Popular columnist and University don, Prof. Farooq Kperogi has taken a swipe at the Federal Government of Nigeria under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Kperogi lamented the poor conceptualisation and implementation of policies that have left Nigerians in abject poverty while calling for a genuine, holistic, and robust approach to salvaging the nation’s economic landscape. He asserted that the President in the driver’s seat is seduced by the false promises of neoliberal salvation and running a government that takes away subsidies from the poor masses and gives to the rich and political elites.
Kperogi lamented that it is increasingly becoming evident that nearly all the economic measures devolving from petroleum subsidy removal, devaluation of the Naira and the dole out of palliatives running into several billions of naira are merely trial and error policies which might worsen the economy anytime soon.
He described the pains that Nigerians are going through as unimaginable. His words : ” I feel the pains on behalf of Nigerian masses, because, first of all, my background, I have said that multiple times in my writings that I grew up poor and that I have gotten to where I am today because I have enjoyed subsidized education, and I have enjoyed all kinds of subsidies. I do not want the ladder that I used to climb up to be broken to be broken.
You recall that the first time I appeared on this show was in 2023, when the effect of the double whammy of subsidy removal and currency devaluation had yet to take place. I made predictions that materialized with almost mathematical exactitude, which I think informed your reinviting me in 2024”.
He said owing to the reforms, rather than yielding positive returns, these policies stemming from the dictates of the International Monetary Fund(IMF) and World Bank, are making Nigerians to continually writhe in pains and are making the populace to die in installments.
Prof Kperogi spoke while featuring as a discussant, alongside transparency advocate, Mr Seun Onigbinde, on the popular monthly interview discourse, Boiling Point Arena, hosted by a media professional and public relations strategist, Dr Ayo Arowojolu.
The current affairs programme which is the 28th episode via Zoom was broadcast live by three radio stations, WASH 94.9FM, Lagos, Sweet 107.1FM and Roots 97.1FM, Abeokuta.
Both Kperogi and Onigbinde spoke on the topic: “Nigeria’s Economic Crises: Hardship Biting Harder Despite Government Palliatives and Measures, When will Nigerians Begin to Breathe?”
Said Kperogi: “Based on the policies the IMF and World Bank have recommended, the government imposed on Nigerians measures whose goal is not to elevate the status of our people but has completely wiped out the middle class. Our economy may be large, but it does not serve our people. Our people are writhing in pain. People are dying in installment. Why do they accept these policies when they know that they hurt the people?
“Some of these policies are tied to loans. They give you loans, and those loans come with conditionalities. And our leaders are not creative enough to think of independent ways of generating resources to run the country.
“We have a situation where the justification for accepting to remove fuel subsidy, devaluing the currency and increasing tariffs is that we need to generate money to run government and to build infrastructure.
“But, what has happened over the years since this so called total removal of subsidy is that we are still borrowing and yet, no infrastructure being built. There’s no rail transportation, no CNG buses as promised. The only thing that has changed is that our governors have more money in their coffers than they’ve ever had. Yet, the N70,000 minimum wage they struggled to implement can’t even take home the workers.
“The reality now is that Tinubu’s economic agenda is not producing any result and it is time to rethink. We just have a bunch of, rapacious, vultureristic cabal that is intent on not just killing the people, but feeding on their carcasses. And they are enabled in this act by people in positions of power and those having economic power.
Prof. Kperogi also took a swipe at the budgetary processes in the country, saying: “our budget in Nigeria is a legalized scam deployed as institutional theft of our national patrimony.”
“In the Tinubu Era, the situation we have now is that we have elites whose lifestyles and inanities are subsidized by the people and by the government. This is quite unlike in the United States where even the President pays for his own meals from his pocket. If we continue this way in Nigeria, the economy is endangered”, he concluded.
While proposing strategies to redeem the country from the quagmire, Farooq advocated for a system that leaves both the markets and the people thriving.
”What we need in Nigeria is a system that marries these two extremes. We can have the markets thriving and we can have the people thriving as well. But what we have seen in the last few years since Tinubu came to power is that we see a man who is seduced by the false promises of neoliberal salvation intoxicated with he idea that we can get the markets working and smiling and that somehow the people are also going to smile and laugh, but that’s not what is happening”.
