Nigeria - A poor country despite Fiction

Just read a statement attributed to Osibanjo that "Nigeria is poor not because Nigeria is not endowed but due to massive stealing.

This is the greatest misconception Nigerians believe about Nigeria. 

Mr. VP, Nigeria is a poor third world country and getting poorer due to the spendthrift culture adopted by the government and grandiose expansionary goals based on a startling incomprehension of the net credits and debits bedeviling its treasury.

All Nigerian governments tout the fallacy and propagate The scape goat of corruption as the reason for the poverty and poor infrastructure in the country. But what many fail to understand is that Even if there is no corruption, national revenue can never match the capital expenditure required to satisfy the growing appetite of Nigerians for luxury goods they do not produce or the need for greater spending to provide infrastructure for its teaming population that the think the can have from comparing themselves to Europe and America. 

The government will only begin to function properly if the acknowledge this fact and trim its expenditure on fancy white elephant and duplicative projects and adjust the expectations of Nigerians according to size. 

Nigeria is functioning on credit and loans, Nigeria is basically a debtor nation and the massive demands on its income is bursting the country at the seams as it can longer pay its workforce owed arrears of salaries, nor can it spend enough on crumbling and worn out roads, it cannot provide social security payments to its mass of unemployed citizens and it lacks the capital to repair its electrical grid to sufficiently energize its manufacturing sector.

Even as the government fails to understand the enormity of its responsibilities it is running itself into the ground with a wasteful presidential system and Balkanized 37 state and 771 LGA's structure alongside over 551 MDA's and rising insecurity forcing it to reduce spending on infrastructure and capital projects to increased spending on internal security policing. 

All its federating units except perhaps two states generate sufficient IGR to operate without allocation from Abuja. 

It is time for the government and Nigerians to adjust to harsh realities sooner rather than wait for social collapse when it's sole capital earner crude oil bottoms out, only then will all realize the misconceptions currently held about how rich the government supposedly is.

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