By Egufe Yafugborhi

PORT HARCOURT – REAL estate solutions provider and business strategist, My-Ace China, also known as Mayor of Housing, has said the worsening inflation in Nigeria would continue to escalate and get more citizens into depression if Nigerians fail to reinvigorate their productive capacities on the back of collaboration and cooperatives.

China, in the first of newly introduced series to volunteer expert enlightenment to give Nigerians a clear roadmap of action to survive the harsh times in lawful ventures, noted that inflation in Nigeria projected to hit about 12% by 2027 has leaped to 20.35% in just 2022, describing the rapid rise as huge. 

He said, “Not all inflations are negative, but the situation in Nigeria is worrisome because we face the cost-push and built-in inflations, the worse two types of inflations. Cost of production in the country is high. Business are finding it hard to survive, creating high prices for low production against very low purchasing power of citizens. This is the worst type of inflation.

“The nation’s currency which is the Naira printed by the Central Bank of Nigeria is there but goods are shrinking. You now have the real built-in inflation where you have a lot of printed paper money chasing few dwindling goods, thereby forcing their prices up and making the currency rapidly drop value.”

Among the critical intensifiers of the growing inflation, China listed, “Rising insecurity. Where people are no more motivated and secure to go to production location, rate of production drops. This is the case with agro-products (foods). 

“Food comes from farms and insecurity is in the farm locations. This is where insecurity is core to the survival of Nigerians because more farmers are abandoning their farms. This is driving prices high up.”

He added that with local grossly disrupted and the nation 95% import dependent, the local currency is always bound to witness current free fall on the exchange rate, just as poor access to energy overbears on production cost with frequent collapsing national grid and high cost of fuel and generators, all of the setbacks he blamed on successive failed leadership.

“Exchange rate is now killing Nigerians because what we did import for $100 at N350 rate is now at N700, not because the dollar price has increased but the exchange rate has built a new inflation into its price. If you must sell locally, it must be at double price, which is 100% inflation”,  he explained.

On how Nigerian can deal with the overbearing inflation that is not likely to leave in a hurry, the Mayor of Housing recommended, ” The first thing we need is go back to production. The second is collaboration which is the new competition. If not, we are not competing. 

“I want to see a resurgence of the productive Nigeria and that is a Nigeria built on the back of cooperative and collaboration. Look at the history of Nigeria, you will see that the nation was most prosperous during its most productive and collaborative years.

“Agric wealth in the 1960s and 1970s was built on cooperatives. Groundnut pyramids were not built on cranes but on cooperatives. Cooperative banks were bigger than commercial banks then.

“Collaboration creates exponential value. When two people of equal in value come together, they create a value greater than the value of two. The tallest house in 1962 in Nigeria was Coco House in Ibadan, built on the back of Cocoa Cooperative.”