Nigerians can never be satisfied—or perhaps humans in general. We destroyed, and we complain when someone halted that destruction pattern.
Please hear me out. All government policies are intended to help citizens, but citizens of Nigeria always ensure the policies fail, and then blame the leadership. I can list dozens of such examples, but I will cite only this one and petrol subsidies.
All of us are alive when the government paid out billions to make life easier for us. All of us are also alive when elites decided to steal this money and ensure that life was harder for us.
Eventually, the government couldn't sustain it anymore and had no option but to stop the subsidies. It came with painful reality. Both policies came with pain. We were not enjoying the subsidies when the government was providing them; we were harvesting poverty and empowering unions and businessmen.
The Border Closure Saga
When Buhari initiated the closed border policies, we all know that this policy was only complied with in some part of Nigeria. In other part of Nigeria Nigeria, people continued to smuggle food in and out.
In some parts of Nigeria, illegal routes were created in the bush for smugglers. If any Nigerian does not know this, then he is one of our problems.
Buhari did not stop with policies alone. He made billions available to farmers to farm via the CBN. We were all living witnesses. We saw people who were supposed to be planning use part of the money for other businesses and then imported food. Some of them were nit even farmers and they accessed thw fund. Only very few actually planted. That is fine, but they started hoarding foods and controlling prices.
Food price hikes did not start with Tinubu. Anyone who says otherwise should go seek forgiveness. It started before him but only aggravated when he removed petrol subsidies, and our enemies decided to move together to ensure the new policies fail. But they werr humbled as the subsidy removal stayed.
I remember vividly that during Buhari’s time, Lagos had to partner with states like Kebbi to fight the cabal who made it a policy to control prices and inflict pain on us. Lake Rice became popular and succeeded for a while in helping push back the prices of rice.
Even with that, our people would buy this rice cheaply from the Government and hoard it, only to resell it later at huge prices.
Yet, every time we write, we blame the Government and policy instead of looking at the mirror and watching how we sabotage ourselves.
The Hoarding Merchants
Who were these people? They are Nigerians like you and I. We blame the Government for not stopping the fraud. Some even asked the Government to fix prices. This was not workable.
But most of us know a farmer or two who is sabotaging fellow farmers. Some hard-working farmers were losing money because of smart chaps who flooded the market with imported goods and middlemen who hoarded the commodities for selfish reasons.
Before the open border policy, we all saw our own people hoarding food and ensuring that food inflation became sky-high—so unprecedented that people were shouting about hunger for months.
The critics were all online saying Tinubu brought hunger and suffering and urged him to act. He didn't act immediately. For many months, we watched our own people use the closed border policies to sabotage all of us and inflict pain.
When the President opened the borders, everyone who hoarded foods started releasing food they stockpiled because the open border policy made them lose money—the wicked people!
That was when food inflation started dropping, and people heaved a sigh of relief. We are yet to recover fully. The bulk of our national inflation was influenced by food inflation. We're only just reaching a recovery from what was nearly 30 to 40% inflation several months ago.
Evil people are already complaining, asking the President to return to the closed border policy so they can resume punishing us!
Policy Solutions
Open border policies allow third parties to import food. It is not a permanent policy, but it was undertaken to bridge the gap between supply and demand, which was created artificially by some evil people that were joarding foods. If our farmers are producing, they will be selling too. Cost may be high; this is where they need to talk. Farmers are also exporting.
I remember during the high inflation, i complain that few we produced are also expeorted, that someone told me farmers have the right to export their food instead of selling to Nigerians. I don't know the group this was, but I wish I could remember that person. What happened to their export of those days? Why complain now?
Who then is this one writing again? Anyway, the closed border will return when our farmers are able to meet local demand and everyone is willing to be patriotic. Once the government protects you, grants you exclusivity, a loan, etc., you must sell in Nigeria rather than export it and create scarcity. Otherwise, everyone will have to compete in open border policies. People are tired of suffering because of evil merchants. The only people i have sympathy for are the patriotic local farmers.
NB;
Above is a common in repsonse to an opinion circulated on social media.
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