By Rotimi Fasan

A PALPABLE  frenzy gripped the nation’s media last week. Among the country’s newspapers it all looked like a competition, a race to be the first to report that the country had slipped into recession. The front pages of these newspapers reported the news with muted glee it seemed. We had finally made a remarkable achievement, maybe a dubious one.

That was the impression anyone unaware of the implication of the news might have been led to believe. The Nigerian economy is in recession and that’s official, they said. Whatever economic indices coalesced to underline the official nature of the reported recession must have been with us for quite a long while now. Nothing cataclysmic, not even slightly dramatic, happened to the Nigerian economy last week to warrant the ‘official’ aspect about the state of our economy.

For several months now the value of the national currency has continually dropped relative to other foreign currencies, notably the US dollar. Prices of food stuffs have skyrocketed for God-knows-how long. The country’s gross domestic product has shrunken to the point of non-recognition. It has shrunken so much that the pretence that ours is the leading economy in Africa, a fact celebrated last year with pomp and circumstance by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, could no longer hold.

Private companies have in response to the state of the economy been laying off staff for many months. So there was apparently nothing dramatically new to justify the rush by the media to report the comatose state of our economy last week. Yet, nobody could justifiably blame the media for reporting that the Nigerian economy is in recession and that the fact had been officially acknowledged.

The reason is that for several months after all indices showed that the economy was in recession, the Buhari administration chose to deny the fact. In the face of the policies it was rolling out and what many saw as their adverse effects, the government was adamant that the economy was on an even keel. It shrugged off all suggestions that all might not be well even when it could be argued that it was not directly responsible for what was happening. It might be struggling to find the right panacea to the problem but this administration did not bring us to where we are today.

Yet, the government refused to acknowledge that we might be regressing economically. A clear acknowledgment of the situation appeared to it like an admission of failure or responsibility for what was amiss. Not when supporters of the previous government were already celebrating what they perceived as the inability of the present administration to end our economic troubles.

So even when the national currency, for example, had all but been devalued the government continued to insist it would not devalue the naira. But things would sooner than later get too hot for the administration to deny as the naira continued to slip further and further into unconsciousness, overwhelmed by the whirlpool created around far stronger foreign currencies. In the end then came acknowledgment- that our economy is indeed in recession, the first time in nearly a quarter of a century.

That’s quite a record. And now we must ask ourselves what should happen next. Shall we sit back and continue to wring our hands in self pity, cling to the hope being offered by Abuja that the situation would not last for long, or roll out the drums to celebrate the ‘fall’ of the Buhari administration, its failure to measure up to the ‘sterling’ economic record of the Jonathan administration, as many open and closet supporters of that administration are already doing?

The fact is that the Buhari administration now has its job more clearly cut out for it. Yes, it has a tough row to clear but it must rise to the occasion and do what it must to bring relief to the people. This is not the time to engage in trading words that can only further distract it from the job at hand. Whether it fails or succeeds now depends on how well it dedicates itself to the task before it.

It can yet prove to its detractors that it has more wind beneath it wings and that it can fly high in spite of what looks presently like a situation that would be impossible to turn around. With or without emergency powers, it should do what it must within the limits of constitutionality to bring relief to the longsuffering people of this country who have borne the brunt of our economic woes. As a Yoruba proverb puts it, when hunger enters the stomach no other matter goes in there.

This government, therefore, should make it its immediate priority to ensure availability of food. One way to go about it is to ease the stringent measures imposed on certain categories of staple food and mass-consumed goods that are imported into the country. Government could do this as a short time measure pending when things improve. It doesn’t look like a wise move in an import-dependent economy to simultaneously place total embargo on importation of all types of goods and food at a time when there are no immediate replacements. A hungry people cannot be expected to have the kind of patience that this government needs from them to tide over the present economic storm.

Although this cannot be done overnight but this is the time, as some have remarked, for the government to invest more in agriculture and allied industry. The present situation would have been more bearable if people could feed comfortably. But for long we have placed all our hopes in exportation of crude oil whose relevance as our economic mainstay is ever more precarious. There is no doubt that the drastic and continuous fall in the price of oil has brought us where we are today. We concentrated on the cheap money that accrues from oil sale and failed to save for the future even when there were indications that things would not continue to be rosy.

Those at the helm of affairs squandered everything on frivolities and stole as much as they could in total disregard of what the consequences would be. This is why those who want to gloat must do so with caution and with the realisation that their man, Goodluck Jonathan, brought us where we are today. The failure of his administration to think ahead and save what came from the sale of oil even while permitting wanton and massive pilfering of the national wealth is the reason we are where we are today. Let nobody shy away from the fact: Mohammadu Buhari must be up and doing but he cannot simply be expected to completely make right what another man spent six full years destroying.