In the days when Boko haram  was still halal in our our country,the Communique   No.103 of the Monetary Policy Committee, MPC, meeting held on September 21 and 22,2015, would by now have been decoded,dissected and deconstructed by our ivory tower thinkers and public intellectuals. It was an official obituary of our economy!

Alas,one month after its release and even publication as advertorials   the “body language” of our castrated   intellectual class shows clearly that boko has truly become haram as many of our intellectual prides of yesteryear now take cue from unbaked politicians before commenting on issues of national importance.

Unlike in the period when professors were   unquestionable sources of profound knowledge and elucidation on public issues,today you will almost puke at the level of palpable ignorance that flows from many of them either as a result of mental fatigue or self-censorship because the gods they worship who are anti-intellectual.

Mental fatigue

A friend told me how he was at a campus early April   and Professors were arguing with passion that the new administration would make $1 exchange at N1.What affliction would make people in ivory towers not to understand that the value of currency is determined by demand and supply and not fiat.

He said he had to quickly exit the place before they could pollute his head. The politicians have since recounted the promise our professors of emptiness were holding on to less than 100 days in office.

That was the campus where every budget presentation by government would be X-rayed with informed positions taken by the   unions of students,lecturers and non-academic   staff within days of government reading such. The strengths and weaknesses of budget directions are pointed out with alternative policy measures recommended.

The level of debates we used to have on union budget at the Students Representative Councils in those days was much more profound than what obtains in our National Assembly today.

When in 1987, prolific playwright and post- graduate student at Ife then,Dapo Adeniyi, wrote a satire with characters such as Prof Bamgbobe(soup carrier ),Prof Ladiladi(as licker) and Prof Ajetooba(lickspittle ) I thought he was delving into the imponderable , but how fast we have arrived there!

In moments of malady like we are in,one cannot but recollect how those bright chaps in African Concord deconstructed Ibrahim Babangida’s “this economy has defied all analysis” outpour in 1992 with the earthshaking cover “IBB Gives Up” which made the gap-toothed dictator to shut the newsmagazine.

To the MPC communique we quickly return to.The domestic economic and financial developments output segment   gave warning signals.It states that “ real GDP grew by 2.35 per cent in the second quarter of 2015 ,a significant decrease when compared with the 3.96 and 6.54 per cent in the preceding quarter and corresponding period of 2014 respectively.

Real GDP growth is projected by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, to stabilise at 2.63 per cent in 2015,compared with the 6.22 per cent   recorded in 2014”.

The Committee went on to premise overall outlook for economic activity improvement on “sustained improvement in the supply of power and refined petroleum products and progress with counter-insurgency in the North East axis”. This is the pig in a poke.

There is no record that we have invested a dime in the power sector in the the last five months and the little improvement out of the efforts of the previous administration which was comically attributed to the “ body language” of the present regime is fast diminishing   with over 1110MW already dropped as at September.

The local refineries which were hyped by the propagandists in June 2015   are now operating at about 10 per cent. A report by the NNPC exclusively published by Thisday of October 19, 2015 stated inter alia:

“ NNPC report indicates that during the eight-month period under review(January-August 2015), the three refineries operated at a total loss of N31.682 billion, with Kaduna refinery accounting for the highest loss of N26.183 billion, while Warri and Port Harcourt refineries made losses of N8.496 billion and N8.057 billion respectively.

While Kaduna refinery recorded losses throughout the eight-month period, Warri and Port Harcourt refineries recorded profits in some months within the period under review.

The Kaduna refinery operated at a loss of N5.111 billion in January; N2.673 billion in February; N2.260 billion in March; N3.045 billion in April; N2.595 billion in May; N2.662 billion in June; N3.847 billion in July and N3.990 billion in August.

But Warri refinery recorded profits of N4.668 billion and N79 million in the months of January and July, respectively, but recorded losses in February (N1.390 billion), March (N1.338 billion), April (N1.753 billion), May (N1.288 billion), June (N1.532 billion) and August (N1.195 billion).
Port Harcourt refinery also recorded profits of N705 million in March, N557 million in July and N5.045 billion in August.

The refinery, however, operated at a loss of N1.497 billion in January, N1.705 billion in February, N1.437 billion in April, N1.713 billion in May and N1.705 billion in June.”

Two former rulers Generals Yakubu Gowon and Olusegun Obasanjo have openly lampooned the December deadline set by government to end terrorism as unrealistic given the deadlier exploits of the Boko Haram group.

The sum total of all the above is that the outlook for our possible economic growth are hinged on the impossible.

Macroeconomic environment

The considerations of the committee are no less scary. It noted that ”the macroeconomic environment remained fragile”,that the economy “further slowed in the second quarter of the year,making it the second consecutive quarterly less-than-expected performance”.

It further bemoaned that growth had come under strains “arising from declining private and public expenditures….the non-payment of salaries at the state and local government levels as a key dampening factor on consumer demand”.Non-payment of wages will only worsen as I am aware of a state that had less than N50m left after all bank deductions were made from its September allocations.”

Apart from the decline in oil prices which the communique   said had brought tremendous pressure on the foreign exchange market,it feared that “some of the banking sector performance indications could be stressed if conditions worsen further. Specifically,the committee noted that liquidity withdrawals following the implementation of the TSA, elongation of the tenure of state government loans as well as loans to the oil and gas sectors could aggravate liquidity conditions in banks and impair their financial intermediation thus affecting economic growth …”

The optimism of the committee that business confidence would continue to improve is also based on weak premises.One is that the government would continue to unfold its economic plans.We are yet to see any and the level of thought of ministerial nominees who could be charged with such assignment was terribly disappointing save for Okechukwu Enelamah.

Second is that “the fight against corruption and improving the business environment   would unlock the inflow of foreign direct investment”.This has also been damaged with the Animal Farm approach to the anti-corruption war where some suspected thieves are being harassed while their counterparts in the ruling party are being promoted to higher offices by “all means necessary“.

Low quality rumour

An anti-graft war that is anchored on innuendos and   low quality rumour like Oshiomohole’s sickening rant that an American official told him of a minister who stole $6b (which the U.S State Department has since denied) would scare investment rather than attract.Leaders market their country when they go out while assuring that they are dealing with their challenges. Our own leaders have been going abroad to de-market the country the way they are using corruption as if they are still campaigning against another government in power.

All we are left with in the final analysis is the committee’s admonition: “Having seen two consecutive quarters of slow growth, the committee recognised that the economy could slip   into recession in 2016 if proactive steps were not taken   to revive growth in key sectors of the economy”.

As fellow Nigerians are encouraged to fasten their seat belts,our Goebbels would sure relapse into their hackneyed and jejune regurgitation of the atavistic nonsense: “we are clearing the mess of the last six years”. Whatever challenges associated with those years were not the reason why Awo wrote to Shagari in 1982 that the ship of the Nigerian state was about to capsize or why Babangida declared in 1992 that the economy had defied all analysis.

We have eaten the sour grapes for decades and now our teeth are set on the edge.The collapse of the mono-product economy with its command and control centre must give way for the proper structuring of the country that would allow   diversification and rebooting of the economy. Every other measure is dodging the issue and   futile attempt at postponing the doomsday which is already here.