Just like us, Venezuela was rich in oil, very rich. At a time, the county’s problem was not money, but how to spend it. Just like Nigeria.
And quite like us again, the South American country did not look inwards. It planted nothing, did not invest in agriculture, since there was an endless flow of oil wealth. Life was one long Christmas, and it was jingle bells all the way.
But the rainy days came, as they would always come. And the bells stopped jingling. Rain began to beat Venezuela badly. Nowhere to take refuge. It did not buy umbrellas in the time of affluence, so no shelter from the rains.
From the days of the immediate past President, Hugo Chavez, to the current Nicolas Maduro, the country has seen that life is not one long honeymoon. The egungun festival would always end, no matter how fun and pleasurable it has been.
From a land flowing with milk and honey, what are the characteristics of Venezuelan life today? Hyperinflation. Starvation. Diseases. Crime and high mortality rates. Massive emigration, the worst in the history of the country.
And the half has never yet been told. By 2017, over 75% of the population had reportedly lost 8 kg (19 lbs) due to hunger. There are interminable food queues, and people even cross the borders, looking for sustenance. At least 94% live in grinding poverty, more than 10% (3.4 million) have left the country, and 25% needed one form of humanitarian assistance or the other.
How did a country that was once an oasis of pleasure get to this sorry pass? Simple. Economic mismanagement, sole dependence on oil. More than 70% of food needs were being imported, and why not, since petroleum-dollars were flowing. Then, the crunch came. Oil prices crashed, and Venezuela crashed with it. Just like it almost happened to Nigeria. Almost. If not for a simple man from Daura called Muhammadu Buhari.
Imagine pediatric wards in hospitals filled with underweight babies, who still continue to suck the shriveled breasts of equally emaciated mothers. Close your eyes and try to envision hitherto middle class adults now rummaging through rubbish heaps for scraps, with the remainder of what used to be neckties now hanging limply over threadbare shirts and suits that have turned to ‘coats,’ looking more like parachutes on thin shoulders . That was what Nigeria almost became. Almost. And by today, with COVID-19 ravaging the world, all international borders closed, oil prices crashed and external reserves dwindling, that is where we would have been. If God had not brought Muhammadu Buhari our way in 2015.
When he got to office as President, oil prices had crashed from an Olympian height of 100 dollars per barrel (it even went as high as 143 dollars), and then dropped to less than 30 dollars. Where were the savings during the boom years? None. Where were the foreign reserves? Mere pittance. Empty national treasury. Excess crude oil account, depleted. Nothing in reserve, local or foreign. The Venezuelan situation was at the very doors. But how did we avert it? How did we avoid the journey to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela?
President Buhari knew that we had to stave off the evil day by getting to work immediately. Whatever money we had left must be put where our mouth was, otherwise danger loomed.
With a rallying cry, the President urged Nigerians to return to the land. They obeyed. God also showed mercy by giving consistently good rainy seasons back to back. And today, we can count our blessings.
In late 2015, the Buhari Administration came with the Anchor Borrowers Program, championed by the Central Bank. It was launched in Kebbi, and the vision was to grant farmers access to finance, so that they could grow rice, wheat, ginger, maize, soybeans, and many other products.
And what a revolution has been sparked off. When we launched in Kebbi in 2015, it was in a vast open land. When we went back to same state earlier this year for the Argungu International Fishing Festival, the heap of rice was almost touching the sky. We once had groundnut pyramids in this country. Now, they have been succeeded by rice pyramids. Just because a President came, and had a dream. He then turned the dream to reality.
I once visited one vast farm in Nasarawa State run by Nigeria Farmers Group and Cooperative Society. It is promoted by a man named Retson Tedheke, started in 2017, and there you have professionals from different disciplines, engaged in farming. Very impressive. I was told Vice President Yemi Osinbajo had also been there. The place sure is dreamland, and who would have thought a prophet could come from a small town like Nazareth? But it’s happening, right before our eyes. Thanks to the man from Daura.
Each time, as I see palliative materials being handed out at this time of health and economic emergency, and I behold heaps and heaps of bags of rice, all locally grown, I imagine what else could have happened. What if we had needed to import, and there was no foreign currency, and all international borders were closed? Hunger ooo. Starvation ooo. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. But we averted the journey to Venezuela. We avoided the trip to Caracas, because a man called Muhammadu Buhari came.
There was a time we imported beans even from Burkina Faso. Rice from Thailand, and from everywhere under the sun. Milk, tomato paste, palm oil, vegetable oil, even toothpick. Everything was imported. Today, we rank highest in Africa in rice cultivation and milling, with over seven million tonnes yearly. Jobs have been created in millions, and food sufficiency has almost been achieved.
Cotton farmers were funded last year to start production. It means a rebound for the textiles sector soon, and jobs and jobs.
Fertilizer that used to be imported at hundreds of millions of dollars, with the attendant sleaze that attended it, is now done locally. Nigeria and Morocco are in alliance, and the project is driven right from the Presidency. Not less than 11 moribund blending plants have been resuscitated, and we now produce about 1.3 million tonnes . Prices of fertilizer have crashed from N15,000 to N5,500 per bag. And set to crash further. Farmers now have direct access to the product, and at affordable prices. Just because a man from Daura had a dream, and turned it to reality.
