President Muhammadu Buhari’s strict state policies have boosted Nigeria’s domestic food production and reduced imports, but at what cost to the people?
What have two terms of “Buharinomics” brought to Nigeria?The Buhari government, in the workplace since 2015, has based much of its economic policy on state interventions in the market; whether in rice production, infrastructure or foreign exchange. It has had combined results.
The government says its plan for national self-sufficiency in rice production — ending the country’s land borders to fight smuggling and blocking the U. S. dollar for importation — is yielding positive results. In January, Buhari revealed a pyramid of 1. 2 million sacks of rice. in the country’s capital, Abuja, saying Nigeria had doubled its paddy rice production to nine million tonnes a year since 2015.
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele said the capacity of Nigeria’s rice mills had increased from 350,000 tonnes to 3 million tonnes before the government introduced a programme for farmers – the main borrowing programme.
However, the value of a 50kg bag of rice has tripled from around 9000 naira ($21) in 2015 to around 33,000 naira in May 2022. Inefficient and expensive local rice processing strategies and slower entry of foreigners due to border closures are responsible.
They [the government] unknowingly created a thriving illegal market, now oil supply [is] the alternative.
According to data compiled by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. In the US, Nigeria produced five million rice in 2021. However, domestic intake exceeds 7 million in the same year.
The Senate Agriculture Committee expressed fear that smuggling will continue to satisfy the domestic call. “With the help of local informants and committed customs officials, importers discovered a way to circumvent the border closure,” says Aisha Oduntan, a resident of the Ipokia network bordering the Republic of Benin, which is a main gateway for rice to Nigeria. “They still bring rice, but this time they sell it at higher costs to make incredible profits because the demand is guaranteed, and the source is not as superior as before, and they don’t pay any taxes to the government. “
Like rice, many other products have been directly imported or banned. In June 2015, CBN revealed that it had stopped allocating foreign currency to some 41 items, such as cement, textiles, furniture, poultry, bird eggs and turkey.
Buhari’s government has also focused on primary infrastructure projects, such as the railway, dams and Lagos-Ibadan roads. The management presented the reconstruction of the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri railway line in 2021 and signed an agreement with the German company Siemens in 2018 to build raising the national production of electricity to 25 GW in the long term.
Supporters of Buhari’s statist policies say he seeks to balance inequalities in global trade, which pits emerging countries against developed countries. and citizens,” says Feyi Fawehinmi, an accountant and public policy analyst.
“The government also lacks the state’s ability to control those bans well, so the effect is just an increase in costs for everyone, as smugglers have to pay more bribes to enter Nigeria. “It has been implemented so poorly and supported through ever-changing justifications, he says.
“It’s not just food and business costs that have been affected by the closure,” said Oduntan, an Ipokia resident. Since then, other people have had to travel miles to get fuel. They [the government] unknowingly created a thriving illegal market because now oil supply [is] the alternative.
That Osamwonyi, an analyst at Lagos-based think tank SBM Intelligence, says Buhari’s policies have had a negative effect on businesses and the broader economy. “The closure of borders in the fourth quarter of 2019 [. . . ] is inconsistent with our multilateral commitments and has resulted in a major economic surprise that was further aggravated during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.
Some analysts, such as Othrough Ezekwesili, a former World Bank vice president, argue that Buhari has retained diversification of the economic concepts of “command and control” from his first era in his “second coming. “When Buhari was head of state of the army, from 1983 to 1985, he halved the country’s import bill by rationing access to foreign currency and tried to impose value controls. Today, the CBN completely with its decision to ration currencies, aggressively managing demand without doing enough to increase supply.
Fawehinmi, the accountant and analyst, says: “One of the biggest consequences is how [statism] has replaced what is appropriate for the government to interfere. in spaces such as money markets and exchange rates.
Fawehinmi adds that because of Nigeria’s very young population, Buhari’s 8 years as president are long enough to influence the economic prospects of millions of others who have come of age under his administration: “You might think it’s general for the president to have a strong opinion about what the currency’s exchange rate deserves to be and for the government to whom he has access.
Buhari took credit from the vast majority of talakawas (ordinary people) to become president in 2015. He says his policies, from currency management to final borders, are aimed at protecting citizens. However, the charge of living for the country’s most vulnerable is emerging. , while inflation is emerging globally.
For Fawehinmi, President Buhari will have the economic legacy of leading a government that is “everywhere but nowhere” and whose main strength is “to prevent things from falling apart [instead of] allowing the things he wants. “that Buhari’s tenure has discredited many popular economic concepts and that Nigerians will now be open to listening to other arguments and will not allow the bad concepts to drag on for long.