By Kola Ayeye
NEWSDAILYNIGERIA: From 2019-2023, we had a situation where all levers of statutory checks to executive recklessness or/and incompetence collapsed. The Senate and House of Reps are the constitutional checks on fiscal profligacy. They can withhold approval of budgets and debt. They can impeach a President who borrows illegally or is guilty of constitutional breaches. In the midst of government failure to curb extremism-nurtured insurgency, it came to light that President Buhari’s Minister of Communications had a histrory of extremism with evidence suggesting complicity in extra-judicial fatwas. Our President kept mum, neither was there a whimper from both green and red chambers. Under Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila, not once was impeachment mentioned. I do not recall any serious censure on any matter. Whatever the President wanted, they approved. Anytime President Buhari asked them to jump, they asked how high, never why. They looked away while Buhari bled the economy to death. Lawan publicly promised Buhari a 3rd term if he showed interest. Buhari rewarded him with an attempt to make him successor, he was illegally returned to the Senate when that failed. Femi Gbajabiamila is currently Chief of Staff after 4 years as Speaker.
While the National Assembly is the legal check to fiscal profligacy, CBN is the monetary check. The CBN has a duty to limit government borrowing from CBN to the legal ceiling of less than N300bn. Our CBN lent Buhari 100 times, a whopping N30 trillion, more than 50% of entire Money Supply. CBN became an extension of the State Treasury. CBN also used its balance sheet to fund all manner of fancy intervention programs creating another corrupt and inept alternative government with no oversight.
We have thus been reenslaved to a yoke of deepening poverty and hopelessness. We are back to the hopelessly unsustainable post oil-crisis debt of 1983. Then we owed far less than $15bn, which kept growing with compounding of arrears till it crossed $30bn. President Obasanjo settled it with a payment of $12bn and forgiveness of $18bn in 2005, after we had laboured under that debt yoke for over 20 years. Twenty years during which public education and health collapsed, deindustrialisation ensued with erstwhile full capacity utilisation dropping below 30%, the Naira on its part commenced its journey from twice the value of the dollar to one hundredth. ANDREW was the local word for the first wave of skilled and unskilled emigration.
Thanks to President Buhari’s 2019-2023, our external debt is now north of $40bn, over 300% of the $12bn we paid. Domestic debt is over N50 trillion, inclusive of the illegal N30 trillion gifted to President Buhari by Mr. Godwin Emefiele. JAPA is the new ANDREW. The Naira is now over N1000:$, and worse except salvaged. Companies have been under a yoke of FX losses for the last 4 years, climaxing with an agregate of over N650bn losses recently declared by MTN, Nestle, Airtel and others.
A non-statutory pillar of society, yet very crucial, is a responsible elite who rise up to ensure minimum acceptable limits of societal ethoes are never breached. In America, that elite, across party lines, is working hard to stop the emergence of Trump because he is a breach of sacred minimums. When Boris Johnson crossed that line, he was axed. In contrast, our elite failed when Buhari and team ravaged Nigeria:
- When our children were killed at Lekki, our voices were barely heard.
- When Emefiele was straddling the financial system like an Emperor, we barely whispered.
- When Senate and House became the President’s Fans Club, only asking how high whenever the President asked them to jump, we were mute.
What is more concerning is that there has been no introspection to see this grave failure and resolve that “never again”. We blame the key actors without taking responsibility for our failing to stop them.
We are, yet again, facing grave danger. The legislature is completely “located in the Presidential residence”. Obscene amounts were voted as palliative for the legislature and judiciary, not even a whimper. Sons are appointed judges, very undeserving names on the SAN list, and the Reps claim they need N160m work tools, there is at best, a mild demur.
We have failed miserably before. Let’s resolve not to fail again. Venting on WhatsApp is very febrile masturbation in a situation demanding resolute ordered resistance. Cowardice is a thousand deaths before death, there are instances when silence consigns essence to the character of the graveyard.
Lest you think the elite refer to the wealthy, not at all. That class of people privileged by education and a more informed understanding of how things should work compared to the proletariat, the peasants, the rural poor, are members of the elite. If you are reading this, you belong to the elite who need to organise to hold government and leadership accountable. Solo effort doesn’t work. Organisation is key. The G32, Concerned Professionals, NADECO were prime examples of structured elite intervention. The current situation of the country deserves no less, rather than continuing to moan. We should pause to reflect on how much more we ought to do. For the sake of our children and grandchildren.