The past casts a long shadow on the present. So, let us turn the clock back to the second republic. The politicians were strutting the stage, happy to have been the immediate first group of civilian politicians to succeed the military politicians. The economy was doing well. Crude oil may sound crude but it was good to the Shagari administration. Between October 1979 and 1982, it put a cool N44.77 billion into the national coffers. The economy looked solid, almost impregnable to the vagaries of the world economy.
Enter Chief Obafemi Awolowo, national leader of the UPN and the keenest watcher of our national economy. In 1981, he warned the Shagari administration not to mistake the glitter for the gold. The economy was beginning to look to him like a house standing on a brick of mud. His statement was deemed politically incorrect, even worse, by the president’s men who felt that the chief was not just out to spoil the party for everyone but to diabolically denigrate Shagari’s economic management as incompetent. They wrapped Awolowo in purple prose. They trundled into public view some evidence to show that the economy was robust. Awolowo was about to munch his words.
He did not. Awolowo, a man not given to the frivolity of laughter, could only have chuckled. In 1982, one year after he warned Shagari, there was too much crude oil in the international market. The technical name for it, in case you did not know, is oil glut. Oil, oil everywhere but no buyers. The sellers were left holding the short end of the stick. The prices fell. Our national treasury received less money.
It was the second time Nigeria would experience it. The first time was in 1978. It forced the Obasanjo military administration to introduce drastic austerity measures to curb frivolous imports and conserve the rapidly dwindling foreign exchange.
Shagari walked down the same path that served the military administration. He introduced austerity measures for the same reasons. More critically for Shagari, he suddenly had the very unenviable task of managing poverty in a nation considered to be the richest oil producing nation on the continent. He did not have to hear Awolowo’s laughter. He knew he was laughing and saying, sotto voce, ‘I told them so.’
Had the president and his men listened to the chief, they would have been better prepared for the crude oil glut when it happened and left the national treasury with the jarring sound of Nairalessness. They did not listen because politics distorted the facts. Managing poverty any time, any where, is a tough task. But it is ten times tougher in a nation that had for years lived and savoured the myth of oil wealth. Nigerians were not prepared for the pains of the austerity measures.
Why did I allow myself to be taken down that memory lane? Let me tell you. A couple of weeks ago as of this writing, the governor of Zamfara State, Abdul’aziz Yari, warned the country to prepare for another recession in 2020. Our most recent recession was in 2016. Given what we went through then, I am sure those who read the governor’s warning trembled in advance of the grim prospects of a struggling economy drawn once again into the eyes of the recession storm. Yari’s state was politically incorrect because it was instantly taken to mean that he committed the mortal sin of criticising the president instead of praising and commending him for his economic husbandry.
A group calling itself the Buhari Media Organisation took up the urgent and politically correct task of laying the cane across Yari’s back. Niyi Akinsiju and Cassidy Madueke, chairman and secretary respectively of the organisation, issued a joint statement telling the governor to shut up and shut in his ignorance about the true state of the economy under Buhari’s watch.
They said: “Nigerians should dismiss the false alarm raised by Governor Yari because the Buhari administration runs the Nigerian economy on an economic template of economic recovery and growth with a robust roadmap towards sustainable growth. How can Nigeria slip back into recession when there is a tight monetary policy which has seen an increase in the nation’s foreign reserves to $44.3 trillion from $22 billion left by the PDP government?”
As it was in 1981 so it is in 2019. This is not about the facts of the national economy but the political correctness of believing that the economy could not go wrong under Buhari’s keen watch. The NPN men who rooted for Awolowo’s scalp thought the same thing about the economy under Shagari’s watch. They believed the good times were set to roll, what with Chief Akinloye’s branded champagne. But the good times suddenly stopped rolling and hunting essential commodities became a daily family struggle.
Yari is in the same ruling party as the president. He, certainly, did not intend to rubbish Buhari’s economic management. He has, most probably like Awolowo, seen signs that the recession shadows are beginning to lengthen and felt it would be irresponsible of him to keep quiet. It has been pretty long since John the Baptist cried in the wilderness and made crying in the wilderness a rather dangerous undertaking for those who see and tell.
Recession is what happens to the national economy. It may be the consequence of past decisions that went awry or it may result from a sudden dip in the fortunes of a monocultural economy such as ours. That is always a present danger. Still, we give in to political correctness. It makes us feel good about our national problems. When politics colours our views and perceptions and when we speak truth to power with forked tongues, we make ourselves deaf to the lone voice crying in the political wilderness.
I hope we do not have recession again, ever. I hope Yari is wrong. But we must beware of half-baked economists who invite themselves to serious matters such as this because they have a self-imposed duty to defend the president.
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