TRUMP SHATTERS PEACE WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA WITH TWEETS ON “ROADBLOCKS”:
Bloomberg Politics - December 28, 2016
Detente crumbles between the outgoing and incoming Presidents:
Donald Trump accused President Barack Obama of hobbling the transition to the Republican’s administration with unspecified “inflammatory” statements and “roadblocks,” as tensions between the two men spilled into the open less than a month before Inauguration Day.
“Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks,” the president-elect tweeted on Wednesday. “Thought it was going to be a smooth transition -- NOT!”
Trump’s Twitter eruption was the culmination of a growing set of grievances topped by Obama’s decision last week to have the U.S. abstain from a vote on a United Nations Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. The move allowed the measure to pass, infuriating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump has promised to be friendlier to the U.S. ally, a theme he emphasized on Twitter Wednesday.
Bibi is like a petulant child who works both parents, after a divorce. It's Palestinian Land! Trump is not only Putin's Puppet, he's Bibi's Puppet too.
“We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect,” Trump tweeted. “The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.!) Stay strong, Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!”
His tweets came hours before Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, planned to describe in a speech his vision for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Netanyahu has said the UN resolution reduced the prospects for an agreement, while Trump announced earlier this month he would nominate his friend and bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman -- an ardent supporter of Israeli settlements -- as his ambassador to the country.
Bibi is like a petulant child who works both parents, after a divorce. It's Palestinian Land! Trump is not only Putin's Puppet, he's Bibi's Puppet too.
Regulatory Actions:
Other recent moves by Obama are also emerging as challenges to the incoming administration. Last week, he announced that more than 100 million acres of the U.S. Arctic and undersea canyons in the Atlantic Ocean would be protected from new offshore oil and gas drilling. He has encouraged Americans to enroll in Obamacare before the Jan. 31 deadline for 2017 sign-ups despite Trump’s vow to repeal the law, and the Environmental Protection Agency is moving rapidly to finalize mileage requirements for automakers months earlier than expected.
Obama has also needled Trump in recent public statements. In an interview published by CNN on Monday, the president said that he would have beaten Trump had he run for a third term. In a speech in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Tuesday commemorating the 1941 Japanese surprise attack that ushered the U.S. into World War II, Obama cautioned against “tribalism” and “the urge to demonize those who are different,” without mentioning the president-elect.
‘Thanks, Donald’
During the past 24 hours, Trump has been busy on Twitter, a medium that has become his favorite channel to communicate with the America public. He tweeted on Tuesday about his election win, after Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the memorial to the USS Arizona, a battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor, and just before their speeches.
“President Obama campaigned hard (and personally) in the very important swing states, and lost,” Trump wrote. “The voters wanted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Later, he appeared to try to create his own version of the “Thanks, Obama” meme that the president’s supporters and opponents have used in commentary on his record.
“The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for December surged nearly four points to 113.7, THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN MORE THAN 15 YEARS! Thanks Donald!” Trump tweeted.
Years of insults between the two men predated Trump’s run for the White House. Yet the real estate developer met with Obama shortly after the election and praised his character while promising to retain some initiatives, including parts of Obama’s signature health-care law.
Both men have said they’ve spoken by phone more than once after that meeting. But their relations, at least in public, appear to have broken down.
In response to Obama’s claim that he would have won a race between the two, Trump tweeted on Monday: “I say NO WAY! - jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.”
Trump’s ratings as incoming President-Elect have the lowest ratings in history.
One does not know where to start. The picture below is alleged to be the copy of the arrest warrant issued to the State Security Services.
The warrant is issued to a body which not exist by law. The State Security Services was abolished and replaced with the Department of State Security. The issuance of arrest warrants has no option but to be precise otherwise its null and void. The lack of care is the hallmark of this administration.
The Department of State Security is not a police service by another name, its role is determined by law and their remit is to safeguard the internal security of the country. They ought to be busy stopping groups like Niger Avengers and Boko haram from operating in the country. They have been a total failure in their core role. However, they are been used by the myopic and lawless administration to drive coaches and horses through our rule of law.
Now due to their incompetence any resulting evidence found as a result of unlawful arrest warrant risk being thrown out of any possible prosecution.
Anybody who thinks that the end justifies this means risk their own security and liberty. That is the attitude which forms the bedrock of our corrupt practices.
I hold no brief for corrupt officials but use the rules, if the current rules are not sufficient then do not be lazy as your president, change the rules and act within the rules.
For the third time since The Atlantic’s founding, the editors endorse a candidate for president. The case for Hillary Clinton.
The Editors Oct 5, 2016
In October of 1860, James Russell Lowell, the founding editor of The Atlantic, warned in these pages about the perishability of the great American democratic experiment if citizens (at the time, white, male citizens) were to cease taking seriously their franchise:
In a society like ours, where every man may transmute his private thought into history and destiny by dropping it into the ballot-box, a peculiar responsibility rests upon the individual … For, though during its term of office the government be practically as independent of the popular will as that of Russia, yet every fourth year the people are called upon to pronounce upon the conduct of their affairs. Theoretically, at least, to give democracy any standing-ground for an argument with despotism or oligarchy, a majority of the men composing it should be statesmen and thinkers.
One of the animating causes of this magazine at its founding, in 1857, was the abolition of slavery, and Lowell argued that the Republican Party, and the man who was its standard-bearer in 1860, represented the only reasonable pathway out of the existential crisis then facing the country. In his endorsement of Abraham Lincoln for president, Lowell wrote, on behalf of the magazine, “It is in a moral aversion to slavery as a great wrong that the chief strength of the Republican party lies.” He went on to declare that Abraham Lincoln “had experience enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician.”
Perhaps because no subsequent candidate for the presidency was seen as Lincoln’s match, or perhaps because the stakes in ensuing elections were judged to be not quite so high as they were in 1860, it would be 104 years before The Atlantic would again make a presidential endorsement. In October of 1964, Edward Weeks, writing on behalf of the magazine, cited Lowell’s words before making an argument for the election of Lyndon B. Johnson. “We admire the President for the continuity with which he has maintained our foreign policy, a policy which became a worldwide responsibility at the time of the Marshall Plan,” the endorsement read. Johnson, The Atlantic believed, would bring “to the vexed problem of civil rights a power of conciliation which will prevent us from stumbling down the road taken by South Africa.”
