Forgive me if I repeat myself. I may have written about some of what I will write about here at a previous recent occasion. I am writing with almost unprecedented energy after I visited Arise TV a few minutes ago, to attend a financial show with ace anchor, Charles Aniagolu. The station is situated inside Transcorp Hilton Hotel, which I had never seen to be so ghostly. It was eerie. Even spooky, as the wind swept the empty parking lot and the vast reception echoed at the sound of every footstep. The dry streets of Abuja could not have told the story of this lockdown more eloquently than the otherwise bustling hotel now turned haunted house.
But it was not only the eeriness of the hotel that spooked me and prompted me to type this article out this very moment. It was partly the chilling statement by Mr Femi Adesina, the presidential spokesman, aired on the show, that Nigeria may soon become totally broke, with no money coming from anywhere, and also the prognosis from Mr Bode Ososami, the Arise analyst from London, that instead of the U-shaped recovery that global economists had expected (meaning a prolonged period of slump and then a sharp recovery), some pundits were now looking at an L-shaped curve, meaning the global economy – predicted to fall by 12% by the IMF – has crashed and will stay down for as far as the eyes can see. Whereas Adesina’s analysis was based on the crash in the price of crude oil, as he tried to justify why other nations are able to put up massive bailouts compared to what Nigeria projects as response to this unprecedented catastrophe, Ososami came in from a wider angle – as he discussed the fact that 10 million Americans, and perhaps 1.5million Brits, had filed for unemployment in the last two weeks. Instead of the job growth that Trump used to boast about, the US Department of Labor announced today that employers cut over 700,000 last month – the highest percentage since 1975. The world is in for a period of serious trouble as a result of Coronavirus. The Daily Independent newspaper today also had a big headline “COVID-19 HAS CRUMBLED NIGERIA’S ECONOMY – FG”. That was perhaps the briefing the President got from our topdog economic managers yesterday.
Adesina’s statement needs to be taken very seriously and further examined. It is true that crude oil has slumped. But contrary to his explanation (as he looked at a recovering Brent), our Bonny Light has stayed down, veering off the Brent in a very worrisome manner. A barrel of our Bonny went as low as $18 on 2nd of April, 2020, before recovering to $21 today. More worrisome is the fact that 50% of the global economy is presently shut down and very few people are optimistic enough to be buying more of fossil fuel, despite President Trump’s attempt to bring the Russians and Saudi Arabians together – the reason why there is a recovery in some other oil contracts. Of course, Trump has bigger problems right now, and the forces rallied against him would rather this present bump in crude oil prices be very temporary. We are in trouble. We are in serious trouble. NNPC is not earning money – or rather we can surmise that it is not getting any cash flow as at now. The Group Managing Director of the corporation had announced two weeks ago that if the price of our crude should dip lower than $22 we were ‘out of business’. Even if the price rallies to say $30, the margins are low, and our 2020 budget is shot to pieces, being based on the price of crude – a very lazy approach that our fiscal arm couldn’t shake in spite of all the postulations over the matter. What is more? The GMD informed us that we had 50 cargoes floating in the high seas, paid for but the beneficiaries had more problems on hand than to collect them. Countries are just not buying crude right now as they face the Big C! So it is a great time to talk seriously about diversification from crude oil. But nowhere is open.
I listened yesterday to a gentleman as he complained that goods are acquiring demurrage at the ports and if the lockdown persists, many importers will simply abandon the goods – and many will go bankrupt. The bankruptcy that is already rolling abroad will soon make a landfall here. The last time it was Carluccio, my favorite airport restaurant brand. So NPA is closed. The FIRS is closed. No one is collecting any taxes and no one can pay. Though the service recorded a 30% increase in collection in the first quarter ended March 2020, the expectations for the rest of the year isn’t looking great. In fact, tax authorities at federal and state levels have started writing to taxpayers, offering us some forbearance as a result of this ‘force majeure’ – Act of God. So where will the cash flow come from to pay for anything after a while? Where will Nigerian governments find the salaries of their staff after a while? The time to think, and act, is now. We cannot afford this rest and this sleep, not even for Corona! Our strategy MUST change. We must buck the global trend.
We need a WAR ROOM. I have been repeating this. We need smart people hankered down over our political, economic, social and public health map, strategizing deeply over the next steps to take. Chances are that there is something there right now, but given the average age of those running the country – many of whom are vulnerable to Covid19 as a result of age, there is every reason to expect that the extreme caution not to get infected may have created a strategic vacuum. Some of us are putting out our ideas right now, for the sake of the nation. Whoever can convene a war room should. But it is frustrating if it ends up being just a chat group with none of their decisions being taken up. My idea of a new strategy, different from what we have deployed right now against Covid-19, is that we must immediately start refurbishment of our thousands of moribund primary health centres, and equip them with some of the drugs that are indicated for therapeutic management of Covid-19. I’m afraid we cannot afford to test perhaps hundreds of millions of Nigerians. That is semantics. If a wave of cold flu should sweep through Nigeria, we must be ready to counter same with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin administered by doctors at the primary, secondary and tertiary health institutions. That is the only viable strategy we have given our relative poverty in comparison with rich countries. We cannot afford the current high drama for much longer. The focus should not be on pristine isolation centres and non-existent ventilators. We are not America.
I note though, that part of the reason why they are having such a major crisis in the USA is because they politicized the issue. The establishment was more interested in rubbishing Trump, they rejected some of his suggestions and expressed too much cynicism to alternative ways of dealing with the crisis. They played along with the global press who were more interested in driving fear (which has killed a lot of people) than in getting people healed. The technocrats – many of them public health ‘experts’ and very smart people – were more interested in being right and relevant than in really saving lives. They made many medical doctors confused and worked them to the bones.
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