Treating the Sore Economy by... Demola Adetunji

When I was in elementary school I played soccer and I sustain injuries regularly. When I show my mum the fresh wound she grabs me and reach out for her bottle of iodine or methylated Spirit whichever is closer. It is better to imagine the peppery pain of either of these liquid.

My second option was to hide the wound for the fear of iodine, and the sore gets worse until it gets infected and start oozing puss. Eventually my mum will get to know and now the wound will have to be handled by the merciless nurse Mrs P. E. Owati at the Ikare General Hospital, regular sterile cleaning and dressing each session extremely painful until healing process starts.

I think for 17 years we have been hiding our national wound and we have been living in fools paradise thinking all is well when we know nothing is well. Unfortunately all our 'moms' lacked Mrs P. E. Owati's gut in applying 'iodine' to our collective financial wound. From Obasanjo to Jonathan, none had the gut to see us cry for the sake of treating our wound. Once they start and we start crying out of pain they leave us alone and the wound continues to fester. Now we have a 'mom' who is more concerned about our health than our immediate pains.

Some will prefer the money recovered so far to be used for subsidy so that we continue to buy fuel at N87 rather than invest in the new oil refineries to improve our local production. Some would have preferred the money to have gone to Thailand for rice importation and continue to boost Thai economy. Last month I stumbled on a news item on a radio station that says that in 2015/2016 rice exportation from Thailand to Nigeria crashed by 80%. That the Stallion and Dangote rice in the market were locally grown and processed. The price might be a bit high now but as capacity increases and infrastructure improves price will naturally come down but we can't pay that price.

Masses in India found similar measures tough on them when Jawaralah Neru (backed by Mahitma Ghandi) were determined to make India a producing economy rather than the consuming economy they were. A principle of whatever we can not produce we don't need. India is about the only country without Coca Cola for decades because they insisted if Coca Cola Inc can not produce the concentrate in India they can go and jump and they were contented with their Brahma Guarana and their Limca.

Thank God Neru and other mothers that nursed them did not listen to their cries today they have healed well and I pray that Buhari like my mom don't listen to our immediate cry for this healing process to continue because if we don't pass through this pain now, the wound becomes more difficult to treat.

BY Demola Adetunji