The Atlantic has endorsed only three presidential candidates in 159 years. Abraham Lincoln (1860) and Lyndon B. Johnson (1964) were the first two. (Alexander Gardner / Getty; ullstein bild / Getty)
But The Atlantic’s endorsement of Johnson was focused less on his positive attributes than on the flaws of his opponent, Barry Goldwater, the junior senator from Arizona. Of Goldwater, Weeks wrote, “His proposal to let field commanders have their choice of the smaller nuclear weapons would rupture a fundamental belief that has existed from Abraham Lincoln to today: the belief that in times of crisis the civilian authority must have control over the military.” And the magazine noted that Goldwater’s “preference to let states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia enforce civil rights within their own borders has attracted the allegiance of Governor George Wallace, the Ku Klux Klan, and the John Birchers.” Goldwater’s limited capacity for prudence and reasonableness was what particularly worried The Atlantic.
We think it unfortunate that Barry Goldwater takes criticism as a personal affront; we think it poisonous when his anger betrays him into denouncing what he calls the “radical” press by bracketing the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Izvestia. There speaks not the reason of the Southwest but the voice of Joseph McCarthy. We do not impugn Senator Goldwater’s honesty. We sincerely distrust his factionalism and his capacity for judgment.
Today, our position is similar to the one in which The Atlantic’s editors found themselves in 1964. We are impressed by many of the qualities of the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, even as we are exasperated by others, but we are mainly concerned with the Republican Party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, who might be the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency.
These concerns compel us, for the third time since the magazine’s founding, to endorse a candidate for president. Hillary Rodham Clinton has more than earned, through her service to the country as first lady, as a senator from New York, and as secretary of state, the right to be taken seriously as a White House contender. She has flaws (some legitimately troubling, some exaggerated by her opponents), but she is among the most prepared candidates ever to seek the presidency. We are confident that she understands the role of the United States in the world; we have no doubt that she will apply herself assiduously to the problems confronting this country; and she has demonstrated an aptitude for analysis and hard work.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.
This judgment is not limited to the editors of The Atlantic. A large number—in fact, a number unparalleled since Goldwater’s 1964 campaign—of prominent policy makers and officeholders from the candidate’s own party have publicly renounced him. Trump disqualified himself from public service long before he declared his presidential candidacy. In one of the more sordid episodes in modern American politics, Trump made himself the face of the so-called birther movement, which had as its immediate goal the demonization of the country’s first African American president. Trump’s larger goal, it seemed, was to stoke fear among white Americans of dark-skinned foreigners. He succeeded wildly in this; the fear he has aroused has brought him one step away from the presidency.
Our endorsement of Clinton, and rejection of Trump, is not a blanket dismissal of the many Trump supporters who are motivated by legitimate anxieties about their future and their place in the American economy. But Trump has seized on these anxieties and inflamed and racialized them, without proposing realistic policies to address them.
In its founding statement, The Atlantic promised that it would be “the organ of no party or clique,” and our interest here is not to advance the prospects of the Democratic Party, nor to damage those of the Republican Party. If Hillary Clinton were facing Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or George W. Bush, or, for that matter, any of the leading candidates Trump vanquished in the Republican primaries, we would not have contemplated making this endorsement. We believe in American democracy, in which individuals from various parties of different ideological stripes can advance their ideas and compete for the affection of voters. But Trump is not a man of ideas. He is a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar. He is spectacularly unfit for office, and voters—the statesmen and thinkers of the ballot box—should act in defense of American democracy and elect his opponent.
Obaseki was a flawed candidate whose party was seen as having delivered while Ize-Iyamu was a better candidate whose party was flawed and still carried the bagage of Igbinedion.
There were passable and explainable paths to victory for both and on this occasion Obaseki won, just. Ize-Iyamu fought a good fight to have won the right to expect victory just two years after PDP were swept out of office at the national level.
Obaseki must not take the attitude of winner takes all in his governance of Edo State. He must take his narrow win into consideration and seek to carry those who did not vote for him along. Ize-Iyamu has earned the right to be an elder statesman of Edo state, given his galant fight, he is now more relevant than ever. When Oshiomole lost to Osunbor, Ize-Iyamu gave heart and might to Oshiomole to claim what was rightly his vote. If there are grounds for redress, then history will repeat itself and Osaseki will be seat warmer for the duration of legal electoral fight. But he must sue for peace and restraint from his supporters. Edo state is too weak to stand any violent and unconstitutional reaction to their unexpected poll defeat. If Oshiomole like Lazarus come back from his political death so shall Ize-Iyamu and if not now later. But for that to happen he must be a democrat by accepting a lawful result and present himself to the people again in a short four years time. He has earned that right and respect. However, his action from today will determine if he will be gracious and await his turn.
Obaseki was behind the economic platform of his government, he must accept that government mistake and not take his election as an affirmation of the debt driven economy Oshiomole has bequeathed Edo State. The attempt at improving on the infrastructure of the state may have been rewarded with this victory and Obaseki must improve on that and build a platform from which Edo state can rival Lagos state. The economic potentials of Edo state can not be over emphasised, a quarter of its citizens are in diaspora. Their contributions must be sought to join hands with the abundant talents in the state to build up the state. Edo state must not the play ground of any individual or individuals, Dangote and Igbinedion stay away.
Power does strange things to people and Oshiomole must remember that as that is his story. Ize-Iyamu assisted his rise and he jettisoned him and others as he grow more confident in office and his hangers-on told him how tall he was. He ceased to be labour and a comrade and acquired yellow girl. So shall it become Obaseki. Oshiomole may now think he has a lackey in Osadebe Avenue but his own antithesis begs to differ.
This is no moral and or political equivalence between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. They were not dealing with the same same cards. While Clinton was firmly rooted on earth, Trump was up with the fairies.
He has no plan, no idea, no game and total waste of time. He is evidence that political freedoms and democracy is fragile and subject to external and internal attacks. His political philosophy is the grave yard our freedoms and democratic rights will be buried. Trump and his gang of deplorables pose a threat to world peace.
Clinton is class apart and ought not be on a stage with such an excuse of a candidate. She was pose, articulate, intelligent with plans and ability to deliver.
