EDITORIAL: The Cost Of Existence Crisis!

• Getting Scary With Another Fuel Price Increase

’Sometimes, people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed – Friedrich Nietzsehe”

In Nigeria today, it is raining cats and dogs.

For a hard-pressed populace, it is no longer about the cost of living. It is about which survival strategy to press into play. As the Financial Times of London pointed out during the week, it is the worst economic crisis Nigeria has seen in living memory. Sadly, there is not even cautious optimism that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

The crisis requires both intellectual honesty as well as critical thinking. We must also do away with ill-advised posturing such as “subsidy is gone,” in a country without even the most rudimentary of social safety nets.

READ: FG Permits Petrol Marketers To Lift Fuel Directly From Dangote Refinery

Even with the recent hike, there is still “subsidy,” as a comparative analysis of fuel prices across West Africa will show. And so what, the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) in the European Union is a one billion dollars-a-day food subsidy!

The key battleground for Nigeria is the rate of exchange, floating the Naira has turned out to be ruinous, a punitive tax on the least protected sectors.

We must begin anew. There must be a fiscal redirection. The ballooning costs of governance must be reined in and the already outdated Oronsaye Report on the costs of the machinery of the government implemented in full.

Nigeria must also go for bust on export. This is the only way to shore up the value of the Naira.

We desperately need a redirection of thinking on the economy, including the constitutional amendments necessary to stimulate production, and a move away from the rent-seeking state. In this dire situation, the government must act quickly.