A bumpy ride on a tiger’s tail is how many have described the first 12 months of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidency. It’s a cocktail of unfulfilled promises, worsening insecurity, a near comatose economy, asphyxiation of citizens via unending taxes, while several other oddities that previous administrations failed to nip in the bud are still flourishing.
Using the words of the father of modern economics, John Keynes, economic reforms often trigger short-term shocks and social dislocations but promise gains in the long term, during which “we are all dead.” A lens to understanding the cost-of-living crisis is to place the national minimum wage side-by-side with the prices of staple food.
But in reality, the poor cannot breathe. Inflation , the bleeding naira , ravaging poverty, falling income, rising insecurity, and other social ills) are suffocating both the rich and the poor.As suggested by Keynes, market failure, the albatross of the invisible hand of economics is killing them, and most of them can only hope that long-term gains happen in the lives of their grandchildren.
Long before Buhari left office, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund alongside local neoliberal economists, advocated pro-market reforms and subsidy removal as necessary options for addressing the structural and endemic challenges. Buhari, a socialist, stuck to a “model that served Nigeria’s interest.
On the other hand, fuel subsidy removal woes were complicated by the liberalisation of the FX market. From a trading band of N460/$, the naira has fallen to about N1500/$ and even crossed N1600/$ at the official market in March. Essentially, the naira has lost about 70 per cent of its value in one year – the same margin it lost in Buhari’s eight-year presidency. Of course, a falling naira is like a falling knife on Nigeria, on several fronts, the least being inflation.
When it decided on what can best be described as the most competitive and tension-soaked presidential election in the Fourth Republic in favour of the incumbent and flag bearer of the All Progressives Congress on October 26, 2023, its reputation further sagged. The preponderance of public opinion was that the Independent National Electoral Commission failed to abide by its own rules with its failure to upload the election results in real-time.
Judiciary One Year Of ‘Renewed Hope Slow Strides In Education Tinubu’S Costly Reforms Unaffordable Cost Of ‘Reforms
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