I am desperate for some help! I recently upgraded my program from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that the new program began unexpected Child Processing and also took up a lot of space and valuable resources. This wasn't mentioned in the product brochure.
In addition Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during systems initialization and then it monitors all other system activities.
Applications such as "Boys' Night out 2.5" and "Golf 5.3" no longer run, and crashes the system whenever selected.
Attempting to operate selected "Soccer 6.3" always fails and "Shopping 7.1" runs instead.
I cannot seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background whilst attempting to run any of my favorite applications. Be it online or offline.
.
I am thinking of going back to "Girlfriend 7.0", but uninstall doesn't work on this program. Can you please help?
.... The Systems Analyst replied:
Dear Customer,
This is a very common problem resulting from a basic misunderstanding of the functions of the Wife 1.0 program.
Many customers upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 thinking that Wife 1.0 is merely a UTILITY AND ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAM.
Actually, Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM designed by its Creator to run everything on your current platform.
You are unlikely to be able to purge Wife 1.0 and still convert back to Girlfriend 7.0, as Wife 1.0 was not designed to do this and it is impossible to uninstall, delete or purge the program files from the System once it is installed.
Some people have tried to install Girlfriend 8.0 or Wife 2.0 but have ended up with even more problems. (See Manual under Alimony/Child Support and Solicitors' Fees).
Having Wife 1.0 installed, I recommend you keep it Installed and deal with the difficulties as best as you can.
When any faults or problems occur, whatever you think has caused them, you must run the.........
C:\ APOLOGIZE\ FORGIVE ME.EXE Program and avoid attempting to use the *Esc-Key for it will freeze the entire system.
It may be necessary to run C:\ APOLOGIZE\ FORGIVE ME.EXE a number of times, and eventually hope that the operating system will return to normal.
Wife 1.0, although a very high maintenance programme, can be very rewarding.
To get the most out of it, consider buying additional Software such as "Flowers 2.0" and "Chocolates 5.0" or "HUGS\ KISSES 6.0" or "TENDERNESS\ UNDERSTANDING 10.0" or even Eating Out Without the Kids 7.2.1" (if Child processing has already started).
DO NOT under any circumstances install "Secretary 2.1" (Short Skirt Version) or "One Nightstand 3.2" (Any Mood Version), as this is not a supported Application for Wife 1.0 and the system will almost certainly CRASH.
Below is the section of the Nigerian constitution which deals with finances of the country.
NASS holds the purse strings of the national treasure. The Executive has the responsibility to deliver to the Nigerian people, budgets approved by NASS.
The federal and states executives make financial and fiscal proposals called the budget to NASS and various SHA.
The SHA and NASS being the custodians of our national and states purses have the powers to scrutinise and approve proposals from the executives.
NASS and SHA can relocate, increase and or decrease, approve or reject proposed budgetary demands according to the states and national ability. It can agree for the federal and states to borrow or not as the case maybe.
To the vexed issue of budget padding. This should not be a concept known to law at least in legislative oversight and approval functions.
As an example, the FGN allocates N5 billion to building a rail line from Benin to Lagos without between stops. The Senator in whose constituency, Ore is located is worried that that town would suffer since the town's main income is passing trade from traffic between Lagos and Benin which will drop causing untold hardship to its people. He inserts a clause increasing the proposed budget from N5 billion to N7 billion to enable that the Benin-Lagos rail line have a stop at Ore. In the context of our current debate on budget padding that will be "padding".
This line of thought is wrong and not taking the entire Part E of our constitution into account.
Of course, one always has to take the Nigerian dimension into consideration. But it's important to get the legal framework right and then discuss the political problems.
In the US, the Congress always increases the budget for the military if when such request have not been made by the presidency, this to fund pet projects in their constituencies. It's sometimes called pot barrel clauses.
When we cry wolf, we should when there is a wolf not in the likelihood of a wolf.
E - Powers and Control over Public Funds
80. (1) All revenues or other moneys raised or received by the Federation (not being revenues or other moneys payable under this Constitution or any Act of the National Assembly into any other public fund of the Federation established for a specific purpose) shall be paid into and form one Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation.
(2) No moneys shall be withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation except to meet expenditure that is charged upon the fund by this Constitution or where the issue of those moneys has been authorised by an Appropriation Act, Supplementary Appropriation Act or an Act passed in pursuance of section 81 of this Constitution.
(3) No moneys shall be withdrawn from any public fund of the Federation, other than the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation, unless the issue of those moneys has been authorised by an Act of the National Assembly.
(4) No moneys shall be withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund or any other public fund of the Federation, except in the manner prescribed by the National Assembly.
81. (1) The President shall cause to be prepared and laid before each House of the National Assembly at any time in each financial year estimates of the revenues and expenditure of the Federation for the next following financial year.
(2) The heads of expenditure contained in the estimates (other than expenditure charged upon the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation by this Constitution) shall be included in a bill, to be known as an Appropriation Bill, providing for the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the sums necessary to meet that expenditure and the appropriation of those sums for the purposes specified therein.
(3) Any amount standing to the credit of the judiciary in the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation shall be paid directly to the National Judicial Council for disbursement to the heads of the courts established for the Federation and the State under section 6 of this Constitution.
(4) If in respect of any financial year it is found that -
(a) the amount appropriated by the Appropriation Act for any purpose is insufficient; or
(b) a need has arisen for expenditure for a purpose for which no amount has been appropriated by the Act,
a supplementary estimate showing the sums required shall be laid before each House of the National Assembly and the heads of any such expenditure shall be included in a Supplementary Appropriation Bill.
82. If the Appropriation Bill in respect of any financial year has not been passed into law by the beginning of the financial year, the President may authorise the withdrawal of moneys in the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation for the purpose of meeting expenditure necessary to carry on the services of the Government of the Federation for a period not exceeding months or until the coming into operation of the Appropriate Act, whichever is the earlier:
Provided that the withdrawal in respect of any such period shall not exceed the amount authorised to be withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation under the provisions of the Appropriation Act passed by the National Assembly for the corresponding period in the immediately preceding financial year, being an amount proportionate to the total amount so authorised for the immediately preceding financial year.
