What The Papers Say
The Punch-Nigeria
The grope must end
An unfortunate history of flirtations with different heads of state seems to be the only enduring hallmark of Nigeria's twenty-four years of political underdevelopment. From the moment the British colonial rulers arbitrarily welded Nigeria together in 1914 to the time of independence in 1960, a conjecture of electoral and military violence, civil war, and mutual ethnic suspicion and distrust have characterised Nigeria's history. It is indeed a remarkable act of providence that the country still remains one.Our people groaned in rickety mud-houses in the suburbs while the filthy rich politicians were comfortable in exclusive houses with gold bathtubs in London, attended to by call girls from Soho clubs. The heart of the nation bled as the politicians in their flowing robes ran after pleasure and easily disregarded the yearnings of our people.
Put succinctly, Nigeria again failed in its second experiment at democracy. Coupled with this second failure, how- ever, was the germinating impression that we are our great- est undoing. The history of the country became entitled 'How Nigerians under-developed Nigeria'. Nineteen eighty four saw the country again forced to flirt with the military in the ardent wish that we may yet find a solution to our prob- lems, that we may find the RENAISSANCE after twenty four years of the DARK AGES.
The Buhari regime which came with the new year has set in motion a vigorous machine to reorient the Nigerian ethos. But Nigerians have been made hardened sceptics by twenty four years of dumbfoundering inability to rise above injus- tice and social decay, political and economic instability and strings of indecisive tinkering rulers.
Are we honestly convinced that we have struck the right note with quite many of our social critics, eggheads and journalists behind bars? Are we sure that the best way to engender national reconciliation is to enforce policies that may alienate groups and sections of our people; be they students, doctors, journalists or workers who are retrenched everyday?
Have we or have we not left the business of ruling to chase shadows and weird dreams? Or pursue mediocrity to the chagrin of the intellectuals with which our country is so bles- sed? Frequently our brilliant professors die while we continue to spend millions on importation of technology. We have doctors who are world-class beaters, yet we retain a blind faith and loyalty in American and West European health care delivery. Just when would we summon the will to hold our destiny in our own hands?
There is a crying need for a show of magnanimity from the government to embark on national reconciliation and an imperative recourse to absolute acceptance of the fact that we have the men and materials to develop Nigeria in less than five years. All we need now is someone who can bridge the chasm between vision and our present experience.
This decade may be our last chance to rebuild well or des- troy finally Nigeria and twenty four wasted years is more than enough to make us pause and ask: what have we achieved? The grope must end.
The Guardian, Nigeria
A deceptive economic recovery
The World Bank and its affiliate, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been jamming the air waves in the past week with the optimistic forecast that world economic recovery is underway. In its report for the year ended April 1984, which was released on the eve of the 39th annual meeting of the World Bank in Washington on September 24, the IMF said the vigorous economic expansion currently in the upswing in both the United States and Canada fore- shadows the spread of recovery to other industrialized countries. There is even the view from Washington that there is a trickle down effect on the developing countries of the expansion in the US economy.The point must be noted first time that rosy pictures have been painted of world economic recovery. In the past three years, the industrialized countries backed by the IMF have presented varying optimistic scenarios which failed to materialize. In this year of election in the United States, President Ronald Reagan, in particular, has been priming the pumps of optimism largely to ward off brickbats from opponents, fuel what is said to be a buoyant mood in the US and humour European allies and Third World leaders who have consistently claimed that the exorbitant interest rate occasioned by his policies constitute the bane of the inter- national monetary system. Indeed, leaving aside the huge Third World debts of 600 billion dollars, the precarious price of primary commodities and the protectionist barriers mounted by industrialized countries against manufacturers from developing countries, the question of interest rates tops the list of problems inhibiting recovery.
It is too optimistic to expect the interest rates to come down at a sufficient pace to positively redress the situation. While the rest of the world may be throttled by them, the US economy thrives on high interest rates. It is a matter of simple but peculiar economics deriving from the fact that 552% of world trade is invoiced in the US currency; central banks tend to hold about 75% of their foreign exchange reserves in US dollars and 80% of all international bank loans are denominated in dollars. The result is that with high interest rates, the United States easily becomes a net importer of funds from other countries of the world. In fact, in the past three years the currencies of the other industrialized countries, France, Britain, Italy, Germany and Japan, have been losing between 20% to 80% of their value to the dollar. The high interest rates that have made US goods less competitive against goods from countries like Japan has propelled President Reagan to harp on US econ- omic recovery as being the engine for getting the world out of recession. But very few countries are in the position of Japan, Nigeria, for instance, cannot benefit very much because it has only oil to sell and the volume is dictated by OPEC's production ceiling.
For a country like Nigeria, with a foreign debt of 30 billion dollars and a debt-servicing burden of four million dollars a year, the road to economic recovery must be charted outside the ambit of current prognosis. As against the stances of the IMF on free trade, it is necessary to design and stick to policies which increasingly minimize immersion in the vagaries of international trade. More than ever before, the world financial system has become so complex and disadvantageous to developing economies that self- reliance is imperative in terms of producing locally and cheaply the essential goods that we need. The curtailment of imports certainly must be backed by increased domestic production especially in agriculture if it is to have any meaning. Otherwise, to accept the alternative approach which involves unqualified dependence on a monetary system governed by the organised anarchy of the US economy amounts to an acceptance of recession.
