By Emenike Vincent Onyembi
At 2014, our GDP to debt ratio was 17%. This 2020, it is estimated to cross 31% (it was already 30% last year). It climbed 55% in 5 to 6 years. With no commensurate infrastructural development. Nigeria will not earn enough [revenue] to service its debt this year.
The thing is Nigerians are responsible for the decisions they made. They will reap the fruits of the votes they cast. They will reap the fruit of their complacency and nonchalance.
Borrowing is not bad. The problem is the conditions under which you are borrowing. In 2017, the US had a GDP to Debt ratio of 105%. It didn’t stop them from being the world’s largest economy. A tiny fraction of their revenue is used to service debt. It is not the debt that is the issue. It is the conditions under which you are collecting the debt.
Nigeria had a robust economy between 2011 and 2014, cracks started showing in 2014 but it was never enough to bring us to where we are today. We were the world’s fastest growing economy only next to China in 2012.
There are discussions that created the MINT group. Nobody in this place will dare run a business the way Nigeria has been run in the last five [5] years. Nobody! The decisions this government has made is simply atrocious. And every single one of them will pay for it.
To make it simple for you:
Look through our budget’s expenditure framework for the last 10 years. Try and find out how much of our annual budget for each year is reserved for debt servicing for each year. I am not sure about them paying for it. Karma has been letting people get away with shit for some time now. We are the ones to pay for it, as unpalatable as that may sound.
We should have diversified but Obasanjo down to Jonathan grew the service industry.
Buhari had a very simple job: keep the economy and the naira stable and start working on optimum fiscal policy to claim value from what is happening in the economy.
It is a very simple job.
1. Deregulate the petroleum industry.
2. Improve power.
3. Get more people into the tax nets and just stay on cruise control.
4. Of course, implement the right monetary policies.
Very very simple job.
They are doing school feeding because they are thieves.
There is wrong mindset that we have. A misconception that we must have something we are exporting. So we wake up and say we want to diversify to agriculture. What we fail to realise is that you must have the capacity to produce to a certain level, and at a certain quality (and create demand), before you can start thinking of exporting.
What sort of policies do we have in place to support Research and Development and Mechanised Agriculture, enough to grow our production to the point where we can say we can export so and so thing?
We are still celebrating the production of rice and shutting borders to stop its importation.
Don’t we see that there is a problem?