83. (1) The National Assembly may by law make provisions for the establishment of a Contingencies Fund for the Federation and for authorising the President, if satisfied that there has arisen an urgent and unforeseen need for expenditure for which no other provision exists, to make advances from the Fund to meet the need.
(2) Where any advance is made in accordance with the provisions of this section, a Supplementary Estimate shall be presented and a Supplementary Appropriation Bill shall be introduced as soon as possible for the purpose of replacing the amount so advanced.
84. (1) There shall be paid to the holders of the offices mentioned in this section such remuneration, salaries and allowances as may be prescribed by the National Assembly, but not exceeding the amount as shall have been determined by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission.
(2) The remuneration, salaries and allowances payable to the holders of the offices so mentioned shall be a charge upon the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation.
(3) The remuneration and salaries payable to the holders of the said offices and their conditions of service, other than allowances, shall not be altered to their disadvantage after their appointment.
(4) The offices aforesaid are the offices of President, Vice-President, Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice of the Supreme Court, President of the Court of Appeal, Justice of the Court of Appeal, Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Judge of the Federal High Court, Chief Judge and Judge of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Chief Judge of a State, Judge of the High Court of a State, Grand Kadi of the Sharia Court of Appeal of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, President and Judge of the Customary Court of Appeal of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Grand Kadi and Kadi of the Sharia Court of Appeal of a State, President and Judge of the Customary Court of Appeal of a State, the Auditor-General for the Federation and the Chairmen and members of the following executive bodies, namely, the Code of Conduct Bureau, the Federal Civil Service Commission, the Independent National Electoral Commission, the National Judicial Council, the Federal Judicial Service Commission, the Judicial Service Committee of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, the Federal Character Commission, the Code of Conduct Tribunal, the National Population Commission, the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, the Nigeria Police Council and the Police Service Commission.
(5) Any person who has held office as President or Vice-President shall be entitled to pension for life at a rate equivalent to the annual salary of the incumbent President or Vice-President:
Provided that such a person was not removed from office by the process of impeachment or for breach of any provisions of this Constitution.
(6) Any pension granted by virtue of subsection (5) of this section shall be a charge upon the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation.
(7) The recurrent expenditure of judicial offices in the Federation (in addition to salaries and allowances of the judicial officers mentioned in subsection (4) of this section) shall be charge upon the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation.
85. (1) There shall be an Auditor-General for the Federation who shall be appointed in accordance with the provisions of section 86 of this Constitution.
(2) The public accounts of the Federation and of all offices and courts of the Federation shall be audited and reported on to the Auditor-General who shall submit his reports to the National Assembly; and for that purpose, the Auditor-General or any person authorised by him in that behalf shall have access to all the books, records, returns and other documents relating to those accounts.
(3) Nothing in subsection (2) of this section shall be construed as authorising the Auditor-General to audit the accounts of or appoint auditors for government statutory corporations, commissions, authorities, agencies, including all persons and bodies established by an Act of the National Assembly, but the Auditor-General shall -
(a) provide such bodies with -
(i) a list of auditors qualified to be appointed by them as external auditors and from which the bodies shall appoint their external auditors, and
(ii) guidelines on the level of fees to be paid to external auditors; and
(b) comment on their annual accounts and auditor's reports thereon.
(4) The Auditor-General shall have power to conduct checks of all government statutory corporations, commissions, authorities, agencies, including all persons and bodies established by an Act of the National Assembly.
(5) The Auditor-General shall, within ninety days of receipt of the Accountant-General's financial statement, submit his reports under this section to each House of the National Assembly and each House shall cause the reports to be considered by a committee of the House of the National Assembly responsible for public accounts.
(6) In the exercise of his functions under this Constitution, the Auditor-General shall not be subject to the direction or control of any other authority or person.
86. (1) The Auditor-General for the Federation shall be appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Federal Civil Service Commission subject to confirmation by the Senate.
(2) The power to appoint persons to act in the office of the Auditor-General shall vest in the President.
(3) Except with the sanction of a resolution of the Senate, no person shall act in the office of the Auditor-General for a period exceeding six months.
87. (1) A person holding the office of the Auditor-General for the Federation shall be removed from office by the President acting on an address supported by two-thirds majority of the Senate praying that he be so removed for inability to discharge the functions of his-office (whether arising from infirmity of mind or body or any other cause) or for misconduct.
(2) The Auditor-General shall not be removed from office before such retiring age as may be prescribed by law, save in accordance with the provisions of this section.
88. (1) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, each House of the National Assembly shall have power by resolution published in its journal or in the Official Gazette of the Government of the Federation to direct or cause to be directed investigation into -
(a) any matter or thing with respect to which it has power to make laws, and
(b) the conduct of affairs of any person, authority, ministry or government department charged, or intended to be charged, with the duty of or responsibility for -
(i) executing or administering laws enacted by National Assembly, and
(ii) disbursing or administering moneys appropriated or to be appropriated by the National Assembly.
(2) The powers conferred on the National Assembly under the provisions of this section are exercisable only for the purpose of enabling it to -
(a) make laws with respect to any matter within its legislative competence and correct any defects in existing laws; and
(b) expose corruption, inefficiency or waste in the execution or administration of laws within its legislative competence and in the disbursement or administration of funds appropriated by it.
89. (1) For the purposes of any investigation under section 88 of this Constitutional and subject to the provisions thereof, the Senate or the House of Representatives or a committee appointed in accordance with section 62 of this Constitution shall have power to -
(a) procure all such evidence, written or oral, direct or circumstantial, as it may think necessary or desirable, and examine all persons as witnesses whose evidence may be material or relevant to the subject matter;
(b) require such evidence to be given on oath;
(c) summon any person in Nigeria to give evidence at any place or produce any document or other thing in his possession or under his control, and examine him as a witness and require him to produce any document or other thing in his possession or under his control, subject to all just exceptions; and
(d) issue a warrant to compel the attendance of any person who, after having been summoned to attend, fails, refuses or neglects to do so and does not excuse such failure, refusal or neglect to the satisfaction of the House or the committee in question, and order him to pay all costs which may have been occasioned in compelling his attendance or by reason of his failure, refusal or neglect to obey the summons, and also to impose such fine as may be prescribed for any such failure, refused or neglect; and any fine so imposed shall be recoverable in the same manner as a fine imposed by a court of law.
