On May 29, 2023, Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be sworn-in as Nigeria’s President. As Tinubu noted during the electioneering campaign, he will continue the policies and programs initiated by the APC-led Buhari administration if elected to office as President of Nigeria. Many have found this uncomfortable.

Last Wednesday, at an eatery at the Accra Mall, Accra, Ghana, a young Ghanaian and self-acclaimed watcher of Nigerian politics demanded to know who I voted for in the last election. She was shocked when I confirmed that I did not vote at the last election. Desiring to know why I did not vote at such a crucial election, I informed her that Nigeria has yet to allow for diaspora voting; hence, since I was not in Nigeria during the election, I could not exercise my voting rights as a Nigerian.

Notwithstanding my explanation, she was curious and wanted to know who my preferred candidate was among the contestants.

Prior to proffering a direct answer, I referred her to my Facebook posting of two years ago where I posited that with Nigeria having the likes of Yemi Osinbajo, Raji Fashola, Kayode Fayemi, Charles Chukwuma Soludo, Ngozi Iweala, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and El-Rufai it would be stupidity of the highest order to put forward the likes of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as a presidential candidate.

“So, would you have voted for Peter Obi had it been you were in Nigeria?” She asked.

My answer was a loud NO!

She demanded to know why. The below were the reasons that I provided to her.

The bane of Nigeria’s economy is a lack of production and since the likes of Mr. Peter Obi, the LP Presidential Candidate who, despite coming a distant third in the election, is challenging Tinubu’s win, were reputed importers of items ranging from toothpicks to maize, grains to cutlass, etc. I see no joy awaiting Nigerians and Nigeria in his emergence as Nigeria’s president.

As I argued with my 10-minute friend at Accra, importation of goods and poor national development are interconnected issues and remain the bane of Nigeria. Importation refers to the practice of buying goods and services from foreign countries to meet domestic demand. While importation itself is not inherently negative, excessive reliance on imports can have adverse effects on national development. How then did the likes of Peter Obi contributed to Nigeria’s underdevelopment and why I saw no joy in voting Mr. Peter Obi as Nigeria’s president?

As governor of Anambra State, I was informed that Mr. Peter Obi invested in a brewery and bread-making in addition to amassed enormous savings for the state. These were lauded as credible proofs that he was business savvy and could therefore transform Nigeria if elected as president. Another point raised but never pursued by my Ghana friend was Mr. Obi’s dexterity with numbers. With a shameful look, my friend however noted that she started doubting his numbers when the facts and figures about Ghana were wide-off the mark.

Like other across the world, Nigerians were impressed with the ease with which Mr. Obi reeled out numbers and many took this as a proof of his readiness for office. For me, ability to regurgitate numbers is no proof of intelligence or mental quality; hence, I was not fazed by numbers but their deployment in practical purposes.

Nigeria has traditionally been reliant on imports, particularly of consumer goods and certain commodities. This reliance has resulted in significant trade imbalances, where the value of imports exceeds that of exports. This trade imbalance has strained the nation’s foreign exchange reserves, increased our dependency on foreign currencies, and weakened our domestic economy. From Obi’s supermarket and bakery to his brewery and computers used at his Fidelity Bank, Obi could be said to have invested heavily in importing poverty and wants to Nigeria and not doing anything in the real sense of it to empower Nigerians.

What with 3 curbs of maize that is being sold at 3000 naira at Mr. Obi’s supermarket or tons of imported grains used in both his bakeries and brewery? Would he have contributed to national development by producing these in Nigeria rather than importing them from Ukraine, Russia and other places in the global north? Would Nigeria have fared better were these items ‘Made-in-Nigeria’?

Importation breeds over-reliance on imported goods, which, in turn, leads to economic dependency. Economic dependency describes a situation where local industries struggle to compete with cheaper foreign products. Did we not see this in Ghana with the 1980s adoption of IMF/World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programs? What happened to local rice and textile production in Ghana when imported Uncle Ben’s rice flooded the Ghanian market? Did Ghana not lose its indigenous rice seedlings  – seedlings that were pest and drought resistant? As in Ghana so in Nigeria in 1986 when Nigeria adopted SAP – importation of commodities stifled our domestic production, hindered our industrialization efforts, and led to a freeze in employment, rationalization of jobs, and the laying off of many Nigerians.

So, the more imported goods the Obis brought into Nigeria, the more endemic poverty becomes in Nigeria. Th more we imported from other countries, the more we  prevent the development of a robust manufacturing sector and hamper efforts to diversify our economy. Can Mr. Obi who made his wealth through importation stop importation when voted into office?

Until very recently, most Nigerians were vehemently opposed to the disparity between the naira and dollars. In newspapers and on social media handles, Nigerians made it a point of duty to blame the outgoing Buhari government for rising cost of exchange.

Nigeria’s economy is heavily dependent on oil exports, which account for a significant portion of the country’s foreign exchange earnings. When a substantial portion of these earnings is used to import goods, it reduces the availability of foreign currency for essential investments most especially in infrastructural development, education, healthcare, and other development initiatives. This has been the situation in Nigeria for years and the same people who are perpetrating this situation are the quickest to call attention to the disparity between US Dollar and Nigeria’s naira. The truth is, they are the ones who are hindering government’s national development efforts and perpetuating poverty everyday.

As earlier noted, despite that Nigeria is blessed with abundant land and a pool of youths, importers like Mr. Obi have continued to stock their supermarkets and factories with grains, including corn, imported from Ukraine and Russia rather than investing in grain production in Nigeria. Despite that Nigeria have favorable climatic conditions and a large rural population, none of these importers realized that empowerment starts with a fully developed agricultural base. Their preference for importing those food products that we can produce in Nigeria from abroad not only hinders the growth of our agricultural sector, but also deepens poverty, and reduces Nigeria’s economic progress. In addition, their preference for importation undermines Nigeria’s food and national security.

When Ghana and Nigeria adopted the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) in the 1980s little did they know that importation of finished goods, for instance rice, marked the death of local (rice) production in both countries. The availability of cheaper imported products automatically forces domestic manufacturers into competition with the well-made (fortified, in the case of rice) imported ones. While this enriches the Obis of this world, it inadvertently weakens the nation’s industrial base, reduces its technological advancements, and limits its potential for value addition and export diversification.

Mr. Obi, like any businessperson, is in it for gains. So, it is not within his purview to seek to reverse the very means through which he made his wealth. In other words, rather than banning importation, he is most likely to deepen it and, by so doing, submerges Nigeria into further economic hardship.

Among others, Nigeria needs economic diversification, improvement in the agricultural sector, support for local industries – not competing with them as Mr. Obi did while ruling Anambra by going into bread-making, investing in human capital, and enhancing our trade policies to facilitate local production – not turning Nigeria into dumping ground for foreign imports.