I am personally aware of businesses that are losing massively by these unplanned and abrupt changes in our currency. When I say massively, I mean businesses that have lost close to billions of Naira over the course of the last 1 month. I am commenting about the business of others because, by comparison, my own directly affected businesses have lost shy of Twenty million Naira. This is terrible!
Those in the agriculture business sector know what I am talking about. When ripe tomatoes get to the market and people don’t have the cash to buy from the market people, and the market people don’t have the cash to pay the big suppliers. This cycle affects virtually all farm produce and the disaster already caused is monumental. It also affects all consumer goods that target the bottom of the pyramid. The swap was unfair to Nigerians.
I was quite pained when I listened to a guest speaker on one of the TV channels, a former minister of Justice in Nigeria, saying that Nigerians will not be able to sue the CBN based on the losses businesses have incurred. Alas, this suffering will not be compensated for!
Nigerians have prayed for Nigeria. Nigerians have now also suffered for Nigeria. We suffered from fuel scarcity, and we have suffered from Naira swap. We have also suffered emotional damage from elections that many Nigerians believe were neither free nor fair. For the first time since 1999, the vote against a candidate was more than the votes for a candidate. The feeling of emotional let-down is high, and understandably so. People feel robbed by APC, raped by INEC, and half expect to be traumatized by the courts.
We have fulfilled all the conditions that Israel fulfilled in Egypt that fast racked their deliverance. We have cried, we have suffered, and we are in Nigeria’s 4th republic. The ground is set for God to hear our cries, see our pains, and deliver us. Deliver us from the oppression of the old Nigeria and liberate us anew. All these losses will only be worth it when we look behind and can see every force of oppression and our oppressors no more.
May it not be for nothing! Amen!