(2) A summons or warrant issued under this section may be served or executed by any member of the Nigeria Police Force or by any person authorised in that behalf by the President of the Senate or the Speaker of the House of Representatives, as the case may require.
In his memoir, The Lion Awakes, Ashish Thakkar describes how, as a young entrepreneur selling computer parts across Africa in the 1990s, he noticed that flights within the continent seemed to take longer than the distances on a map would suggest. “Were the planes slower?” he wondered. In fact, he learned, the commonly used Mercator projection vastly understates the size of Africa, and its 54 countries, relative to other continents. You wouldn’t know it from most maps, but the continent is large enough to fit China, India, Mexico, the United States, and western Europe within its borders—with room to spare.
The distortion of Africa goes beyond cartography; Western journalists and academics have a history of misinterpreting and misrepresenting the region. Failing to account for the size, diversity, and dynamism of the continent—and relying on incomplete and inaccurate data—they have fashioned easy-to-comprehend yet warped and incomplete stories. In past decades, the main story line tended to be one of failure, focused on conflict, disease, corruption, victimhood, and poverty. A headline on the cover of The Economist in 2000 captured the gloom: “The hopeless continent.” By 2011, however, the magazine touted an “Africa rising.” But such simplistic optimism does not capture the full story, either. With more than one billion people, over 2,000 languages, and some of the fastest rates of national GDP growth in this century, the real Africa has always been more complicated.
Challenging as it is to properly capture the complexities and contradictions of a region as large, diverse, and dynamic as Africa, three recent books seek to replace the caricatures of Africa’s economic performance with more accurate pictures. Morten Jerven picks apart the flawed analyses of mainstream economists, Thakkar recounts his two decades of personal experience as an entrepreneur, and Jake Bright and Aubrey Hruby tally the risks and benefits of doing business on the continent. Taken together, these books provide a valuable corrective to the fraying narrative of failure. The Africa that emerges from their pages is one of remarkable energy, creativity, and opportunity, in spite of the grave challenges.
Ultimately, however, their accounts still add up to an incomplete story. In emphasizing economic and business perspectives, the authors cannot tell readers how much people’s lives are actually improving, whether individuals are becoming more or less capable of achieving their aspirations, whether communities are becoming more or less resilient to crisis, and whether the distribution of benefits in Africa is becoming more or less equal.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DATA
According to Jerven, the dominant narrative of African economic failure persists because economists ask the wrong question: they seek to explain why Africa has failed rather than show how Africa has actually performed. In fact, over the last century, many African economies have experienced episodes of both growth and decline. Immediately after independence in the 1950s and 1960s, African economies grew faster on average than the rest of the world. They lagged behind from the mid-1970s into the 1990s, largely due to external shocks and bad policies, before growth returned in the late 1990s. Economists missed this variation, Jerven argues, in part because they were so intent on explaining failure.
They were also basing their analyses on incomplete data sets and incorrect assumptions. Nearly all economic data capture only the value of goods that flow through official channels, missing the informal sector, even though it is crucial to livelihoods across the developing world. Worse, when data are missing for a country, economists simply extrapolate from neighboring countries, ignoring important differences in resource wealth, human capital, and trade. Many data sets go back only to 1960, so there is no historical context to explain the economic activity that followed. Other data, such as estimates of corruption, are based on opinion surveys rather than direct observation.
A billboard advertising Hennessy cognac near the lagoon in Ikoyi district in Lagos, June 2013.
To illustrate the resulting distortion, Jerven compares the rankings of 45 sub-Saharan countries by per capita GDP in three commonly used data sets. In one of these, Guinea ranks as the seventh-poorest country, but in another, it just misses inclusion among the ten richest countries. Mozambique, depending on the source, is among either the eight poorest or the 12 richest African countries. Given the uncertainty in the data, it’s hard to see why anyone should rely on policy recommendations based on such flawed sources. Garbage in, garbage out.
Jerven also charges that economists mistake correlation for causation, leading them to identify faulty silver-bullet explanations for Africa’s economic performance. He rejects arguments that blame slow growth on the absence of robust institutions, a lack of social capital, or particular features of a country’s history, ethnicity, climate, or geography. Weak institutions may correlate with low GDP, he argues, but studies have not reliably demonstrated which way the causality runs. He challenges the data and conclusions in Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s Why Nations Fail, which pinned the blame for poverty on extractive government institutions. To claim that Africa is poor because of weak institutions may get the relationship backward; poverty may be a cause of weak institutions.
The distortion of Africa goes beyond cartography.
Ultimately, Jerven concludes that although the narrative of chronic failure is a distortion, so is the “Africa rising” narrative. Again, the problem is exacerbated by the scarcity of reliable data. He points out that many countries have not updated the baseline data from which they calculate GDP. In 2014, when Nigeria updated the base year it uses to estimate the size of various sectors, its official GDP nearly doubled overnight, surpassing that of South Africa. Was the country suddenly twice as rich? Not yet. As other African countries update their own economic benchmarks, their GDP figures will also rise, perhaps due more to better measurement than to increases in economic activity—thus making it harder to determine the real rate of growth.
Finally, rising GDP figures reveal nothing about the informal sector and very little about a country’s level of poverty or vulnerability to future shocks. Jerven thus worries that such upticks in GDP convey misleading information about the conditions of average citizens’ lives. To get a more accurate picture, he calls on economists to capture country-level nuances by studying actual economies rather than fishing from afar for correlations in abstract numbers. This is valuable advice, but even a careful study of actual economies will face many of the same shortcomings that hinder broader analyses, unless the quality and availability of data improve substantially. Moreover, observers should still pay attention to correlations among growth and governance and history, even when perfect causality may not be established.
THE START-UP CONTINENT
For greater nuance and a larger dose of optimism, look to The Lion Awakes, a compelling homage to Thakkar’s family and an argument for correcting the reputation of the continent Thakkar has come to know as an entrepreneur. Contrary to its image in Western media, Thakkar argues, Africa is not a “hopeless charity case” but a continent open for business. It is a good place to launch and grow a profitable company, enjoy a high quality of life, and even get rich. Thakkar’s Mara Group, which invests in companies across the region, is presented as proof of this claim, and he offers his personal story as a striking example of the triumph of commerce and confidence over trauma.
