I was trying to will myself to sleep last night when my thoughts started to drift. It’s obviously at the forefront of everyone’s mind how the global economy seems to keep deteriorating day after day. The war in Ukraine and the continued supply chain delay due to the pandemic have created disruptions in projections and earnings. Grain and Gas supply in the world is so unpredictable at the moment Joe Biden is scheduled to make a trip to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to beg for more gas supplies. One would think that this would have been a non-starter considering how a lot of people in western diplomatic & media circles feel about those in charge in the Arab kingdom since the Jammal Khashoggi assassination.
Europe on the other hand is portraying a rather confusing situation, pushing ahead to continue engaging with Russian gas on one hand while providing weapons and strategic assistance to Ukraine. How this is in line with the earlier claims and pronouncements about sanctioning the former soviet country is anybody’s guess. The claims in the international market state that grain supplies from Ukraine are not meeting required demands which are set to trigger a significant global food crisis. If this is true it doesn’t sound like 2022 is going to be the year we all hoped it would be.
What concerns me in all of this pertains to how Nigeria could have played a strategic and opportunistic role in being able to plug itself into the global supply chain process. I say ‘could have’ because Nigeria isn’t remotely a player in the supply chain scheme when it comes to food security and commerce. How did we become a country so willing to be a non-participant in global commerce on such a scale when we factor the immense resources we have.
It is difficult for me not to believe Nigeria’s enemies are not within the corridors of power when you contemplate the work required to get us from bumbling to functional. After more than 3 decades repairing government refineries with billions of dollars we still are unable to produce enough refined product to ensure the country’s demands are met, and now we are ladden with astronomic fuel prices that threaten everyday businesses.
How are we still struggling to get a transmission network working optimally after over 2 decades of civilian rule? Power generation is a key infrastructure to building a sustainable economy but somehow we continue to battle epileptic power supply for one reason or the other. The conversation around power supply has even gotten less opaque than it was a decade ago. Previously, ministers and relevant figures provided updates on the state of power infrastructure development regularly, these days, the only way word seems to get out is when there are disputes with the CBN.
It is worrisome that agriculture has not developed at the anticipated trajectory once boasted of by previous administrations, leaving the current one to put on circus shows centred around ficticious rice pyramids. Talk about doing propaganda badly.
All this points to a system that has ensured accountability stays dead and failure having no consequences. People’s lives continued to be toyed with, and as I finally drifted off to sleep it didn’t escape my notice how all this truly was failure happening in real-time.
