Nigeria’s currency, the Naira, presently exchanges officially for 1,672.38 to just 1 US Dollar, and N2,252 to 1$ US average in the black market. This represents an increase of 259.59% by the present Tinubu-led administration from the official rate of N564.51 to $1US, and the black-market rate of N800 to $1 US it inherited from the government of Muhammadu Buhari on the 29th of May, 2024, barely one and a half years ago.
Even the currencies of war-ravaged and war-torn countries like Somalia, Libya, Iraq and others, exchange with the US dollar favourably for their citizens.
But before the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida administration’s ill-motivated Structural Adjustment Program in 1986, the naira’s exchange rate was N0. 66 to $1 US. But SAP was all the same force on the country, despite its vehement rejection by Nigerians in a referendum earlier conducted by the Babangida administration.
It is such hegemony and monopoly in the international world of finance, that made some like-minded countries come together and form the grouping known as BRICKS. The abbreviation stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICKS). They came together with many other countries to counter the hegemonic international influence of the US and its currency, the dollar. They have yet to give their common currency a name, though.
Nigeria is expected NOT among them, because it was the last thing that the key Western countries would like to sanction their obsequious agents, masquerading as (foreign) leaders to join.
The US, in approval or connivance of some of the insidious Western governments, effects leadership or what they call ‘regime change’ on trumped-up excuses so as to install or encourage the instalment of compliant or compromised leader or leadership in a country, with a view to controlling its resources and also ensure that the country never knows peace again. The scenario is playing out in many countries where the US engineered the so-called regime change, with the expected negative consequences that rage on to this day.
They also use another of their deadly creation, the World Bank, to achieve their sinister motive of destroying a country they perceived as strong and a potential threat to their hegemony and perpetual undisturbed exploitation of such countries
Russia was once forced to close its gas pipeline from Russia to some countries in the Western Hemisphere and insisted that it would only reopen if payment would be made in its currency, the Rubbles. It worked eventually, as payment in rubles, not the US Dollar, became the currency of payment for its gas to the West.
China also reached an agreement with some countries to make official payments for its services only in its currency, the Yuan. Nigeria and China were in a swap deal effected in their currencies, not the US dollar. It is unclear to this writer whether the arrangement still exists.
But Nigeria NEEDS to be a member of the organisation BRICKS for its progress and protection against the negative motives of the leading Western countries of the US, Britain, France, Germany, and others under the subliminal control of International Zionism.
Nigeria’s Iron and Still gigantic project located in Ajaokuta, Kogi state, has stagnated since it was started by President Shehu Shagari’s administration in 1986 because some of the Western powers have been opposed to it from the beginning.
Margret Thatcher, a one-time, and first female Prime Minister of the UK once said “No nation EVER grow more PROSPEROUS by TAXING its citizens BEYOND their CAPACITY to PAY”, which is exactly what the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration is doing in Nigeria, even though the citizens are increasingly finding it hard to get what to eat.
Professor Attahiru Jega once cautioned the government against lapping up everything that the World Bank advises. The famed academic and former Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) and immediate Chairman of the Committee that looked at the problems of herders, said not many of the World Bank’s prescribed economic policies worked. According to him, many of the countries that applied all that the bank advised, got the opposite result, because the advice was not given in sincere faith, but hidden sinister motives.
According to Mr. McGregor, a retired Colonel in the US Army, the United States is indebted to the tune of about 35 trillion dollars, which is about 100% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and pays $2.4 billion every day as interest, hence the misleading World Bank’s advice to compromised (by way of blackmail) leaders to devalue local currency to enable international dominance of the dollar, so that the country (US) would be able to pay its huge debts cheaply.
Most of the money is owed to the new superpower on the block, China, whose technological expertise is competing, and sometimes, exceeding the best in the world.
By the Grace of Allah, our discussion tomorrow will be on an issue that most of the citizens of our dear Nigeria would not only be pleased with but would eagerly participate in it. May He, in His infinite mercy, answer our ardent wish for our beloved nation.
Labaran wrote from Katsina.