Economists mistake correlation for causation, leading them to identify faulty silver-bullet explanations for Africa’s economic performance.
Thakkar comes from a family of Indian traders in Uganda. His parents lost everything during the brutal reign of Idi Amin; after Amin expelled Asians from the country in 1972, they fled to the United Kingdom, where Thakkar was born. Years later, eager to return to Africa, his family found itself in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Once they returned to Uganda, the 15-year-old Thakkar began selling computer parts he sourced from Dubai.
Thakkar recalls his early travels in Africa in the mid-1990s, when “running water was a luxury,” “constant electricity blackouts” were the norm, and “phones didn’t work.” Around the turn of the millennium, however, things started to improve. Thakkar observed that in places as diverse as Kampala, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Lusaka, and Lagos, “customs officials in those once chaotic airports were starting to smile a bit more and play by the rules. . . . The potholes were getting fixed. Garbage was being collected.” Africa, particularly within its cities, was shedding its past and becoming a confident, viable place for modern business. Thakkar’s own interests expanded from computer sales to include banking, real estate, information technology, call centers, glass factories, packaging, philanthropy, and more.
The key drivers of progress he identifies include improved leadership (exemplified in his view by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda), an innovative telecommunications industry, an energetic youth population unleashing its pent-up demand, and the return of a highly educated diaspora, especially after the 2008 global financial crisis reoriented African expatriates’ perspective on the geography of opportunity. Most important, he says, was the arrival of cell phones; according to a 2015 report by the telecommunications company Ericsson, the number of mobile subscriptions in Africa has reached 690 million.
Thakkar also highlights the development of technology hubs, such as Kenya’s “Silicon Savannah,” and the explosion of Nollywood, Nigeria’s $3.3 billion movie industry, and he champions Africa’s many vibrant new start-ups. For him, the answer to Africa’s economic challenges is business, not foreign aid. “Western policies of institutionalized aid have done terrible harm to Africa for decades,” he writes, whereas China has flourished economically without such aid.
In reality, however, China has received billions of dollars in Western aid. And although aid to Africa has not been as beneficial as its strongest proponents claim, it has not been as damaging as Thakkar suggests, either. Aid should be judged at the level of particular projects in individual countries over time; it is no more helpful to caricature foreign aid than it has been to caricature its recipients.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Bright and Hruby, both of whom have experience with Africa in the private sector, present a similarly upbeat, although more analytic and cautious, picture. They set out to achieve a balance between “overly simplistic ‘Africa rising’ narratives” and what they criticize as “a new strain of Afro-pessimism.” While recognizing the limitations on the quantity and quality of available data, they call for a “multi-dimensional . . . more refined and data-driven” approach.
It is no more helpful to caricature foreign aid than it has been to caricature its recipients.
Over the past decade, Western businesses have started to take Africa more seriously. One factor behind this enthusiasm, Bright and Hruby note, has been better governance, including more multiparty elections, improvements in transparency, and tighter fiscal management. Bright and Hruby attribute greater importance than Jerven does to the role of institutions, yet demography may matter most of all: Africa boasts the world’s fastest-growing population, largest youth population, most rapidly urbanizing population, and fastest-growing consumer class. The result has been an explosion of demand for a range of consumer basics, from air travel to supermarket goods.
As does Thakkar, Bright and Hruby tell the story of innovation. M-Pesa, a mobile-phone-based payment system in Kenya, now handles transactions equivalent to one-third of the country’s entire GDP, providing millions of Kenyans with an alternative to bank accounts and credit cards. They also document a thriving culture of entrepreneurship that has emerged across the continent, including such start-ups as BRCK (a rugged WiFi router developed in Kenya and designed for rural areas) and Jumia (a Nigerian e-commerce site that lets buyers pay cash on delivery). They paint a picture of fast-paced technological growth and innovation that, in some sectors, have surpassed and influenced the West.
Despite their enthusiasm, Bright and Hruby catalog a number of challenges to continued growth. In several areas, Africa still accounts for less than its expected share of global activity. They call this “the problem of less than 3 percent”: even though it is home to almost 15 percent of the world’s population, Africa accounts for less than three percent of Google hits, less than three percent of global trade, less than three percent of mobile broadband subscriptions, and less than three percent of global private equity investment.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 2016.
Africa also suffers from serious gaps in infrastructure. Only 32 percent of sub-Saharan Africans have regular access to electricity, and only one in four has a bank account. Africa’s road network is sparse and potholed, with Nigeria, the continent’s economic powerhouse, having a rate of road penetration that is just 15 percent of India’s. Just as Thakkar noticed decades ago, in many parts of the continent today, blackouts are still frequent, running water remains a luxury, and ATMs are largely absent.
Beyond these serious challenges, there are three “deal breakers” for Bright and Hruby that could set the region back. Africa’s large and growing unemployed youth population presents one of the greatest risks to political and social stability. The continued failure of public institutions to deliver the benefits of growth and higher incomes to all groups, and not just a small elite, also threatens progress. And a serious and unexpected global economic shock—and not merely a slowdown in China’s growth rate—could prove devastating. Notwithstanding these risks, the trends are positive. Bright and Hruby, like Jerven and Thakkar, conclude that Africa’s progress and potential are outpacing its challenges.
THE REAL AFRICA
My own experience, based on work in more than a dozen African countries over the past decade, leads me to a similar conclusion. There is tremendous promise in the dynamism of young African students and entrepreneurs; in Africa’s vibrant, growing cities; and in countries on the continent that have dramatically improved their leadership and institutions. The region’s abundant world-class innovation and talent are increasingly being harnessed to improve lives and generate wealth. This is an essential story to tell, and its telling is long overdue.
Africa’s large and growing unemployed youth population presents one of the greatest risks to political and social stability.
But this is not the full story, which is always much more complicated than either success or failure. First, any aggregate portrait of a continent obscures its heterogeneity. Every country exhibits its own social, economic, geographic, and political characteristics, and the experience of the average Ghanaian, for example, bears little resemblance to that of the average Sudanese—just as the experience of one of Africa’s billionaires would be unrecognizable to one of its malnourished rural poor. Although convenient for development organizations, a single concept of African growth may be less helpful in understanding what Thakkar calls “a vast polyglot place” and Bright and Hruby describe as “the most diverse continent on the planet.” This diversity demands to be disaggregated at the country and, most important, at the city level. For now, the data are too limited and unreliable, but that is changing as new businesses develop new tools and methods to close this data deficit.
