ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY - by Tari Ogbowei

Just a few years ago, in 2014 precisely, the dollar traded between #150 and #170. Today it's trading at #720 to a dollar, a whopping 367% increase. Our excess crude account has shrunk from $35.37m to $376,655, the lowest it has ever been since the beginning of the fourth republic. What this means is that we have virtually no savings and by implication nothing to cushion the effect of any economic misfortune we might run into. Meanwhile, the NNPC has a daily crude oil sale of 1.6m barrels per day at $100 per barrel. That's $160m per day without taking cognisance of gas sales, yet we have just $367,655 as our foreign reserve. 🙄 What this means is that someone somewhere, most likely in the presidency is shortchanging Nigeria and Nigerians. As at May 2015, 1 litre of petrol was #65. Today it is around #180, 176.9% increase. In May 2015, a bag of rice was sold at #7,000. Today it's over #30,000. This is over 328%. The price of many other commodities have also increased with at least a 150%. Bread which is one of those foods in high demand has done at least 200% increase. The naira is in a free fall. In less than no time, it will be trading for #1,000 to a dollar. Our political elites have hoarded forex which they have used for their primaries and are also planning to use in buying their ambitions in the forthcoming elections, thereby starving businesses, importers and manufacturers of much needed forex which in turn puts a strain on an already fragile economy. If we faced the same circumstances we had in 2015, we would definitely enter a recession we might never come out of and Zimbabwe would be a walk in the park in comparison. All these, coupled with the yearly double digit inflation rate result in the erosion of the purchasing power of the naira. Nigeria being an import based economy, will soon be brought to its knees by all its negative KPIs. In all of this, a broke country as Nigeria whose debt servicing is more than it's income still borrows and for what? To steal the said funds, further impoverishing the people and mortgaging the future of generations unborn. All of the aforementioned stem from one source, the leadership of an inept president who had no real reason why he wanted to be president. A man who had no solutions to the problems we had but only wanted to be president for the fun of it. So he exaggerated our problems and made himself look like the only one who could solve them but rather made things worse. From the first day he assumed office, it was obvious that he wouldn't do well. It took him 6 months to appoint his cabinet. He ordered the DSS to blow up and invade the homes of some judges in the guise of fighting corruption while all he was doing was cowering the judiciary into submission. Today it seems the judiciary is an appendage of the executive arm of government. His draconian and anti-people policies have even made things worse. While all these were ongoing, some Nigerians, social media influencers, like Dr. Dipo Awojide, Segalink, Omojuwa, Odanz, etcwere cheering him on and called others wailers. Today, in the light of all that is happening, these set of people no longer have a voice. We are all wailers now. Funny 😁 In spite of all these, that Buhari and the APC has put Nigerians through, the APC still has the effrontery to ask Nigerians to vote for it in the forthcoming elections. It is fighting for continuity. Continuity on what exactly? The existing bad legacy? Seems like the APC wants continuity to finish Nigerians pata pata but it is said, "ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY" I don't know but I feel Nigerians have woken up and are ready to take back their country from clueless and inept, tyrannical, far right winged dictators who think Nigeria's presidency is "turn by turn."

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