Photo credit (Zorah/Flickr). Image of famine in Somalia.
Not long after the All
Progressives Congress (APC) party defeated the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
in the 2015 general elections, the country was thrown into different and deep
troubles. Among the most biting of the troubles was the economic recession the
country sank into. The defeated party quickly cashed on this economic challenge
of the nation by accusing the ruling party of its cluelessness and having
economic amateurs as members of the Economic team. They boasted that in the
administration of the defeated PDP, it had a renowned economic team and
technocrats headed and coordinated by Dr. Okonjo Iweala, a renowned Economist
of the World Bank Standard. But the party also quickly forgot that the defeated
government presided over one of the most corrupt era in the history of Nigeria.
The corruption and
impunity could be objectively stated that they were the remote causes of the
recession that the economy suffered under the APC government. The impunity was
so high that the former president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan boldly defended the
corruptness of his government by saying that “stealing is not corruption”. The government
of the PDP had a pedigree for corruption with the former Minister of Petroleum
under the same regime, Mrs. Diezanni Allison Madueke, is now a point of
reference, and can conveniently be referred to in a Doctoral thesis as a case
study for her historic corruption as alleged by the Economic and Financial
Commission (EFCC). This is not to talk of the Dasuki-Gate where the money meant
to buy the weapons to fight the Boko-harams was shared among the committee of
thieves under the PDP government.
The economic recession
of this present government took a toll on Nigerians. The economy was almost flat. Many Nigerians
especially in the financial and manufacturing sectors lost their jobs. Many
companies either folded up or relocated outside the country. The depletion of
the value of the nation’s currency led to the high cost of food and other
essential commodities. This escalated the poverty-level of the already
depressed people of Nigeria. The recession also compressed and constrained the
spending level of the affluent. The level of poverty was further compounded
with many jobless and unemployed dependants feasting avariciously on the pittance
paid to the lucky but definitely under-employed breadwinners. Some people
committed suicide, while several others attempted the supreme escapist-device
to forestall their hopelessness and irredeemable agony. Crimes reverberated as
a mechanism by the criminals to cushion the effects of the recession. Kidnapping
became the order of the day as it became extremely lucrative to the extent that
some people organized self-kidnapping.
In the midst of these
entire prevailing situations that cannot be exhaustively scripted here, the
government had promised at several times that the economy will bounce out of recession.
Those promises were rather esoteric and hypothetical. Suddenly, like a
thunderbolt from the blues, the Office of the Bureau of Statistics announced
that Nigeria was out of recession. It quickly added that no one should rejoice
prematurely because the impact will take long before being felt by the ordinary
Nigerians. It said that announcement of
the end of the recession was not a political statement but rather because the
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country has actually improved successively
over the quarters in the year 2017.
The recession will only
end when the unemployed are gainfully employed. There will be no recession when
the prices of food and other essential commodities are affordable by the common
man on the street. It is when men desist from crime as a panacea to the
crushing effect of a highly deflated economy, only then can we say there is no
recession. Recession can’t end in favour of an international economic theory scripted
on papers when Nigerians go begging for fortunes or are at the mercy of the
ever-malevolent employers of labour. It is only the poor that can actually announce
the end of Nigeria’s recession, and not the government; except the government
wants it just for political reason.
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