I was about starting the day’s job, on Monday, when I received a call from a distraught childhood friend. She had taken a N1 million loan from a microfinance bank to set up a modern canteen. In the beginning, she said, repayment was not an issue as customers trooped in with ease. She was also able to get foodstuff and other materials needed to sustain the business at cheap prices, which helped to widen her profit-base to an extent.
Things, however, took a negative turn towards the last quarter of 2015 when fuel scarcity, nosediving oil prices and the free fall of the naira all combined to make business a nightmare. My friend, who had been a salary earner until she ventured into self-employment, found that her former colleagues, who had, before then, relied on her to prepare week-long meals for their families, suddenly started going to the market themselves to cut costs.
To worsen matters, customer traffic also thinned out even in the face of increasing prices of business ingredients. The result was that she couldn’t honour the repayment conditions as she used to; and the microfinance bank was not patient either.
On the day she called, about 10 officials had stormed her Surulere posh canteen in a way that suggested they were there to claim part of the relooted loots in the ongoing Dasukigate. This informed her opening statement on the phone: “Yemi, mo daran ooooo! (Yemi, I’m in deep trouble).”
Of course, as a struggling editor, it was sad that there was nothing I could do at that point to help. I only prayed along with her and offered some advice.
However, I became really worried when an older friend, a civil servant, called exactly 30 minutes later, pleading profusely that I had to come to his aid. His children had been sent out of school, owing to his inability to pay their fees. Worse still, his wife, who usually stepped in to help when such happened, was lying critically ill at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital.
Between his two predicaments, he said, no single relative or friend was ready to help. At that point, I held my breath because I knew I would be his next enemy. Why? Like most of the people he had earlier taken his plea to, I was about to disappoint him in a big way even though he might have thought that he had touched the feet of a ‘saviour’.
At the time he was asking for N350,000, which he hoped to return in two months, I could only boast of N13,000, home and abroad. Having tried, unsuccessfully, to convince him that I also needed help, I sat down to think seriously about the unfolding scenes in the widespread horror movie called “Living in Nigeria”.
But I had hardly settled down to productive thinking when the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, scattered my line of thought with scary pictures of what the rest of 2016 would look like in socioeconomic terms.
First, Emefiele said Nigerians would have to bear the huge sacrifices they must make as the country’s economic managers battle with the effects of a prolonged period of low oil revenue. While briefing the public on the outcome of the last Monetary Policy Committee meeting, he said, “The committee observed that the last episode of low oil prices in 2005 lasted for a maximum period of eight months.
However, the current episode of lower oil prices is projected to remain over a very long period. “Consequently, it is imperative to brace for a longer period of low government revenues from oil sources, which would necessitate hard and uncomfortable choices as the economy transits to more sustainable sources of revenue, consistent with the economic realities and strategic objectives of the country. In the circumstance, certain trade-offs must be envisaged and duly accommodated.”
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