Nigeria does not have to borrow from anybody – 1

I join Lawyer Femi Falana in asking the government to desist from incurring new foreign loans. This I do for several reasons.  Falana listed a number of sources from which government could recover up to $200billion in order to fund the budget and even beyond. This is valid. The president himself has on several occasions […]

I join Lawyer Femi Falana in asking the government to desist from incurring new foreign loans. This I do for several reasons.  Falana listed a number of sources from which government could recover up to $200billion in order to fund the budget and even beyond. This is valid. The president himself has on several occasions regaled the nation with scintillating stories of recoveries of billions of dollars.  On many occasions, the president talked of how many trillions they have ‘recovered’ in the Treasury Single Account (TSA). He has also talked severally about recoveries from those who looted the treasury in the past, and on the streets we see several houses decorated with the “EFCC KEEP OFF” insignia.  On the 5th of February this year, or thereabouts, the President in London stated categorically that they had recovered so much money from those who voluntarily returned stolen funds and their ilk, that they in government ‘believe (they) may end up not incurring deficit this year’. He received something close to a standing ovation for that statement.
It therefore befuddles when the Minister of Finance released a ‘roadmap’ for the economy, and talked eloquently about how the 2016 Budget will be ‘DEBT-FUNDED’. She went on to describe several borrowing scenarios, including how Chinese Panda Bonds were better than the European ones. Our president then went off to China, ostensibly to secure a $2billion loan, only for us to learn that the Chinese had approved a $6billion loan which needed no collateral, no agreement and no conditionalities, according to the statement I heard from the mouth of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. He said it was plug-and-play, as in all we had to do was draw on the funds after identifying ANY project of our fancy.  Listening to Geoffrey Onyeama, one will leave with the impression that it was free money, and perhaps it is.  Other reports have it though that the loans are tied to projects. I am wary of easy loans, even if they are from China; which a friend rightly observed to be a better development ally compared with Western superpowers.
We also heard that the Central Bank of Nigeria signed an agreement whereby the Chinese currency, the Yusn, will become easily convertible to the Naira and where Nigeria will become a hub/clearing house for the Chinese currency in our region. This also indicates that the Chinese wants trade between us and them to be more fluid. But they have much more to sell to us than we could ever come up with. Caution. What is more? The Chinese are so clever, and like with the Western countries that have terrorized us economically for decades, they too know an unstrategic country when they see one.  They have been known to fund development projects where they bring their own peasants to do the job. In one instance, they brought prisoners from their prisons to work on a construction project in Accra, Ghana, in lieu of jail term. These prisoners were not even paid in Ghana. Their dues went to their families in China, so the Ghanaian economy had little benefits.  Many people have hailed this ‘Yun hub’ news with much aplomb. But that itself is quite tricky and I suggest we not play up the idea that Nigeria will be at the centre of a shift of global reserve currency from the Dollar to the Yun, because the Americans can get very feisty at such an idea. Ask Iraq. Ask Libya.  
In the case of Iraq they were going to move to the Euro, and then the Americans concocted some story and bombed the hell out of them for some nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.  This is no hearsay. It was captured even in textbooks of International Finance, notably by Professor Keith Pilbeam of City University London.  Ghaddafi’s mortal sins prominently include trying to create some pan-African currency and suggesting to OPEC countries to start receiving gold rather than the Dollar for their Crude Oil. Nigeria, caution.  It’s a mean world out there and when you want to do these things, you have to be really quiet about it.  This was also captured by scholars. Any surprise when this very week, President Obama listed that his worst mistake was what he did to Libya? Meanwhile Ghaddafi is gone, mercilessly killed and sodomised with a knife on the streets, his corpse treated like dog’s, and buried in an unknown place so that he will not be hero worshipped.  All at the instructions of the Americans, British and French. Hilary Clinton, the mean-spirited Secretary of State at that time, and now front-runner for the US Presidency, jubilated by singing ‘We came, we saw, he died!’. Wicked woman! Libya today lays prostrate as one of the most dangerous countries on earth thanks to these people. the country with the highest Human Development Index in Africa was destroyed before our very eyes while our ‘educated’ people cheered on brainlessly.  Of course Libya’s fall opened up the route for Boko Haram – or whoever is behind the killing of tens of thousands of Nigerians so far – and with them came the most dangerous of weapons and bombs.
So, if I want to talk about conspiracy theories, I will say that it is a suicidal move on the part of Buhari. When Goodluck Jonathan went to China with 13 of his Ministers, global media refused to report the news. He was roundly ignored because they were livid. Jonathan was even made to cut short that visit as he left after two days. I would say his relationship with the Western crazies never remained the same after that move. Yaradua also committed this sin by romancing with Medvedev, who visited Nigeria to sign some deals with the steel sector. This ‘conspiracy theory’ is important and should be taken serious because someone is spinning the news of Buhari’s visit to China and in particular the Yen deal, as an attempt by Nigeria to ‘crash the US Dollar by 70%’. Whereas Nigeria cannot ‘crash the dollar’, not by that percentage, we have made a bold move and given other countries ideas. But it is still a bit foolish for anyone to suggest that Nigeria is deliberately triggering a global currency war that will see the Yun replacing the Dollar as global reserve currency.  Imagine, the report also states that Nigeria intends to diversify its entire reserves into Yun, and our own NTA carries this on its website. Are we declaring war on the US? If we are, are we ready, capable and prepared? This is very dangerous territory.
Meanwhile, Nigeria is the butt of jokes in the world, because of our penchant to beg many countries to loan us money, which we never use judiciously. All levels of government in Nigeria seem to be searching frantically for loans.  Almost every state in Nigeria has sent series of delegates to every part of the world in search of loans.  Yet no one has come here for loans; not even from places like Togo, Cameroun or Niger. Nigerians love new things. We love big things. But we produce little, and forget that things always look new, in the countries we visit, because they are well-maintained. More next week.