The Editorial comments of Bloomberg, an online publication in its April 7th, 2019 edition is a blatant abuse of freedom of expression, and a pot-pourri of hate speech, incorrect conclusions, and unconscionable assault on the sovereignty of Nigeria.
The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) said the Editorial titled “Only Growth Can Defuse Nigeria’s Poverty Time Bomb,” with a picture of a boy sitting on a dumpsite with a caption that says “waiting on Baba Go Slow”, is a hatchet job quit unexpected of a publication like Bloomberg.
In a statement signed by its chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, BMO said: “If we are to put things in context, it is ridiculous that a media company that thrives in a country that benefited from 400 years of slave labor and colonialism, would sit on a high horse and talk down on Nigeria that never had such luxury and has been independent for only 59 years.
It is agreeable “on a macro-scale, the 21st-century world has been successful in increasing human well-being and reducing poverty from 1.4 billion to 600 million, but on a micro-scale some countries – including Nigeria – still find themselves struggling to decelerate the negative indicators for human well-being.
“We will like to remind Bloomberg that President Muhammadu Buhari had only been president since 2015 so their scathing analysis on President Buhari’s performance is out of touch with the causality and reality of things.”
The pro-Buhari group noted that India and China’s successes in reducing poverty are tied to a couple of social investment programmes and economic policies aimed at improving agricultural value chain and the industrial sector; “these are actions that were not taken during the last 16 years of previous administrations in Nigeria.”
“As a matter of fact, India was able to lift 170 million people out of poverty because of a combination of welfare packages, pro-growth government policies and an environment for highly competitive businesses, all these President Buhari’s policies seek to address”, the group said.
“Already on-going are the Social Investment Programmes that are touching 13 million Nigerians’ lives, including the poor (Conditional Cash Transfer), school kids (Home Grown School Feeding Programme), youths (N-Power) and market women (Trader Moni).
“Every nation follows a specific path towards growth, and agriculture is one of the major paths that Nigeria has chosen. Today, due to President Buhari’s Anchor Borrowers Programme, Nigeria has cut rice import by over 90% and rice farmers account for over 12 million jobs, the revival of fertilizer blending plants and the partnership with Morocco has seen a drop in price of fertilizer from N13,000 to N5,500, within four years of the administration.”
BMO agreed with Bloomberg that Nigeria’s major revenue base was predicated on oil export which saw a global decline in 2014, but noted that Nigeria’s recession was fore-warned by the former Minister of Finance Ngozi Okonjo Iweala and former CBN governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who saw the institutional decay that allowed the plunder of forex earnings in the Excess Crude Account, Sovereign Wealth Fund and the Foreign Reserve.
“President Buhari has blocked the leakages by instituting a reform that unifies all government accounts into what is now called the Treasury Single Account (TSA) and has since then presided over an increase in Foreign Reserves from a low point of $23 billion in 2014 to over $43.547 billion in 2019.”
According to BMO, if Bloomberg should criticize the administration for using multiple foreign exchange windows, it should have noted that these were homegrown solutions to the peculiar challenges in Nigeria’s structure.
“It is remarkable that Nigeria saw an increase in foreign portfolio investments by $6 billion between February and March 2019 despite the uncertainties of elections, and that is an acknowledgment of investors’ confidence in the Nigerian economy under President Muhammadu Buhari.
“Bloomberg should be reminded that aside from the inflow of $6 billion portfolio investment between February and March 2019 during the Presidential elections, another evidence of investors’ confidence in President Buhari’s administration is the recent declaration by Shell to invest $15 billion dollars in the Nigerian oil and gas Industry. So how can Bloomberg claim Nigeria is losing Foreign Direct Investments under this administration.”
The Pro-Buhari group further noted that on the issue of security, President Buhari has been able to reduce terrorism-related deaths by 80%, according to the Global Peace Index report published in 2018 and efforts are being intensified to curtail the menace of banditry and farmer/herder clashes.
“President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is putting the right policies in place to ensure an enabling environment for businesses to thrive through the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, which has been able to record a number of reforms; including Visa on Arrival, 24hrs company name registration, the filing of taxes online, etc.”
On Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the group noted that companies that had left Nigeria decades ago are now coming back due to the favourable policies of President Buhari’s administration. “The most recent is BATA shoe company that just invested $1 million in Nigeria. Apart from that, over 30 companies have either moved to Nigeria or are expanding in Nigeria. These include $1 billion Obu cement factory in Okpella, Olam’s $150 million integrated feedmill in Kaduna, Lee Group shoe factory in Jigawa and $300 million Procter&Gamble expansion project, etc.
“The administration’s backward integration policy, for example, has seen manufacturers like PZ now using local palm oil to produce their soaps while Guinness is also another example of the numerous companies using backward integration to aid production. Guinness now uses more of locally sourced sorghum instead of importing barleys thereby saving Nigeria the much needed foreign exchange,” the group said.
BMO also noted that Nigeria has an impressive Debt-to-GDP figures and Bloomberg’s concern about Debt-to-Revenue ratio is also shared by the administration, which is why policies are directed to ensure that Nigeria increases tax net, plug leakages and continue to move away from commercial credits to concessionary credits. “It is important to note that the loans taken by President Buhari’s administration are primarily tied to two things: replacing old matured debts with longer, cheaper debts and linking new loans to Infrastructure. These two approaches are directed towards the path of growth.
“It is important to note that the United States, Japan and many other developed countries used debt to improve their economies. That is why they have Debt-to-GDP ratio ranging from 105% to over 200%, unlike Nigeria whose Debt-to-GDP ratio is just about 20%. So there is still time to leverage on that to grow as long as there is a leader with fiscal prudence and short and long term growth plan”, the group added.