Recognizing these differences will make it easier to tackle what are genuinely continental challenges, such as gaps in energy and infrastructure, sectarian strife, the risk of pandemic disease, and the need for collective action on climate change. These are all problems of cooperation that can be addressed only with an appreciation of both the shared interests and the differences.
Second, in today’s interconnected economy, no region’s destiny is entirely within its own control. High commodity prices and strong Chinese investment, for example, have played a large role in Africa’s recent growth. As both have declined, so have expectations for the continent’s overall prospects. Growth has also been fueled by a successful diaspora bringing its skills back to the continent or sending back remittances. Similarly, developments within Africa affect economies far away: African innovations in mobile banking have been replicated in Asia, African designs can be found in American fashion houses, and African immigrants are altering labor markets in Europe.
Finally, it is time to rethink what it is that’s worth measuring in the first place. It is unmistakably clear that the full measure of progress is not captured by increases in GDP or by any statistical yardstick used by Western economists. At best, such metrics may be imperfect proxies for improvements in the human condition; at worst, they distract from qualities and experiences—peace, health, fulfillment, and so on—that also matter and might be considered more indicative of genuine progress. A more useful analysis would consider alternative metrics derived from real experiences in Africa. It would also be attentive to the perspectives of diverse stakeholders—from entrepreneurs to laborers, farmers to urban dwellers, refugees to landowners, investors to the unemployed, ethnic groups to diaspora communities, the young to the old. With that approach, a truer picture would at last emerge—not of a single Africa but of a continent whose challenges and opportunities are as diverse as the people who call it home.
The case for delay and reflection on the issue of Art.50. The Brexit campaign did not articulate a single narrative or option for the UK post Brexit. There are various options on the table most leading to the same state of affairs as remaining in the EU while the drift option is inimical to the interest of the UK. Do we leave the EU and seek to be in the EEA is an option which will allow access to the common market but obliged to comply all the terms of the common market which including the vexed matter of free movement of people. The other alternative is be the Hong Kong of the EU. This is the drift option. We are on our own, seeking trade deals like other Joe Bloggs countries under WTO rules. This would have immediate inflation pressure on the UK economy as prices will rise. The payment of tariffs will increase the prices of goods without an immediate rise in income. Our imports will become expensive while our exports will be equally become expensive to others diminishing the market for our goods. These were not thought through by the ragtag army of little Englanders who sought Brexit. Now that we are were we are, if no compelling reasons to rush Art.50 its best to calmly consider the options before us. The EU can not force a race to Art.50, the Brexiters cannot either they are falling as weeds, Johnson, Farage comes to mind. Gove is too damaged to provide leadership, Duncan-Smith is a silent man with something of the night about him. The Sun and Mail are no longer gun toting about this matter as they were, one wonders where the intellectual articulation of their position will come from. This is why the Chinese say "mind what you wish for, you may just get it" and the Jamaican reggae group Third World sang "now that we have found love, what are we going to with it". Little Englanders wished for Brexit and they get it and now they sing in chorus, now that we have Brexit, what are we going to do post Brexit.
Enoch Powell once said every political career ends in failure. The Politician who most exemplifies this quote in current times is Prime Minister David Cameron.
The carcass of his political life is littered with stench of failure which is usually slow burning.
On his watch and ill leadership, Libya was set on fire whose flame is still burning. The decision to intervene in Libya was formatted in Paris and London. They commenced an intervention for which outcome they neither knew or anticipated. The result is a Libya on flames consumed by Islamists. The current refugee crisis has its origins in the demise of the state of Libya which two blind politicians plugged Libya.
The House of Commons saved his bacon when high with power sought to intervene in Syria again as the provisional arm of the Islamic State. This is because direct Western intervention would have resulted in the complete take over by Islamic State of Syria. Again he called a vote in the House of Commons without knowing the outcome of his decision to put the matter before the House of Commons. Any political science student will tell you, never call for a vote if you do not know the numbers on your side.
Following his unexpected victory in the 2010 general election, his solution to the economic palava which hit this country was to hammer the powerless and poor. Cut spendings and cut taxes to pay for the deficit created by the captains of industries and the super rich. They created a insidious political atmosphere against the disabled and unemployed. Scum was poured on such identified groups for having the temerity of relying on the state. The social contact which tied the poor to the rich was broken. Council and social tenants were made to feel unworthy to live in affluent areas. He increased university costs and placed the burden on poor students. He presided over a regime of shaming people who were lest able to answer for themselves. That created a slow burn of resentment. That resentment then directed against immigrants who become the whipping person to the abuser and abused.
Without empirical evidence, he gave a commitment to reduce levels of net migration into the UK. There are two classes of immigration into the UK. From the EU and rest of the world. The movement from the EU is a legal right and they have equal nationality with UK citizens. Therefore to put a figure on their numbers is at best myopic or at worse incompetent. He missed his own targets by miles and blamed the migrants for his self harm and failure.
Finally, the creme da la cremee was the offer to give an IN or OUT referendum on the EU. This given the above background would have been clear to Steven Wonder how the people will react.
Again never ask a question if you do not know the answer before hand. The British people in all surveys have supported the death penalty but the sovereign parliament have always rejected such a motion. Important state issues are not a matter for referendum. Including complex issues such as membership of a supernational state from which essential economic benefit accrue.
David Cameron attended Eton, an elite high school, gained a first class degree from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He clearly went to Oxford but Oxford did not go through him. He was a parliamentary assistant and worked briefly as a public relations man. He is from a higher income middle class family. His father hid money in Panama.
On the eve of an international anti corruption conference, he chose to abuse some of the participants including Nigeria who he described as being fantastically corrupt. A classic own goal by a man born with his silver foot in his mouth.
He almost lost Scotland to the United Kingdom by his teeth. He killed a political party, the Liberal Democrats. He made them give up a cardinal plank of their commitment to their largest constituents, students. By obliging them to fail on their pledge not to increase university tuition. That singular act killed that party by the next election in 2015
Now for his crowning glory. He proposed a national constitutional answer to a UKIP question which had marginal threat to a few vulnerable parliamentary seats of the Conservative party. He sought to being a gun to a knife fight with UKIP.
