As Nigerians continue to wallow in the utopia that leadership is rocket science, maybe it’s because President Bola Tinubu is following in the footsteps of every leader that has been before him.
By David Hundeyin
If I were given the task by a foreign power to cripple a developing economy like Nigeria and reduce its 200 million people to a state of desolate, mindless nihilism, here’s how I’d go about it.
1. Raise taxes indiscriminately and across board. Do so with zero consultation and make the announcement as abrupt as possible so as to magnify the shock value.
2. Institute multiple taxation and create entire new arms and functions of government centred around collecting new taxes and levies. Make this process as rapid and opaque as possible, and once again, ensure there is zero public consultation and maximum shock value.
3. Remove any subsidies on production (such as those on petrol and diesel, which power 87% of all production in Nigeria) and ensure that any consumer prices set by government (such as electricity tariffs) skyrocket. This ensures that producers not only raise prices but also pass the entire cost burden on to consumers instead of pushing back on the inflationary policies. Crippling consumer inflation ensues, followed by a debilitating cost of living crisis, the likes of which the country has never seen.
4. Make energy production and supply even more convoluted and mind-bending than they already are. Add new layers of corruption between producers and the energy they need. Insert my nephew’s oil company into the nerve centre of national energy infrastructure and start a war against the country’s only functioning refinery, which threatens to simply access to energy. Create a weird new national energy policy that avoids all the cheaply available energy reserves in Nigeria, and starts pushing weird stuff like “renewables” and CNG on an impoverished population whose cooking fuel is mostly still either kerosene or firewood.
5. Hire a central bank governor whose career at a certain international bank intersects very curiously with mine at a time when I was involved in illegal activity and laundering the proceeds through that bank. Naturally, he is 100% pliant and will do WHATEVER I want him to do without hesitation or pushback. And then…
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6. Print money. Print it at a prodigious rate. Expand the money supply at a rate more than 3x that of what my predecessor did during the COVID years. Do all of this with zero parliamentary oversight, and spend money without any sort of appropriation or documentation. Literally, print money out of thin air, purchase hard assets with it and watch the worthless fiat money disappear into the dark void of a 65% informal economy. Combined with devastating consumer inflation, an unprecedented cost of living crisis, crippling energy shortages caused by my new layers of corruption and weird energy policies, the national currency’s value drops through the floor, falling 200% against the dollar in the 15 months I have had power.
7. Instead of working to build new regional export markets for my country’s producers (which continue to function against all the odds), start throwing trade sanctions around ECOWAS and try to start a West African regional war on my country’s northern border because France and America want me to. Where my predecessor attracted criticism for creating such close ties to our northern neighbour that he pushed for an economically unviable standard gauge rail line between both countries, I instead try to start a war with that neighbour and commit several violations of international law in the process – including possible war crimes. West Africa as a whole begins to pivot away from my country and my country’s producers are left with zero export market and an impoverished local market that can’t afford to buy anything.
8. PILE. ON. MORE. DEBT.
Take on loans from EVERYWHERE AND EVERYONE. IMF, World Bank, African Development Bank, Zenith Bank, LAPO Microfinance Bank, pension funds, retail investors, osusu thrift credit society, EVERYTHING. If anyone questions it, throw bullshit statistics like “Low debt-to-GDP ratio” at them.
9. During all this carnage, consume CONSPICUOUSLY. The old presidential S Class Maybach is no longer good enough. Get new armoured Cadillac Escalades for me and my vice. The old presidential jet fleet – already the largest in Africa – is no longer good enough. Buy a new customised Airbus A-300. Propose buying a presidential yacht. Expand your presidential convoy to about 5 minutes long, and make sure to inconvenience people with it EVERY
SINGLE. DAY.
10. Spend billions on keeping the media quiet and funding ethnic polarisation on socially media so that everybody’s attention is kept focused on everything and everyone except me.
About The Author
David Hundeyin is an investigative journalist, author and filmmaker.
