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Well, my take is that the massive corruption at all levels of government gave access to huge cashflows by members of the ruling class. This in turn had such a huge trickle down effect that it created a visible wave of conspicuous consumption that led to the false impression that the economy had a sustainable underlying foundation. So things like the property markets in certain parts of the country such as Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt defied orthodox economics. As house prices skyrocketed on steroids, purchasing power followed it. But purchasing power from where? From productive economic activity? Of course not!
Apply the same to private jets, luxury cars, huge amounts of cash in bank accounts, a high propensity for profligate, jet set lifestyles, etc etc, and you’ll see that the economy was just a lie. The vast majority of people behind these conspicuous consumption didn’t have any visible means of legitimate livelihood. They just had access to lots of money to burn. Even Nigeria’s measure of unemployment has been a lie for many years. Do you know what our current unemployment rate is officially? 12.1% at the end of March 2016. What a joke! Who has jobs in Nigeria? The vast majority of working age Nigerians have even given up looking for jobs and have since gone into all forms of economic survival options ranging from legit petty trading and street hawking to drug peddling, armed robbery, kidnapping, 419 and other sophisticated cyber crimes. My best guess is that our unemployment rate would be in the region of 70%, if not worse. There just isn’t enough legitimate economic activity to create nearly as many jobs as are required to offer full employment opportunities for the population of working age Nigerians.
So when anybody wakes up today to tell you that Buhari destroyed the economy, tell them to go jump off a cliff. The 70% reduction in our forex earnings has had a catastrophic effect on our economy as it would have, no matter who won last year’s presidential elections. It has affected every single country that depended heavily on oil. Our exchange rate was dictated by our forex earnings which were decimated by the fall in the price of oil. No policy would prevent that. And as a mass importing country, it completely affected everything. Serves us right!- George Uriesi
Extract from a brilliant piece from G. U
