Across the 36 federating states of Nigeria including Abuja, the federal capital territory, there is a growing distraught resulting from worsening high cost of living and rising poverty permeating the Nigerian society and subjecting the gullible populace to perpetual agony.
Suffice it to say that since democracy re-berthed in Nigeria in 1999, the economy of Nigeria has grown from bad to worse, while the value of Naira plummets on a daily basis.
Regrettably, not even the written off of Nigeria’s mounting external debts occasioned by the rare negotiating ingenuity of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Nigerian economy during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime could wedge the Nigerian economy from sliding into another round of bankruptcy few years after President Obasanjo vacated the stage.
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Like a frightening tale, stories about the performance of the Nigerian economy have often left a sour taste in the mouth of discerning Nigerians.
From 2007 to date, to be precise, it has been throes and woes for Nigerians, as virtually every department of the nation’s economy has become comatose and asphyxiated.
What with the moribund four refineries staring Nigerian leaders in the face, while the country unashamedly go cap in hand importing refined petroleum products from countries that do not have a drop of crude oil in their soil, but only have the financial intelligence and entrepreneurial know-how to invest in the business of refining petroleum products and rake in billions of dollars.
Without mincing words, Nigeria appears to be sliding down to the dark days in roller skates while the Nigerian political class gallivant across the world with ill-gotten wealth.
A critical look at the happenings in the petroleum industry, undeniably the bedrock of Nigeria’s economy, presents the nonfunctioning state of the country’s four refineries over the years, which has given fillip to continuous importation of petroleum products.
This sad narrative hurtfully tells the amount of critical thinking our leaders seriously lack.
Worst of all, the toxic petrol imported into the country recently, leading to the scarcity of petrol, sudden increase in petrol pump price and causing untold hardship in the polity, is quite lamentable.
Against the backdrop of the tumbledown in the political administration of the nation currently, it is apt to say that the Nigerian maturing democracy regularly throws up worsening economic situations that greatly depreciate the opportunities of the majority poor to eke a living.
Worried by the theatre of horror akin to the Nigerian situation therefore, we succinctly call on all political leaders in Nigeria to have a rethink and urgently halt their unpopular style of leadership so as to rescue the country from the calamitous path it is heading.
We make hay to say that the coming 2023 political dispensation offers Nigerian leaders and the entire citizens a rare opportunity to discard the chequered political and socioeconomic history of the country and engineer a new regime of progress in running the affairs of the country.
On this note, we urge Nigerians to catch in on the opportunity beckoning at them in 2023 to take their destiny in their hands.
They must be committed to this noble and compulsory cause by using their PVCs to elect credible men and women to run the affairs of the country in the spirit of equity, fairness and justice.
2023 brings forth a prominent opportunity Nigerians must not toy with.
Never again must Nigeria be entrapped in this sorry state.
