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MONETIZATION: EUPHEMISM FOR DEVALUATION!
BY: LES LEBA
It is not unusual for a government to knowingly deceive its people. The art of deceit is often deployed in
most of the dictatorial regimes throughout history. It is easier, of course, for a government to brainwash its
citizens when it also controls all published information but that is not to say that liberal countries with
independent and open press cannot also succeed in selling a false message to their people, for example;
most Americans initially embraced the Iraqi war because of Bush’s finely orchestrated false alarm that
Saddam Hussein harboured weapons of mass destruction; such continuous government induced mind
bending could gradually become poison to the people as they believe the professed ‘good intentions’ of
government when, in fact, government’s policies have become increasingly injurious to their welfare!
Basic texts in psychology often relate the analogy of a toad in a pot of water to demonstrate the power of
gradual conditioning. The same toad, which will immediately leap out, if thrown into a pot of boiling water
will on the other hand make no effort to get out of the pot until it is dead, if the temperature of the water is
slowly and steadily raised over time.
Though, ours is a pseudo liberal society with supposedly free press, our government has succeeded in
inducing the media to sing the discordant tune of economic reforms and progress; and Nigerians are urged
to exercise patience for the reforms to bear fruits! Some of our more aware senior citizens will be hesitant
to trust such advice as the promised salutary rewards of such reforms in the 1980s have, in fact, manifested
as deepening poverty over the years, and Nigerians are being killed softly by our government’s misguided
economic policies. The reality is that the cost of basic food items rise by a minimum of 15% every year;
unemployment has risen every year with over 60% of our graduates ending up without jobs after the NYSC
programme; transport costs consume over 25% of the income of most workers, United Nation’s agency
indices indicate over 75% of our people live on $1 a day and we are classified amongst the world’s poorest
nations!
Inspite of a relatively free and independent media, how come the press has become willing tools for
promoting the dubious success messages dished out by government to misinform a largely illiterate and
uneducated public without independent and critical evaluation? It seems that the expected vigilant barks of
our press may have been circumscribed by the prevailing economic culture, as most of our journalists live
in bondage; few editors in the main stream media earn above N100,000/month, while the majority in the
lesser cadres earn below N50,000/month; barely subsistence income for a couple, even, with only one
child! Inevitably, it becomes easy for such burdened men of the media to rationalize the culture of ‘brown
envelope journalism’. No wonder, that most journalists would prefer to serve as megaphones of
government or its agencies. The opportunity to directly partake in the national cake has often turned many
a fiery critic of government to praise singers as affluent press officers.
Another serious weakness of our current press corp is the lack of specialist knowledge of the majority in
their areas of coverage. This failure is certainly most glaring in the area of monetary and economic policy.
There is no way that the government could get away with the voodoo economic policies, which it has used
to subject our people to such severe deprivation, if we had intelligent journalists with a good grasp of
economics; for certain, they would have raised an alarm on the contradiction in the so-called plague of
excess money in the system, at a time the same government complains of lack of money to pay pensioners
and contractors; they would challenge the raison detre for government borrowing almost N2 trillion from
the banks and incurring interest payment of over N260bn this year on such loans, only for our Central Bank
to turn round and merely store the huge moneys borrowed, inert, in a ‘warehouse’; the inexplicable
resistant rate of the naira at over N126=$1 despite of our reserves rising above 10 times the paltry value of
$4bn in 1996 when the naira exchanged for N80=$1 would have attracted the attention of any journalist,
with a modest grounding in monetary economics. The oddity of the phenomenal success of the banks, in
the face of dwindling industrial capacity utilization, would have attracted appropriate condemnation and
unceasing commentary until the authorities adopted remedial action; the dubious generosity of the CBN in
giving a soft, unsolicited, uncollateralized, untenured loan of $7bn to 14 Nigerian banks at rates of interest
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lower than the rate at which the same CBN incurred such huge domestic loan stock with the same banks as
creditors, would have ached the mind of any patriotic journalist.
Regrettably, the reality is that the public are copiously fed with primarily those inaccurate messages
sponsored by the government or any other private or corporate bidder, such as our mega banks, and the
obnoxious culture of brown envelope journalism is actively cultivated. In this event, the masses can be
dying of hunger, but the papers and media will continue to be awash with unbridled propaganda extolling
the success of government policies!
The art of propaganda usually adopts a set of themes, words and phrases, which conveniently sound benign,
but in fact hide the true intention of government; for example, genocide as a policy instrument may become
ethnic purification! Nigerian practitioners of deceit have also adopted the camouflage of such words as
‘rightsizing’, deregulation, privatization and monetization to hide the debilitating adverse effects of these
government policies on the masses! The first three words have become synonyms respectively for
increasing unemployment, rising prices and the auction of our patrimony for peanuts to favoured
associates! The word monetization, on the other hand, whenever used by government, has actually implied
devaluation of income and priviledges. We recall that the monetization of the priviledged perks of GRA
housing, transport, etc, of senior civil servants may have actually undermined each officer’s dignity and
self-worth.
Furthermore, monetization belies an even more sinister burden when applied to monetary and fiscal policy!
The Central Bank claims it monetizes the dollar revenue from crude oil sales; by this, they mean that they
unilaterally change (like a bureau de change) the nation’s dollar revenue to naira before sharing to the tiers
of government. This in reality implies, supplementing available naira with loads of additional freshly
printed notes to make up increasing values of distributable dollar revenue; such action creates the plague of
excess naira in the system and the need to borrow back the huge naira sums from the banks at great cost to
prevent spiraling inflation. This arrangement also continuously puts the naira rate against the dollar under
so much pressure as more and more naira become available in the market with increasing dollar revenue,
with the inevitable result of a depreciating naira and the collateral of increasing cost of fuel, raw materials
and machinery in the domestic economy. So, dear readers, be warned, anytime you hear the government
talking about monetization, you can be certain that they mean further reduction the value of your income,
welfare and personal dignity.
SAVE THE NAIRA, SAVE NIGERIANS!
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