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Goodluck Jonathan And Joseph’s Warning! By Chukwudi Adepoju

January 27, 2015

It is in his time that Nigeria has experienced the highest earnings from oil in a really long time. Except for the boom of the 1970s, we have never had money being thrown at us as much as it was during Goodluck’s time. But his government is that of cronies and crooks.

Joseph in the Bible – the son of Jacob, not Mary’s Joseph – was known for two main gifts. It was reported that he had remarkably vivid dreams, foretelling future events many years ahead, and he could also interpret dreams for other people in a way that left them in no doubt what the message of the dream was.

It is this second gift of interpretation of dreams that catches my attention today.

We read that the King of Egypt (official title, Pharaoh) had a dream, and he was not sure what the dream meant. He was introduced to Joseph, who told him point blank that what he (Pharaoh) saw in his dream (seven lean cows swallowing up seven fat ones without adding any layer of fat in the incredible act) stood for seven years of famine that are coming after an unbelievably prosperous seven years of plenty. He did not stop there though. He advised Pharaoh to setup a huge storage to keep most of the harvest from the seven years of plenty, and this will serve the Kingdom well during the seven years of famine.

 

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Well, he could as well have been addressing the current President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan who has presided over the affairs of the oil-rich (but infrastructure poor) sleeping giant of Africa for five full years. Five full years that complete what can be described by the discerning as SEVEN very fat years indeed for Nigeria’s purse. If you doubt the veracity of my claim, take an objective look at the data...

The chart shows the increase in crude price from 2008, as it climbed steadily but surely from around $45/barrel all the way to $115/barrel in 2011, and hardly moving below the $90 price till the late 2014 when the descent started, reaching the $47/barrel that we see in January 2015, prompting the best petroleum economists all over the world to predict that the low price has come to stay. For at least another three to five years.

They even say that it could very well go as low as $20 per barrel. (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/crude-reality-oil-prices-are-going-to-stay-low-for-now-2015-01-20)

There are many reasons why global oil price has fallen, but the short answer is that increased supply (from shale oil in the US, Canada etc) has now challenged demand, and the price had no choice but to fall, to the delight of our biggest customer (the United States) and her sisters in the advanced countries that buy our oil. The bad news is that things will remain this way for a while. And oil is the main thing that we sell.

And how does this concern our Goodluck Jonathan again?

It is in his time that Nigeria has experienced the highest earnings from oil in a really long time. Except for the boom of the 1970s, we have never had money being thrown at us as much as it was during Goodluck’s time. But his government is that of cronies and crooks. Some of us have been shouting ourselves hoarse for a while that the man we kept in charge of our finances had no plan to use our resources judiciously (https://inspiredtwice.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/choosing-a-leader-for-our-cooperative-society). Pray, where are the trillions of naira we have earned in the last seven years? The first two, presided over by Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, and the last five, presided over by our brother who grew up with no shoes, and should have known that the years of plenty would not last forever.

Economists have conservatively put the figure that passed though our purse in Jonathan’s time at $55billion. Fifty five BILLION DOLLARS. Not Naira o...

And that is one of the main questions we should be asking our Goodluck Jonathan.

What have you done with our years of plenty?

Which store do we now eat from, as the lean years stare us in the face, Goodluck? You could not pay federal workers their December salaries, and it wasn’t even lean year yet. You have NO REFINERY working, at the end of the $55billion, and you expect that we should go to the market again to import (at fraudulently-subsidised rates) what we should have been refining, and buying for less than N40/litre.

Goodluck Jonathan, where do we get the money to build the much needed infrastructure now that you have finished sharing our money for all manner of evil people, who have absolutely no qualms, as “stealing is no longer corruption”? Just in December, Hillary Clinton also bore witness against you and your government, saying...they have squandered (Nigeria’s) oil wealth; they have allowed corruption to fester, and now they are losing control of parts of their (own) territory because they would not make hard choices.” I never could have imagined that there could have been a worse leader than Abacha, but as sad as it sounds, you have led us down a wrong road in our national journey, brother Goodluck. I never could have imagined that Nigeria’s citizens would become refugees in Chad and Cameroon; or that our poverty rate would grow in the time of plenty.

So I ask again, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, where do we find the money for all the oil we have sold? And do you know that Naira is now exchanging for the dollar at N208/dollar?

Fortunately for Nigeria, a new President will be sworn in this year, but unfortunately he will meet not just an empty treasury, but a nation sapped of strength, a nation already bearing heavy burdens and is still being laden with much more.

My prayer is that as we survived the goggled one from Kano in 1998, we shall survive your bad-luck too, and this nation will thrive again.

Chukwudi Adepoju is @adechuks on twitter