The Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI), a policy think- tank group has said that President Bola Tinubu is steering Nigeria away from Venezuela-like tragedy.
The group noted that Nigerians have gotten to the junction of their economic comeuppance where they must pay for decades of abuse and wrongdoing, stressing that contrary to suggestions in a section of the media, the economic reforms of the President Bola Tinubu administration are based on a clear plan to steer the country away from the tragic path of another oil-rich country, Venezuela.
According to the policy think- tank in a statement on Sunday by its Chairman, Dr. Niyi Akinsiju, the challenges are because of years of populist macro-economic policies which have sunk the country to a level that the country had to change course or be doomed.
“We’ve observed with interest the criticisms that continue to trail the reforms implemented by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration. Of particular interest are two opinions that gained some traction.
“One of the critics finds the reforms to be a: wreckage of the past 15 months, from which the country is reeling.” The other viewpoint, an editorial, brands the “government as insensitive and strategy-deficient. It also sees the government as “incompetent to perform its primary duty of delivering welfare and security to the people.”
“These attacks on the ongoing reforms are natural if viewed from the relatively narrow and subjective context of the steep change in the country’s cost of living. Yet, the reality of the nation’s macroeconomic situation is that where we are on the economic curve is a consequence of where we came from.
“When the premise and predicates of the nation’s economic trajectory are reviewed and aggregated, the apparent conclusion will be that we are where we are because this affliction of economic malaise at this point is predetermined.
“Though the mainstream media and thought leaders unconsciously felt that the country’s economic management has always had a problematic stigma, they refused to give critical attention to the possible consequences of the national economic peregrination since we first struck oil in commercial quantity in the 1960s. Where we have found ourselves is a function of where we came from.
“Since 1972, the Nigerian economy has been characterised by an unpredictable circle of bust and boom. In layperson’s terms, it means that one moment, we are deemed rich and able to buy whatever catches our fancy, and everybody, including the media, is happy. Next, we are flat broke. We lament the difficulties encountered in sating our basic needs, whining and criticising the government in power as the source of our decimated existence.
“But truth be told, the situation report is that we have arrived at the junction of our economic comeuppance where we must pay for decades of abuse and wrongdoing. It’s that simple.
“Typically coming from an underdevelopment mindset, Nigeria heavily borrowed from the preferred economic practices of the then-emerging economies of South America. Among countries in this region, Nigeria shares many similarities with Venezuela, particularly in the nature and character of their adopted economic model, which economists describe as “macroeconomic populism,”it explained.
IMPI also cited similarities between the two oil-producing countries to drive home its position.
It said: “Like Venezuela, oil has taken Nigeria on an exhilarating but dangerous boom-and-bust ride. Again, like Nigeria, decades of poor governance have driven what was once one of Latin America’s most prosperous countries to economic and political ruin. In 2008, crude oil production in Venezuela was the tenth-highest in the world at 2,394,020 barrels per day, and the country was also the eighth-largest net oil exporter in the world.
“We also find a similarity in the leadership style prevailing in Nigeria between 1999 and 2015, as well as in Presidents Hugo Chavez (1999-2013) and Nicolas Maduro (2013- present) of Venezuela. The Venezuelan leaders implemented the wrong macroeconomic policy during the 2000s and early 2010s when Venezuela’s economy, like that of Nigeria, was booming due to the global commodity ‘supercycle’ – a prolonged period of high and rising grain, metal, oil and gas prices.”
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