What are these economists saying?

CBN Governor Olayemi Cardoso

Bismarck Rewane, an economist who has featured prominently in several public intellectual discussions on economic matters recently in an interview with Channels Television spoke like a Nigerian poor. He told his audience that Nigerians are not interested in the figures the government and its economists are bandying about. Their interest is in the price of bread, rice, yam etc. When he said that he came close to my mind after I read the long speech of Olayemi Cardoso, the new CBN governor which he gave at the annual dinner of the Nigeria Institute of Bankers. That was said to be his first outing on his policy as the new CBN governor. He was before the same crowd that had managed, I dare say mismanaged Nigeria's economic terrain since the Olusegun Obasanjo administration in 1999, through Umaru Yaradua, Goodluck Jonathan and the lacklustre Muhammadu Buhari who visited great ruin on Nigeria. I have read Cardoso now about three times and will still read him but I found nothing new in all he said. Just as I doubted Godwin Emefiele when for obvious tribal reasons and inability to swallow the truth of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan sidelined the bold Sanusi albeit illegally and put an Igbo from Delta in the saddle.

I knew instantly that because of his background and the circumstances of his choice, Emefiele was not going to perform well at all. Emefiele was picked from a bank whose lack of reputation is well known to Nigerians. Today when therefore you read of the great misdeeds of Emefiele, helping Buhari to ruin whatever was left of Nigeria, know that he was programmed to do it. Now the nation now has Bola Tinubu in the saddle as president with Yemi Cardoso a Yoruba man like Tinubu at the CBN with a background in Citibank. What do we expect?

I said Bismarck Rewane came close to my mind in economic issues. Economics should not be so obscure as Nigerian experts are making it; every human is an economic being. Late Ashikiwe Odione Egom invented "motor park economist" many years ago, and it describes perfectly how we must approach our economic situation in Nigeria. Ashikiwe wrote for The Guardian and African Guardian and later edited Financial Post. Not being an economist, I wonder whether the economics studied in Nigeria is different from the one studied in other countries, especially in the West. I wonder why our economists here think economists in other climes know better than them and should take instructions from them or the institutions they work for, IMF, World Bank etc. For example, listen to Yemi Cardoso when he said the Russia/Ukraine war and the Covid 19 pandemic left the dollar strengthened and the economy of the emerging markets weak and therefore needing to pursue policies that will constrain foreign currency outflow from those countries, a situation that has badly damaged the economy of the less developed countries, of which Nigeria is a part. Why has the same war not strengthened the naira?

I was amazed at Cardoso's use of figures as all economists are wont to do. I think they use that to fool those of us who are not literate in their profession. They have nothing for us really and so hide under mountains of figures so that we will think something is happening. A presidential candidate in the last election did the same thing until Nigerians got to know that his statistics were wrong and were only fooling them. I have decided not to be fooled again and in my decision, I made up my mind that any responsible man who can run his family successfully can manage the economy of a nation. My little knowledge of economics up to WAEC "Advanced Level" came to my help. I know demand and supply and I have been managing my family for some decades. Although things are pretty difficult now courtesy of Buhari and Tinubu, my family is not complaining. We are sailing through.

So all the figures of Cardoso must be rejected; as Bismarck Rewane said, they would make no meaning to us at the motor park. Nigerian leaders don't travel by road so they don't know the level of enlightenment that goes on at the motor park. I recommend that the leaders henceforth make a habit of visiting the place and the newsstands where you get up-to-date analysis of situations of Nigeria away from the drudgery of Cardoso-type analysis. A motor park economist I encountered at Oja'ba market in Ibadan amazed me when he proposed a very simple solution to Nigeria's economic problems. This man distributes bags of sachet water. His fairly big shop has become my resting place when I follow my wife to the popular market. After my long analysis which included Tinubu's junket all over the world to beg for money, this man nodded and asked me: what produced the Cocoa House in Ibadan? I said it was earnings from cocoa export, then let Tinubu go back to cocoa, he told me calmly. He will find all the money he needs to run the economy. I couldn't but agree with him and I don't think he was that much educated. That is motor park economics.

How can anybody attribute the high prices of foodstuff in Nigeria to the Russia/Ukraine war and the Covid 19? No, the food crisis is fully a domestic problem. In Ibadan where I live, all the land that used to be cultivated for farming has been sold by the 'omo miles' (land owners) who do nothing but drink all day. Their fathers who farmed are all dead and all their children who have half-baked education have taken to the streets smoking hemp. It is simply the demand for foodstuff that far outstrips supply that caused our food inflation. The solution is to mechanize farming and encourage youths back to farm. And get the cattle herders into ranches. Nigeria will get food and the statistics of Yemi Cardoso will not be necessary again. That is motor park economics. Tinubu wants to build a trillion-dollar economy in ten years and Cardoso wants to help him do that by getting the banks to increase their capital. Is that not what cerebral Charles Soludo did when he was CBN governor? When Soludo began that policy I praised his genius and thought Nigeria was ready to fly and meet the advanced nation. But I didn't think Soludo considered the Nigerian factor into his equation. The banks combined meet the prescribed capital but rather than business growth because of the availability of funds for long-term borrowing, it was the banks that grew through all kinds of shady deals that Soludo could not fathom at the beginning. It took Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who took over from Soludo to help the situation a little. Of course, depositors lost money and some of them their own lives. Therefore, let Yemi Cardoso listen to motorpark economists; and tell Tinubu to forget his 1 trillion-dollars target in ten years. Nigeria has not forgotten Vision 2020" which must remain a vision eternally. Rather allow investors to grow their banks gradually and set various serious ethical watch on the banks. Mr Yemi Cardoso, your Yoruba people say: "Ti onje ba kuro ninu ise, ise buse" ( once the food is removed from poverty, poverty has been tamed); deal with the food crisis as suggested, and listen to another motor park economists who advised that Nigeria go back to cocoa, groundnut, cotton, cashew, sugarcane, cassava, yam and other cash crops. You won't need those figures again and you will be speaking the language that Nigerians understand, the language of the motor park.

Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.