THE SEARCH FOR A SCAPEGOAT
Godwin Emefiele, CBN’s governor, is working for a better future, writes THE PROSPERITY OF OIL IS THE PROSPERITY OF NIGERIA AND A DECLINE IN OIL PRICES ALSO SPELLS DOOM FOR THE NIGERIAN ECONOMY. OF THE FIVE RECESSIONS NIGERIA HAS EXPERIENCED IN ITS 56-YEAR
Like every other day in the Nigerian socio-political system, the past few weeks have witnessed a number of protests and counter-protests. Some Nigerians flooded the National Assembly to ask that the assembly be scrapped; some urged President Muhammadu Buhari to rejig his cabinet. We see nameless groups springing up every now and then, seeking attention or demanding, legitimately, for a course of action. The set of groups I have found very laughable in the past few weeks are a bunch of faceless groups calling for the sack of Godwin Emefiele, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Nigerians in Diaspora Monitoring Group (NDMG) and Advocates for Social Justice for All (ASJA) have continually called for Emefiele’s sack, claiming he is responsible for the failure in Nigeria’s economy. “We have seen Mr. Emefiele converting the central bank into the personal bank of his business friends which he used to raise dollars for them to execute projects not just in Nigeria but also in other African countries without a thought for how this would affect the nation’s economy,” one of the groups said in a statement. “The CBN has also largely abdicated the bank’s regulatory roles to the commercial banks under the Bankers’ Committee, which has consequently created a situation where a clique takes decisions to the detriment of 180 million Nigerians so long as their bottom line is met.”
These statements show, literally, how ignorant these groups are, about central banking and simple economics. How does one man convert a 58-year-old institution, belonging to the Nigerian people, into a personal bank in the face of law and order?
The central bank has seen a bloody civil war, numerous military juntas, and a good number of coup and counter coups. Never in those relatively lawless times did the CBN become a private property, not even to the “supreme leader” Sani Abacha.
Another group says the CBN governor is responsible for the country’s recession, and must be fired. This is all the evidence we need to know that these men are living in absolute denial of the most present realities in the global and local economy. Nigeria’s economy has been built over the years around oil. We are a mono-product economy. The prosperity of oil is the prosperity of Nigeria, and a decline in oil prices also spells doom for the Nigerian economy. Of the five recessions Nigeria has experienced in its 56-year history, four of them were due to low oil prices, and only one was due to the civil war. So, to say Emefiele is responsible for recession is to say the CBN governor is responsible for the fall in oil prices.
The most recent oil slump, which began in 2014, has seen oil prices fall by more than 50 per cent, and Nigeria’s revenue has tumbled in the same fashion. As if that was not enough, militants in the Niger Delta region, began blowing up pipelines in 2016, reducing Nigeria’s oil production, and consequently its revenue generation capacity.
As Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo clearly puts it, if not for the activities of the vandals, Nigeria may have avoided the worst recession in nearly three decades. Speaking after the last meeting of the Economic Management Team, Osinbajo said if Nigeria did not have cases of vandalism, it would not be in a recession. “It is important for us to understand the nature of this recession in which we have found ourselves. In discussing this issue of recession there is tendency for people to generalise; a lot depends on what sort of recession and how we got here. If we did not have vandalism in the Niger Delta as we are currently suffering, we will not have this recession today. Moreover, in looking at the solutions, we should try to focus on the type of problem we have and what instigated it. Then we can begin to come up with better solutions.”
The vice-president, as the head of the country’s economic team, clearly opposes the claims made by these groups that Emefiele is responsible for recession. In an op-ed for Bloomberg in September, President Muhammadu Buhari corroborates Osinbajo on the cause for Nigeria’s recession. In his word: “We also know that the current recession is partly driven by the production outages in Nigeria’s Delta region, and we are confident that growth will accelerate as problems in that region are resolved”.
In Africa, when a child falls, he stands up and continues on his journey. When an adult falls; he looks at the place where he stumbled and moves on, watching out for such obstacles in the future. But when a fool falls, he sits at the spot, blaming everything and everyone around for his own fall.
With Nigeria’s recession, we, as a nation, should act like adults, see why we fell and move forward, learning not to fall to such obstacles again. This, in my opinion, is exactly what Godwin Emefiele has been doing. Emefiele sees Nigeria’s import dependence, and over-reliance on oil, and has tailored many CBN programmes to ensure we drive our economy away from one that depends on oil for survival.
The central bank, under Emefiele, has given small scale loans to youths and entrepreneur to foster non-oil growth in economy. The bank has intensified its anchor borrower scheme for farmers, to make Nigeria capable of feeding itself, while implementing a sound inflation control mechanism for short term spike. It is common in Nigeria for such groups to look for a scapegoat at any time the country is facing one challenge or the other to blame for our collective age-long failures, but we consistently miss the point for scapegoats. The idea of scapegoats dates back to the old Jewish culture, where goats were used as sacrifices to take away sins, and guilt from the Israelites camp. In this culture, two goats were got; one is killed and the other is sent into the desert to die, after carrying the sins of the whole nation. Once this is done, it is believed that the sin of the whole nation is gone, and there’s a new guiltless year ahead.
In Nigeria’s case however, getting someone to take the fall for a recession does not end the recession. In fact, in Emefiele’s case, it only worsens our economic woes. It brings uncertainty, it breaches the flow of economic progress, and it would only plunge the nation into deeper economic uncertainty – and uncertainty is good for no man’s business.
Emefiele’s plans and programmes are yielding results: inflation is abating, the currency crisis is getting behind us, inflow of forex is on the increase, and most recently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated Nigeria as the largest economy in Africa. It is only wise to hold on to the team that steers a country through its worst economic situation in three decades.