The former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Muhammadu Sanusi ll, has dropped those lines that usually put high voltage verbal attack on his person: Nigeria has wasted 40 years, and all the gains during President Goodluck Jonathan have been reversed.
According to the ex-emir and ex-banker, all indices show that the purchasing power of Nigerians has plummeted, and income has fallen to 40 year low. He noted that Nigeria rose to the mountaintop in 2014 when it recorded the highest per capita income on record. But since then, gravity has been pulling the number down. In his model, by 2023, we will be back to 1980 numbers! Tufiakwa.
He dropped these lines in Kaduna at a colloquium to mark his 60th birthday:
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“In 1980, Nigeria’s GDP per capita on purchasing power parity basis was $2,180. In 2014, it appreciated by 50 per cent to $3,099. According to the World Bank, where were we in 2019? $2,229. At this rate in the next two years in terms of purchasing power parity, the average income of a Nigerian would have gone back to what it was in 1980 under Shehu Shagari. That means, in 40 years, no progress, we made zero progress. 40 years wasted,” he said.
What is the solution?
Option A: Vote the same people who have been running the show for ages because they belong to your tribe.
Option B: Try a new generation of leaders who can fix Nigeria irrespective of ancestral affinity. For instance, under my leadership, I will formalize land assets, putting velocity on them, and within 18 months of taking power, I will double per capita income in rural Nigeria. I will deploy two business models: aggregation model (aggregating the land) and marketplace (to deepen orchestration of demand-supply framework). How he wishes? Malaria dream for the village boy!
The aggregation will deploy startups at ward level to map the assets and afterwards, they will put them in land registry and marketplaces, which the owners will activate to make it easier for buying and selling to happen faster, and at scale. Watch this video to get the idea.
Then many other things have to happen.
The Numbers
In a plot, this is what the former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Muhammadu Sanusi ll, was talking about. He extrapolated that by 2023, the number will hit 1980 level. We hope that will not come to pass as that would mean mass poverty, unconstrained. But irrespective of your political affinity, Nigeria has a REAL question to answer now, and that question is this: can doing the same thing again, and again, produce different results, and if we answer NO, then what next?
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We become saint when we lose power!
Anyways he remains “ex-emir and ex-banker” – lol!
Almost everyone here can diagnose Nigeria’s problems, it remains to get the people capable of fixing them. It’s just like a local prophet or ‘spiritual’ people telling you all your problems, including the ones you inherited from your ancestors, and after everything, no solution.
To build a nation is a very complex and highly demanding endeavour, with uncommon sacrifices, but our usual problem is that even those who wish for the best aren’t ready to sacrifice anything.
What did we do in 2014 that gave us our best purchasing power parity in over four decades? It’s likely that we don’t even know, other than checking what the price of crude oil went for that time, if the price was far north, then it could be that the improvement came from there.
We watched our naira collapsed before our eyes, yet no credible explanation on why it collapsed so fast, all we were told was that oil price slumped and we import almost everything, as if we used to be a manufacturing hub.
What is the role of incompetence and bad judgement in all our national malaise? No one has ever run the numbers, but it’s very easy to blame external factors.
We are specialists in making bad choices, so until we correct that, all our diagnoses and postulations are meaningless.