David Cameron proposed and kept to the promise, an IN or OUT referendum on the EU. This against his economic crimes against his people with misdirected economic solution for which they were looking for who to kick. A man farts and the humans blames the dog is the adage that well describes the mood of the British people. David Cameron commits economic fart against his people and they blame immigrants and EU.
The people decided to vote against the EU cutting their noses to spite their faces under a government elected to save the people from themselves.
David Cameron resigns and his political career ends in utter failure. Enoch Powell saw him coming hence his famous apt statement, all political career ends in failure. He failed.
Muhammadu Buhari took office as Nigeria’s president a year ago on a wave of optimism that the ex-military ruler could revive a nation battered by falling oil prices and decades of corruption.
Now, Africa’s biggest economy is on its knees and Buhari has been forced to throw in the towel on a central pillar of his economic policy -- a currency peg.
“It was difficult to imagine a scenario in which things got worse,” said Malte Liewerscheidt, a Nigeria analyst at Bath, U.K.-based consultant Verisk Maplecroft. “But it’s been a lost year. What’s missing is sound macroeconomic policies.”
Nigeria will soon enter a recession, according to the central bank, and an upsurge of militant attacks since February has sent crude production, which usually accounts for 70 percent of government revenue, plummeting to an almost 30-year low. Delays in approving a budget and a cabinet as well as Buhari’s refusal to weaken an overvalued currency -- until he relented this week -- have caused foreign investors to flee.
Foreign investors, fearing a devaluation, are staying away. Foreign direct investment was the lowest last year since the 2007-08 global financial crisis, and Citigroup Inc. said deals have ground to a halt. Capital controls prompted JPMorgan Chase & Co. in September to kick Nigeria out of its local-currency emerging-market bond indexes, tracked by more than $200 billion of funds.
Bond Losses
This year, Nigeria’s local-bond yields have climbed 276 basis points to 13.46 percent, leaving them as the only such securities among 31 emerging markets tracked by Bloomberg to make losses. Electricity output has plunged to about a 30th of that of South Africa, Africa’s second-biggest economy, as attacks on pipelines cut supplies of natural gas to power plants.
When Buhari beat then-President Goodluck Jonathan in the first election victory by an opposition candidate, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration called it an “historic step for Nigeria and Africa.” A 73-year-old retired major-general who ruled from 1983 to 1985, Buhari campaigned to end the corruption he said was “killing” his country. He and his All Progressives Congress party promised to crush Boko Haram, whose Islamist insurgency has led to thousands of deaths in the northeast since 2009, and foster economic growth of as much as 10 percent.
Naira Peg
Now recession looms. The economy contracted in the first quarter by 0.4 percent, the first decline since 2004. If Buhari doesn’t alter his stance on the naira and loosen the restrictions used to defend its peg to the dollar, output will probably sink further, according to Mark Bohlund, an Africa economist with Bloomberg Intelligence in London.
“The Nigerian economy is at high risk of experiencing its first full-year recession since 1987,” Bohlund said. An improvement next year depends on security being restored in the oil-rich Niger River delta region and “a shift toward more market-based economic policy.”
Buhari was dealt a tough hand. He inherited a virtually empty treasury and Jonathan’s administration did little to diversify the economy, leaving it vulnerable to the crash in oil prices since 2014. A rainy-day fund known as the Excess Crude Account was whittled down to barely $2 billion when Buhari took office, from $21 billion in 2008.
Boko Haram
The president has won plaudits from investors for beating back Boko Haram and trying to overhaul graft-ridden institutions, including the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., the management of which he sacked. Yet they have been left bemused by his economic policies.
He opted to keep gasoline prices capped at 87 naira ($0.44) a liter ($1.76 a gallon) until months of shortages and unrest over long fuel lines forced him to increase them by 67 percent in mid-May. He has also clung to the naira peg even as evidence showed a dollar shortage was strangling the economy. Buhari continues to oppose devaluation, though he has given the central bank leeway to implement a more flexible currency regime, his spokesman, Garba Shehu, said on Monday.
Under Governor Godwin Emefiele, the central bank began to fix the naira at 197-199 against the dollar in late February 2015, even as other oil exporters from Russia to Colombia and Kazakhstan let their currencies drop. Buhari has backed that stance since coming to power.
Businesses are struggling to operate as the central bank, whose reserves have fallen to a more than 10-year low, runs out of the dollars they need to import raw materials and equipment. Many are forced to turn to the black market, where the naira value has plunged to around 350 per dollar. That’s pushed the inflation rate to 13.7 percent, the highest in almost six years.
Currency Squeeze
U.S. carrier United Airlines said would it stop flying to Nigeria next month, in part because of the hard-currency squeeze. Foreign airlines have the naira-equivalent of $575 million trapped in the country that they can’t repatriate, according to the International Air Traffic Association. The Africa president of Unilever, whose Nigerian unit has seen its shares drop 29 percent since Buhari became president, called the currency policy “very insane.”
The central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted on May 24 to allow “greater flexibility” in the foreign-exchange market, which investors hoped meant that banks would be allowed to trade the naira more freely. Yet, while Emefiele said a new system would be unveiled “in the coming days,” no changes have been made.
Policy Failure
It was an “admission of the inevitable failure of the policy, which created a black market economy,” said Kingsley Moghalu, a former deputy governor at the central bank who now teaches at Tufts University in Boston. “The exchange-rate policy contributed quite significantly to creating a recessionary situation. It hit manufacturers, who could not access forex. It has created unemployment.”
The economy is so weak that Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun says officials probably won’t be able to collect enough taxes to meet the revenue target in this year’s record 6.1 trillion naira budget, which was only passed this month after senators said Buhari’s team made mistakes in the first version sent to them.
Nigeria’s 36 states, most of which depend on monthly handouts from the federal government, are on average three to four months late with salary payments to teachers, doctors and other civil servants, according to the oil minister.
“There’s a sense of exasperation among investors,” Ronak Gopaldas, a Johannesburg-based analyst at Rand Merchant Bank, said. “There’s still a level of goodwill toward Buhari and his government but it’s dissipating. The man on the street is really struggling.”
