DOES THIS OUR PRESIDENT KNOW WHAT HE IS DOING?

Its Night Thoughts today again with your amiable friend, Dayo Oderinu. Let's take this ride together tonight and reason together!

Two days ago, President Muhammadu Buhari became five months old as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. These five months being crucial takeoff periods is undoubtedly a time that should have been utilized for setting clear roadmaps for governance, formulating and making known key government policies that will shape the actions of this government for the remainder of its four years.

The most important question is, do we have any roadmap so far? Because he just clocked five months, I will examine his government using five key issues that affect our collective future. These are areas where I believe he has completely lacked knowledge.

1. WHY SHOULD WE KEEP DEFENDING THE NAIRA WITH OUR FOREIGN RESERVE?

I like to simplify complex government statements such that a layman can easily understand how these big vocabularies affect his life.

In recent times, the CBN has been defending the value of the Naira with our Foreign Reserves. What does this mean?

It is a known fact that crude oil remains the largest foreign exchange earner for Nigeria. Nigeria import activities on the other hand relies on the nation's foreign exchange to transact business. What this simply means is, the value of the dollars available to importers to transact their business is a function of how much forex the nation earns per time. Because the Nigerian system is such that encourages import at the expense of local production, that import forex requirement is quite huge.

In the days when crude sold competitively in the market, importers had access to huge foreign exchange as the country was earning wonderful figures in this regard. Then prices of crude crashed and the crisis began. Two things became evident in the face of the crisis that followed: it became difficult for importers to access foreign exchange, as little was coming in, so the forces of demand and supply settled in, and the dollar began selling at outrageous rates. The second thing that became evident is, Nigeria no longer earns enough from crude sales to fund its import requirements.

Instead of allowing marketplace determine the value of the Naira however, Baba's administration in his bid to force up the value of the naira, due to his uninformed campaign promises, is allowing the CBN to continue defending the naira with our foreign reserve.

The problem with this arrangement is, the FG through the CBN will keep depleting the Reserve towards defending the naira; unfortunately, if crude oil prices do not go up soon, we might end up emptying the reserve and the problem will still be left unsolved.

The common sense solution was, discourage importation as much as possible, stimulate local production at all cost and drastically reduce the nation's requirement for the dollar. But pending that time, allow the market forces dictate the value of the naira. Yes, commodity prices will go up, but it will soon spread around and once local production is promoted, the temporal hardships will disappear.

That was why I asked the question, why did Col. Hamid Ali (Rtd) lift the ban on rice importation? The answer that I got from pro-Buhari politicians was that the nation was losing much to smugglers, so it became better to lift the ban and receive appropriate duty payments. This argument is deficient. Even in the US, consumer products are daily smuggled from Mexico into the US....I am saying every nation loses a sizeable amount to smugglers in duty payments. Which risk was costlier? Attempting to increase duty collectibles or the fact that forex requirements will skyrocket in the process of legalizing rice import? I prefer we make our borders as secure as possible and continue to disallow the importation of rice so we can encourage local production.

Baba Buhari has ignorantly been pursuing a monetary policy that does not in any way contribute to the long term value of the naira and yet is draining our foreign reserves. He has not performed at all in this regard!

4. WILL BOKO HARAM TRULY END IN DECEMBER? AND WHERE ARE THE CHIBOK GIRLS?

It is saddening to note that in the last five months of President Buhari's administration, the mindless killings going on in the North East seem to have taken an even more worrisome dimension. People are now being killed like lizards.

What is baffling about the whole scenario is, Buhari boasted before the elections that Boko Haram would become history before he clocks one month on the seat. He won public sympathy with his many talks about Jonathan's incapacitation to end Boko Haram and his bad disposition towards the rescue of the Chibok Girls.

Today however, we are seeing more killings, the army is saying they do not even know the location of the girls again while Baba has continued feeding us with December deadline. Is this still possible? Why are we not seeing Madam Ezekwesili and her followers run campaigns for the chibok girls as they did in Jonathan's time? Do we assume that the Chibok drama was a fraud after all?

The big assertion here is, from all reports and indications, Baba has done no better than GEJ in the fight against insurgency. All we have right now, is the same worrisome situation still pending in our society.

5. WILL WE DRIVE ON ANTI-CORRUPTION?

So far, a number of projects that were already ongoing before GEJ left office have been abandoned.

Of notable importance is the Lagos-Ibadan expressway that was supposed to ease the vehicular movements that has long become worrisome on this route. The big question here is, if projects are being suspended because Baba is busy fighting corruption, shall we then drive on anti-corruption highway now?

The fight against corruption is commendable if sincere, but while we fight corruption, we must as well allow for the full functionality of government institutions.

We do not necessarily have to cripple the system because we must catch thieves!

I ask that we all join hands and pray for Buhari though, for in the success of his administration lies also peace and prosperity for us, lest we have a failed government at the end of these four years!

Have a blissful night!