Letter to Professor Chukwuma Soludo
Dear Prof. Soludo,
what I immediately thought of on hearing the news of proposed naira re-valuation by a resourceful Central Bank Governor that you have proved to be were as follows: How would re-valuation, with the attendant huge costs of printing new currencies and minting new coins coupled with intensive and massive public education, translate to economic relief for Nigerians?
I concluded that re-valuation as a single policy might fetch us no goodies except it is coupled with massive re-organization of productive forces in this country for greater productivity such that price levels begin to drop drastically. In this connection, we can focus agriculture as a first step in a series. When you travel round Nigeria, you will discover that we have arable land in quantum to the extent of becoming the bread basket of Africa. We may lack a strong industrial base but we have a potentially sound, solid and strong agro-base. By mobilizing idle youths, furnishing them with requisite technical training cum financial wherewithal on modern, scientific farming, we can become the world’s Super Food Power!
I recall in 1980, when at age 42, a retired (but untired) military Head of State, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, who had handed power to President Shehu Shagari in 1979, wanted a new career, undertook a 3 month crash training the Institute of Agricultural Research & Training (I.A.R & T), at Moor Plantation, Ibadan as a prelude to his highly successful farming business. He learnt so much that he wrote his farm feasibility report by himself. I was then in primary six and was living with my parents at the I.A.R & T quarters.
The point I’m making is that increased productivity in food production on a phenomenal rate would bring a tremendous relief to most Nigerians who live from hand to mouth. That happening paripassu with a rather nominal re-valuation of currency will not only give the policy the kind of meaning our suffering masses would understand and appreciate, it will add real value to the naira.
For now, our situation is tragic because while we have not less than 200 agricultural research and training institu-tions, skilled manpower and abundance of fertile lands and funds-mobilization capacity to make our agricultural sector the envy of the world with a single planting season, we are starving. Yet, we talk of industrializing. We are like the butcher in Yoruba wisecracks whose children cry for lack of meat.
In a nutshell, if we revalue naira without tackling the issue of productivity on all fronts in an aggressive, war-like manner, the naira, in no time, shall come crashing in value like the Great Wall of Jericho as we experience population growth with all its pressures or suffer misfortunes in our-almighty oil and gas receipts. Methinks we urgently need a Think Thank on Real Sectors’ Accelerated Productivity for your laudable re-valuation proposal to work.
‘Femi Meyungbe-Olufunmilade
Abuja femiology@yahoo.com.
08057345436
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