Dr. Law Mefor is a Social/Forensic Psychologist and Head of Department (HOD), Department of
Psychology, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Nasarawa State. In this interview with The Dream Daily’s John Emmanuel, the varsity don assesses the state of the economy under President Muhammadu Buhari and faults the President’s economic policies, among other salient issues.
It is official that Nigeria is in a recession. What is your assessment of assessment of the situation.
I dont even know when it is appropriate to assess a government. When they celebrated one hundred days in the office we thought it was too early to asses them. When they did a year, we also thought it was too early to asses them. Now it is one year four months and for me , things are not okay and I am not the only one in this assessment even the government position on the look of things in itself is very gloomy. If you take it from the economic perspective, the government has admitted officially that we are in a recession.
The contraction put the GDP at barely 2% and that is not a glorious feature. Officially we are in a recession and that indicates that the economy is not doing well. You can take some aspects of the economy and then look at it holistically. If you look at infrastructural development like the area of road construction and rehabilitation, l am not aware that the government has constructed even a kilometer of road since they came in. The rail project commisioned was essentially what ex president Goodluck Jonathan did, the current administration completed it, so to speak. I can tell you that the input of this administration in that aspect is quite minimal. Where do we stand? In the area of security, l think they scored up to fifty percent. I want to believe that the Boko haram insurgency has been downgraded substantially to the point that they have been pushed out of positions noted to be local government area in Borno state particularly and now holding in Sambisa forest. But the fact that they still have the Chibok girls as shown in the last video that they showed the world, indicates the war has not been won.
For me l dont see how the war can be won without the rescue of the Chibok girls. It’s just objective. Again the continued captivity of the Chibok girls also has very serious implications. It shows that indeed, the sect is still occupying some territories, otherwise they can’t be running around with the girls strap to their backs. They are are staying somewhere which means it is objective if one says the Boko haram sect is still holding some territories. Sambisa forest is part of Nigeria, if they are holding on to Sambisa forest, they are still holding part of Nigeria, that’s objective if you ask me.
But as we are defeating Boko haram, we are also spreading the frontline in other areas that were not as volatile as they have become now. See the troubles of IPOB, MASSOB, Niger Delta militants,etc. Days ago, the Nigerian military rolled out fulled out fully what they called Operation Crocodile Smile, l do not know how crocodile smiles but they are teaching us that crocodile now smiles and the insurgence replied back with a counter launching of Operation Crocodile Tears, for me it is the escalation of conflict in that area.
You are aware that the group, that is now going by the name Niger Delta Militants regrouped over three months ago and the have been able to force oil production in Nigeria from 2.4 million barrels a day to a paltry 1. something million barrels. In the face of the dwindling price of oil in the international market, coupled with the almost cut to half of the production capacity of Nigeria, also fuels the recession in the country. What recession is talking about is that you have economic down turn, you don’t have enough money to power the economy and then promote sufficient productivity to the point that economic activities are in an ackward movement. When you do not have enough to raise the economy off the ground and sustain productivity and all that and there is contraction for two to three quarters, that is what is referred to as recession.
I understand the issue of change, whether we like it or not, change comes in different ways in an economy. There is what we call the J curve, here you know things will have to experience depression before they come up, but for me l don’t know how long this J curve will last before things begin to work. The depression is too deep and my ultimate fear is that we may not have hit the buttom yet. It does appear to me that the depression is still digging in, which means we may not get out of it in the next two to three years.
ARE YOU IN A NUT SHELL SAYING THAT THE APC LED ADMINISTRATION HAS FAILED?
I don’t rate a government from such a perspective, all l know is that things are not well progressively as one had expected. But lf you have to weigh all that against the timelines provided by the APC when they were campaigning to oust president Jonathan from power, promising eldorado, one can say they have failed in almost every promise they have made. They stil have two and a half years left to go before election comes knocking. They have failed in one year, you have two years of governance, the third year is preparation for election and the fouth year is election so l really don’t think they have much time left. But lf they seek appropriate assistance and intervention from proper professionals and those who know, l think they will be able to turn things around, may be not completely, they should be able halt the drift because we are still drifting. Today the dollar is 420 naira, only last week it was about 400 naira, so lf the progression continues like that before the end of the year, l am afraid to say what we are experiencing now may just be a tip of the iceberg.
Two issues illustrate that, one is that lnnoson motors in Nigeria has closed down because he can’t afford the dollars and that means thousands of jobs have been lost.
The reason why things are like this is because there are certain decisions taken by the government that did not augur well with the way things stand in the international politics and economy. A major instance is the president waiting for as long as six months to constitute his cabinet, it was a gross error of judgement and that didn’t allow him to take off properly. When he did eventually, it was still sundry personalities that he put together. Those he could have called out right out there at the Eagle square, there wasn’t need to wait for six months to give us the likes of Ngige, Fayemi, Fashola, Amaechi and the rest because they have been there with him so he he knew them all along. It wasn’t as if he took his pains to assmble a crack team.
Then the issue of treasury single account, l don’t see the benefit of that. I have asked one question, lf you want a single treasury account, you should be able to tell us what the account has been able to save. Check what they have been telling us you can see that that the account has not been saving anything fantastic. What l am saying is that when you have the money in different commercial banks and so on and so forth, you have the liquidity base of the banks and their over all capacity to do business, lend funds for short, medium, and even long term. Now you took that capacity away, what do you gain by doing that. If you say the TSA helped us to mopping up the commercial banks, what is the big deal that we now have a single account. For me that was a major policy error because he has put the banking sector in a very big didadvantage. What is the result, the banks have been laying off workers, creating more unemployment. Even now corruption is still inherent in the TSA. Dont forget, the System Spec that collects rhe TSA walks away with billions in interest or commission of what accrues to them while they are trying to ensure we have the money in a single account. Of course stakeholders must partake in it.
TSA is not even the initiative of this present government, it was initiated in 2012 by Ngozi Okonjo Iweala under Jonathan. They were reluctant to implement it because of its adverse consequencies and they felt the best way to take care of that was to implement it in phases, but here we implemented it in a swoop, hence the negative impact on the economy.
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