Wisdom of Cardoso In A Cloudy Market System

By Kunle Awosiyan

A man like me wouldn’t have gone to school if not because some “impostors” in my neighbourhood started coming home with university degrees.

I had loved to sell footwears or fruits and make money like my mother at young age but the “arrogance of the impostors” forced me to school.

We knew their academic performance in secondary school, suddenly we learnt they had gained admission to university. How? It was through “Ori Olori”, which started long before now.

What can we do in a porous system that believes so much in certificate and theory than practical application of knowledge. With money anybody can go to school and obtain “Paali’.

For me, formal education is good when it provides knowledge and it becomes better when the knowledge is efficiently applied to solve problem or add value.

Without degrees, anybody can become knowledgeable through reading and researching but wisdom is the analysis of perspectives and ability to make sound judgement, which of course may have come through life experience and putting the acquired knowledge into fruitful use.

However, this definition makes me to hate theory sometimes and hate it the more when it is economic theory that has failed to transform our economy.

Every night, our experts speak economics with datas on television and if one should judge our current economic situation by our number of experts, Nigeria should be the best in the world.

They are too brilliant. However, everything is theory. It doesn’t add up.

It makes it look like our situation has defied economic theory or perhaps it needs those who have economic wisdom instead of economic knowledge.

I may be wrong, I think it is not enough to know how to plot graphs and provide statistics, there is need for all theories to translate to affordable, good standard of living by the citizens.

In his press conference at the weekend, the Governor of Central Bank, Oluyemi Cardoso described his recent policy on Naira against dollar as “firefighting approach”, which for me is great wisdom to stabilise our foreign exchange. Unless there is a new theory called “Economics of Firefighting”, for me this is pure wisdom.

Of course, his approach led to the depletion of our foreign reserves, which many had criticised.

The arguments of some economists against Cardoso’s idea are deafening, yet they have failed to provide better ideas.

They also failed to provide better alternative to the Cardoso’s recapitalisation of the Bureau de Change. They could not also provide better alternative for the payment of our debts to foreign airlines, which of course culminated to depletion of our foreign reserves.

Something must give way in the application of this temporary measure and it is the foreign reserves.

But they were quick to say that the foreign reserve is depleted and so the policy is bad. Okay oooo.

They said that the only thing that can stop Naira fall is that Nigeria should begin to manufacture and export things, even when many of them have never patronised “Made in Nigeria.”

Perhaps they did not see that the Cardoso’s firefighting approach has also affected the cost of air travel and with it Air Peace is breaking the monopoly of the foreign airlines.

Cardoso also mentioned in his press conference that the CBN will now begin to implement its strategic policies, which will include price regulation, creating attractive environment for investment in a transparent market system.

With a dollar to Naira just above N1000, I think Cardoso has defied the theory of economics to a certain extent with his wisdom.

With the call that he should begin to apply economic theory now, I’m eagerly waiting to see the transformation without more endurance by the citizenry.

This is because every manufacturing industry will have to pass through gestation period to reach its productive level. This is my own primary school economics as a footwear seller in those days.

Yes, manufacturing is the ultimate solution, can Nigerians wait for the process to pass through the normal production chain without taking temporary measure to address steady fall of the Naira?

Will Nigerians not raise alarm if government begins to regulate commodity prices even now that most traders have raised the prices of their products in the name of dollar rise? But when the dollar falls, their commodity prices refuse to fall.

The Independent Oil Marketers who raised the pump price of petrol over dollar rise have refused to lower the price, despite dollar fall against Naira in the last few weeks.

These same marketers that have refused to reduce their fuel prices had always raised the price at the rumour of dollar rise or closed their gas station to hoard the products.

This is a cloudy market system where Cardoso will need more wisdom rather than economic theories.

I don’t know economics.