The immediate past President of the Nigerian Statistical Association, NSA, Dr. Mohammed Tumala, has blamed the current economic crisis in the country on poor planning and inefficient management of national resources by the three tiers of government over the past decades.
The statistician, who said this in an exclusive interview with National Mirror explained that rather than make adequate provision to mitigate recession circles associated with the global commodities market in the past, available resources at the disposal of governments were frittered carelessly.
According to him, the country failed to take advantage of the years of surplus to build up buffers. He explained: “Let me tell you a story of my village. There are no economists there but I saw as a child that because this village was on the fringes of the Sahara desert they have been hit by drought in a circle of 7-12 years. So what they did is that during years of good rain, there is good harvest, they store, they = don’t consume all the harvest so that they have something to fall back on.
“That is exactly what we refused to do in Nigeria. However, between 2011 and 2013, Nigeria earned the highest in terms of crude prices. But that is the period also that we borrowed so much,” Tumala said.
The NSA helmsman noted that the political leadership needed to make tough choices due to the peculiarity of the country’s situation, especially in the face of Nigeria’s huge dependence on import to meet domestic demand for goods and services.
“Usually, when recession comes people don’t have money so they don’t buy things therefore prices go down and interest rates will go down. What the government needs to do to bring the economy back is to make more money available by lending money to people on low interest rate.
“Now, here we are, there is no money to spend, inflation is going up because we are import dependent; our interest rate are high. So if you push so much money into the system, inflation will go up because you have so much money chasing too few goods and service.
“If most of the things you are consuming in your country is imported , you don’t control the price; you don’t get anything from it. And if your major income for foreign currency is one item (crude oil) which you do not have control over its price, you also cannot control your own income. So it’s a bit difficult! You are just helpless that is what it means”, Tumala added.

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