By Dele Sobowale

For a nation so heavily dependent on export of crude oil, our greatest fear should have been a global recession substantially reducing the price of crude because that would take us back to 1983-86 when the price of crude went below $15 per barrel. Today, we will be in dire straits if it fell below $90. The revolution so glibly invited by some leaders of thought will occur sooner than they think.

Open any of our newspapers today and you would think that the most urgent danger to our collective survival is either Boko Haram or the reinstatement of Justice Ayo Salami or the renaming of Unilag or fuel scam or pensions funds embezzlement or Jonathan’s 2015 ambitions.

Grave as these matters are, they however pale into insignificance compared with the real calamities gathering over the horizon, and, all inexplicably, ignored by governments and the political opposition at federal and state levels; civil society groups and even leaders of thought and seminar organizers.

The Nigeria Economic Summit Group, NESG, that collection of billionaires concerned with only the interests of billionaires has not considered it important enough to organize a workshop to address it. Neither has the ultimate decision making body in Nigeria, the Federal Executive Council, FEC, turned its attention to them.

Yet the monsters threatening to consume us faster than all the rest are right on our door steps. The mother of all the dragons at the door is the gradual and unrelenting collapse of the price of crude oil on the international market on account of imminent global recession. This time last year, the price of crude oil was hovering over the $140 per barrel mark and volumes were up.

On Sunday, June 3, 2012, the day the Dana Airline plane dropped on buildings at Iju, a suburb of Lagos, killing more than 150 people, the price of crude oil also fell on top of Nigeria to $98 per barrel or a 30% plunge from last year’s high. It was the lowest level in 16 months. And while the aircraft tragedy affected only a few thousand individuals, and the damage has more or less been contained, the crash of crude prices has not abated; it is still going down and with it all the promises by governments at all levels and in all the states continue to plummet.

This is one tragedy which will spell doom for all 165 million Nigerians; young and old; Muslim or Christian; poor or middle class or rich; employed or unemployed; male or female; urban or rural dweller; and irrespective of the party in power in any state.

Actually, the fact that neither state nor federal governments had addressed their minds to how Nigeria will cope with crude selling for under $75 dollars per barrel, which is becoming a distinct possibility, reflects how badly we are being governed today. Everywhere, governors and the president are more concerned with politics than economics which is deteriorating and for reasons, admittedly, outside our control.

At the federal level, the persons I had expected would be shouting from the roof tops include our World Bank alumna, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Coordinator for Economic Management, CEM and Lamido Sanusi, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.

Certainly, they both know the dire consequences of such a drastic fall in the price of crude oil which is imminent; and that given the economic turmoil in the United States, Europe, China and Japan, Nigeria is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the global downturn without the safety net of internal gross revenue generation which would cushion the impact of under $80 crude oil.

To state that we are in trouble is to understate the problem. That large segments of our country would be devastated is more like the predictable result. Even the woman running a cafeteria knows that she is in deep trouble if the customers responsible for ninety per cent of her income are laid off or have their salaries slashed. Well, the US, China, Japan, India, and Europe which together account for ninety per cent of our exports are set to start importing less crude oil.

Gross Domestic Productivity, GDP, growth in all those countries is almost certain to plummet to less than half of what they were last year and with that global demand for oil will drop drastically. China and India, which for several years grew at more than ten per cent per annum will shrink to less than five per cent; Japan to less than one per cent and Greece, Italy and Spain will lead Europe to negative territory.

When that happens, all the governments of Nigeria will be unable to meet their obligations; neither recurrent nor capital expenditure targets will be met and our complaints about infrastructure deficits, atrocious health and education will fall on deaf ears; insecurity, now alarming enough, will take a disastrous turn for the worse.

Instead of one deadly menace called Boko Haram, we will face a million and one gangs of toughs menacing us as jobs, already hard to find, will become impossible. No government will be spared; so nobody will escape the catastrophe. The question is: are our governments prepared? The answer, sadly, is: not at all.

In every state the focus remains still on politics; the political parties in power want to hang on at all costs because most of their top officials have no other means of subsistence than sharing the national cake. The political opposition invariably has no credible plan to improve the situation because they too have become machines for seizing power in order to loot the treasury.

Certainly, none of the parties has alerted Nigerians to the looming danger. Compare this with 1982, when the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, warned the government of President Shehu Shagari that a dangerous economic down turn loomed. Everybody in the National Party of Nigeria, NPN, including Professor Edozien, an economist and the Chief Economic Adviser, ECA, to Shagari, denounced Awo.

Well, the recession came, the price of crude tumbled from $20-plus to less than $15 and a military coup took place. But, even military take-over did not stop the downward trend; it finally reached $9.95 under Babangida leading to the Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, and several years of painful adjustment. The economic, social and political corrupt practices which SAP brought about are still with us today.

Most especially was the destruction of values which had made Nigeria, once a promising world power, a basket case. We still struggle till today to regain the straight road but we do so lacking a sense of history. Few of the members of the Federal and States Executive Councils were old enough or close to the corridors of power to remember what happened then.

And, there are no historical records anywhere to use as guide and reference to help us navigate the stormy seas ahead. The same is true of the legislative houses everywhere. We have in charge novices leading us, unthinkingly, into another economic quagmire.

So we indulge ourselves in discussions of other things which, while important, should now take a distant second place to planning for survival in a world of $70 per barrel of oil. Certainly, the Sovereign Wealth Fund, SWF, would have been overtaken by events; Dr Christopher Kolade’s SURE Committee will take a bow and disappear into history; the subsidy debate should fizzle out because the landed cost of fuel might dive below N70 per litre and all the noise about minimum wage of N18,000 will abate because, like it or not, governments will have to retrench. Even, President Jonathan, who, hitherto, had engaged a bloated number of Ministers and Advisers, mostly useless, will be forced to run his administration with fewer free-loaders.

Perhaps our leaders will then put on their thinking caps and fashion the survival strategies to get us out of the black hole of Nigeria – before we become extinct like pre-historic animals.

Has anybody heard a serious discussion about food crisis; the only voice crying in the wilderness belongs to the Federal Minister for Agriculture; yet more will perish from hunger than Boko Haram can possibly annihilate.

QUOTE
Even, President Jonathan, who, hitherto, had engaged a bloated number of Ministers and Advisers, mostly useless, will be forced to run his administration with fewer free-loaders.