Why are Nigerians this bad?, By Uddin Ifeanyi

There is no reason why the past few weeks will not go down as the most unusual in the history of this country. Everything that could have gone awry has been done with considerable aplomb. Sick scissored by various scarcities (fuel, cash, permanent voter card, etc.) the economy can be ground to a screeching halt. We await confirmation of our worst fears when data for output growth, the unemployment rate, and inflation for this period become available from the official bean counters. Anecdotal evidence, meanwhile, suggests that the economy will be extreme. The normally bustling streets of Lagos, for one thing, resemble a post-apocalyptic world. And if footage made the rounds on social media, last week, the culture of new queues at the banks’ cash machines is nothing to swear by, the burden on people in the streets could approach the point where the proverbial camel broke its back. .

As with most of the past eight years, the sense of national responsibility for all of this remains unstable. A simple-minded president, heart in the right place (of course), may have been made a monkey by knaves in high places. — At least, the matter is not so trivial than the active paper money swap. That these scallywags do not suffer because of their deceitful ways is also par for our national road.

However, one thing remains unchanged. The way we think about these things has not been affected by the ructions that have taken over the economy. It is easy to read this in terms of the many explanations that have arisen for the discord between how many of the new banknotes the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) insists it is available to commercial banks, and how many of the latter are passing into the streets. You can have a choice of explanations — a large plot to disincentivise the use of money to sway the outcome of the upcoming general election, or an even more sensible attempt to incentivize domestic economic entities to abandon cash for alternative financial channels to complete financial transactions. But with a clearer symptom of how to think about how easy it is for a large contingent of domestic commentators to conclude that the market’s response to the crisis reflects the genuine evil of the average Nigerian.

Almost always our thought leaders take what they will prove (that the same situation exists in other countries, citizens will behave differently) as proof (that Nigerians are evil). Take just one example. Banned in the United States. The whole point of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution is a good one — to address the level of alcohol abuse by establishing alcohol prohibition in the United States. Indeed, a few months after the amendment took effect on January 16, 1920, alcohol consumption in the U.S. dropped to about one-third of its pre-amendment level.

However, when the amendment was repealed 13 years later, the US was saddled with Alphonse “Scarface” Gabriel Capone running the Chicago Outfit and Charles “Lucky” Luciano running the Genovese crime family in New York. Unlike the domestic response to shortages, these are really bad guys who are the leaders of large criminal networks by organizing illegal distilleries and smuggling businesses. As with the global pharmaceutical business, as long as there is a need for a service or good, men (and women) will find ways to meet that need profitably. Likewise, there are shortages everywhere.

In an unregulated market for goods and services (not prohibited or restricted), this impulse is what drives innovation. — finding new ways to reach the market by using old goods/services differently or through new goods/services. Speculation and hoarding that accompany it, really ensure that consumption has evened out over time. The attempt to enable this push for renewable energy sources and Artificial Intelligence programs, while shutting down goods and services that “we” don’t like is one of the failures of public policy making around the world. However, ideas don’t have to be bad to have bad consequences. That’s why, locally, we even try to kill the instinct to provide good services or goods in the sector that has the biggest demand to supply, which is the incompetent country.

What is bad about the Nigerian economy is the way it proves the failure of developing countries. Not how people respond to these failures.

Uddin Ifeanyi, a manqué journalist and retired civil servant, can be contacted @IfeanyiUddin.