Agriculture has contributed a great deal to our Gross Domestic Product in the past four years. The private sector has equally keyed in. Dangote Group is already test running a two billion dollars fertilizer plant, which will see us become a net exporter of the product. And many others.
A presidential aspirant recently described the closure of our land borders as an ‘insane’ policy. May we have many more positive insanities. If President Buhari was not proactive, even prescient, to have closed our borders, where would local farmers be today? Every food product was being smuggled into the country, thus discouraging local initiatives. And when borders were closed, apart from the security benefits, local production of food items thrived-rice, poultry, vegetables, tomatoes, other food products boomed. Yet, somebody says it’s ‘insanity,’ because the selfish interests of buccaneers were affected. More of such insanities, please.
The Coronavirus pandemic is severely testing our capacities to feed ourselves. And we are making a good showing, acquitting ourselves creditably.
Despite the crash in the global economy, we are continuing with key infrastructure projects, not borrowing to pay salaries as we did in the height of the 2014 oil boom. An army of entrepreneurs is being created in different spheres. All because a man from Daura had a dream, and turned it to reality. May God bless this man. Amen, somebody!
Harry Belafonte, King of Calypso music, sang the hit track, Matilda.
“Hey! Matilda, Matilda, Matilda, she take me money and run Venezuela.
Five hundred dollars, friends, I lost
Woman even sell me cart and horse!
Heya! Matilda, she take me money and run Venezuela.”
But now that Venezuela is the way it is, with President Maduro striving day and night to turn things round, where will Matilda run to? Nigeria, I guess.
*Adesina is Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Buhari
The Nigerian army personnel have announced the arrest of 28 foreign informants leaking operational secrets to the Boko Haram terrorists. According to intelligence, the suspects who are of local and foreign nationals are currently under investigation.
Nyesom Wike: Our Governor Has Gone Mad Again, By Fredrick Nwabufo
If the gods want to punish a people, they either invoke plagues on the land or deploy agents of slaughter as leaders. The gods are not happy with Rivers state, obviously, hence the affliction by Nyesom Wike.
The state had a chance of averting this ruination in 2019, but it did not take it.The recent brutish actions of Wike in Rivers really knock me into wondering whether the governor superintends over a parallel country. Wike has taken deeper gulps from the chalice of malice, absolutism and despotism. He is now running wild and untamed.
In April, the governor ordered the arrest of two Caverton pilots for allegedly violating the lockdown measures in the state. After their arrest, the pilots were arraigned at a magistrate’s court and remanded in prison until May.But Hadi Sirika, minister of aviation, torpedoed this arbitrary action, saying aviation matters are strictly on the exclusive list of the federal government.
Caverton protested against the remand of its pilots, and said the federal aviation authorities granted it the permission to fly into Rivers state.And at a press briefing organised by the presidential task force on COVID-19, Sirika corroborated the position of the logistics company, accusing the security agents who arrested the pilots on the governor’s order of “displaying ignorance”.Wike has carried on as a law unto himself in Rivers. He is the judge, the jury and the executioner in the state.
On Thursday, he made a proclamation in his accustomed cadence like an emperor of Persia – to auction cars seized during the lockdown in Rivers. He said: “The defaulters will be tried by the Mobile Courts and I have told the Attorney General, all the impounded vehicles must be auctioned.
By tomorrow, the Honourable Attorney General would have advertised those vehicles and we will auction them.’’
On Saturday, bulldozers riding on the dispatch of Wike moved into hotels, which reportedly violated the lockdown measures, mowing them down. How addled can a man be by brute power?Really, it is depressing seeing how some Nigerians cheer the governor on in his inebriation. We have become so habituated to abuse and tyranny that we bless our violators and curse our liberators. What is happening in Rivers state violates every sense of decency, normality and rationality. It is a farrago.
As a matter of fact, it is more telling that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which releases windy and vacuous press statements now and then, accusing President Muhammadu Buhari of tyranny, does not think it fit to call its transgressing members who are governors to order.
Nigerians witnessed how Ben Ayade, governor of Cross River and a member of the PDP, harassed, hounded and incarcerated Agba Jalingo for criticising his government. They are also seeing how the administration of Emmanuel Udom of Akwa Ibom is punishing Kufre Carter, a journalist, for criticising a commissioner in the state.
On Saturday, Mary Akpan, mother of the detained journalist, was denied access to see her son by the DSS in the state. The distressed mother said her ‘’son did not commit any crime. Even families of armed robbers are permitted to see their son in a cell and see how he is doing’’.Painting her picture of despondence keenly, mama said she does not ‘’have money, he gives me the small money I use to eat because I retired since 2016 and the governor refused to give me my gratuity, I’m being fed by my son’’. Her son has spent more than 14 days in detention without any charge.
This is not how to govern a people. One thing is clear; the only irritation of the PDP with the Buhari administration is lack of access to power. The PDP should desist from issuing hypocritical statements and purge itself of the same vermin in the APC. The party has no moral ground to attack the ills of another like it. The PDP must call its governors to order now.
Fredrick Nwabufo is a writer and journalist.Twitter: @FredrickNwabufo.