What is all this brouhaha about President Buhari not appointing an Economic Adviser or Economic Management Team ! What did we get from the last Economic Adviser or Economic Management Team ! Absolutely nothing but massive and mindless looting of the treasury and fake statistics of how Nigeria has overtaken South Africa as the biggest economy in Africa!

We were told the former Minister of Finance Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala is a product of Harvard University and therefore had the anodyne to solving all the country’s economic woes but alas she turned out to be a flash in the pan ! She was even appointed Minister of Coordinating Economy and absolutely given unfettered powers to fix the economy! China became a super economic power within fifty years, I know that the managers of her economy did not attend Harvard or Oxford or Sorbonne or top western universities!

I also did not share the sentiments that the country ‘a currency devaluation is the panacea to the prevailing foreign exchange crisis that has seen the exchange rate of Naira spiralling to an unprecendented low! The poor do not need dollars to survive it is only the elites and the rich that need the dollars to maintain their lavish life style!

Devaluation will only benefit the rich and the elite to the detriment of the poor! The solution to this crisis is self-reliance and diversification of the economy and producing what we can produce. The peasants and the urban poor do not need dollars to survive. And they are the majority. I think the whole essence of government is the welfare and security of the majority not a powerful but tiny minority!

Nigeria will not collapse (as some will want us believe) because of this speculative foreign exchange crisis but will come out stronger! Singapore way back in the 1950s faced a graver crisis that led the Malaysia to expel from the Singapore/Malaysian Federation which caused it then Prime Minister, the legendary Lee Kuan Yew to contemplate resigning his Prime Ministership of Singapore! But he soldiered on and miraculously transformed Singapore from a third World Country to an industralised advanced within four decades through disciplined, strong, authoritarian and visionary leadership.

In 1985, the then General Buhari (as Head of State) successfully revamped the economy after corruption and maladministration inflicted on by the civilian government of President Shehu Shagari and oil glut without accepting the conditions prescribed by the International Monetary Fund ! The then General Buhari did not appoint any economic management team or an economist as his Minister of Finance! The Minister of Finance appointed by General Buhari was a sociologist known as Dr Onaolapo Soleye!

President Buhari Must resist the pressure to adopt populist policies but rather embrace pragmatic long term social and economic measures to resusciate the economy after the devastation caused by PDP sixteen years of misgoverance.

Okoi Obono-Obla ?