Current Commodity Inflation Is Rubbing Pepper On Injury Of Poor Citizens!

ZION B-BC   NEWSLETTER.  
A Publication of the Zion Faith Bible-Believing Church, Kpeyegyi, Abuja Nigeria. [VOL. 5. NO 136. 19th March, 2016.} “…ONLY The Truth, Will Set You   Free! (John.8:32).

CURRENT COMMODITY INFLATION IS RUBBING PEPPER ON INJURY OF POOR CITIZENS!

These, indeed are trying times for casual workers and civil servants who are paid small percentages of their salaries as it obtains in many Nigerian States where the purchasing power of take-home pays has virtually crashed to ground zero because of cost inflation! Since the astronomical slide of the Naira to its lowest ebb ever against the United States Dollar from December 2015 to early March 2016, Nigerian traders and marketers took undue advantage to hike prices of goods and services as they were guided by their whims and caprices and were completely oblivious to the sufferings of the majority hapless population who normally bore the brunt!
Inflation is defined as a situation where the value of money declined when prices rose sharply because of upward or excessive demand and also when higher cost of products pushed up cost of production. The unbearable cost inflation being experienced was orchestrated by greedy and cruel marketers whose commodities were not in any way affected by the sudden fall and rise of the Naira against foreign currencies but who only took undue advantage of the unusual situation caused by “DOLLAR POACHERS” who decided to rock the delicate Nigerian economic terrain because they were uncomfortable with the resilience of the present managers to restore normalcy! As at mid-February 2016, the Naira exchanged for between N372 and N391 for one US Dollar and N505 per British Pound at the parallel or black (un-official) market due to foreign exchange scarcity from official sources while official inter-bank rates remained stable at N199.34k! Nigerians besieged the black market with panic-buying attitude and in a “twinkling of an eye” the exchange rates hit the roof and sky-rocketed to a record-breaking figure! Commodity inflation is a global phenomenon and can be managed by governments which plan in advance for the “rainy day” by not indulging in consumption of foreign goods but in local massive production of their nations’ material needs and necessities with local resources!

Apart from the fact that Nigeria had depended on the mono-product – crude oil – for foreign exchange earnings from the seventies, previous managers of the economy also forgot all about diversification to natural resources in order to intensive agricultural and solid minerals production but massively imported the finished products of other countries including petroleum products derivable from CRUDE OIL – a policy highly detrimental to economic growth!
As at the time of this publication, 20th March, 2016, naira exchanged for N220 against the American dollar from the N250 providentially recorded early March from N307 but in spite of the tremendous reduction and subsequent  international crude price which rose to $US 42 dollars, Nigerian marketers have stuck to their guns as prices of every commodity including local staple foods like gaari, beans, rice, millet, potatoes, yam, yam-flour, fish, meat, and soup ingredients like onions, tomatoes etc, have increased from between 150 to 300 percent in all States across the nation!
We were able to establish that Nigerian marketers regularly consulted the foreign exchange rates chart which had no relevance to local food stuffs on daily basis before fixing prices on commodities for sale and in spite of the fact that the volatile foreign exchange market indices had subsided, they have not budged on the imposed extremely high prices! How did government get to this abysmal economic level and what efforts have they put in place to cushion the harsh effects of this unpleasant situation on the down-trodden masses?
It is no longer news that past military and democratic administrations in Nigeria never looked at the economy as the heartbeat of the nation but as a conduit pipe of corruption for those who found themselves in positions of authority and who wasted no time in looting the treasury at every given opportunity instead of fulfilling their avowed obligations of righteous services to the citizens on appointment!
From the First Republic to date, corruption among public officers had been the order of the day as enunciated by all coup plotters and subsequent civilians who rigged themselves into office through subtle connivance with security agencies only to blame their predecessors in office for corruption and avarice while in office! Nigeria got to “ground zero” because foreign exchange earnings from crude oil was usurped by a few cabal in office and was stupendously wasted on incessant official foreign trips, medical treatments, overseas courses, children’s school fees, constant importation of exotic foods, cosmetics, clothing, furniture, building materials, state-of-the-art automobiles, private helicopters and jet aircrafts to the detriment of the foreign reserves owned by all citizens while all local food and beverage, weaving and textiles, automobile manufacturing and steel industries remained moribund and comatose! With this kind of development the only source for foreign exchange open to Nigerian industrialists, importers and exporters was the PARALLEL OR BLACK MARKET which sky rocketed the rates to an unprecedented and unacceptable proportion of which the ripple effects were the inflated costs being experienced on all commodities, local or foreign since marketers arbitrarily placed Value Added Tax (VAT), on all their wares including cement and all building materials as we have all witnessed and forced to accept in the past four months! Are we not supposed to be our brothers’ keepers always, in good and bad times?
The traders and marketers who are now smiling to the banks with illicit gains brazenly forced out of LEAN PURSES through super-inflated prices of local commodities must be sanctioned by SPECIAL TASK FORCES in the absence of the Price Control Board (PCB) who will investigate all public complaints against the unscrupulous and merciless merchants who love money more than their brethren and bring them to justice!

The economy is bound to bounce back in no time to leverage the very poor masses because we have hope in the new administration of the All Progressives Congress (APC), which is determined to destroy the cancerous stigma of corruption by investigating, exposing and prosecuting all those who were involved without minding whose ox is gored!
President Buhari has challenged any person or group of persons who have any allegation of corruption against him to come up with such for investigation by the relevant agencies and even went further to assure all criminal investigating bodies to probe past Nigerian Presidents as he had no contract of administrative protection with any of them!
When he came on board to find an almost empty treasury he opted for the TREASURY SINGLE ACCOUNT (TSA), which had saved the country from bankruptcy and also refused to devalue the Naira in spite of internal and external pressures from dollars poachers who owned majority of the Bureau de Change to their dismay and disadvantage and who fought back by creating artificial scarcity in those outfits to force foreign exchange users to patronize the Black Market which in turn raised exchange rates to that unprecedented figure in February! When the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Boss Mrs.Christine Largade visited Nigeria in January 2016, she made far-reaching suggestions to revamp Nigeria’s economy but rejected DEVALUATION OF THE NAIRA as an option!
She disclosed that though there would be global recession due to international crude oil price fall, Nigeria should adopt flexible monetary policy that would better serve the interest of Nigerians, reduce cost of governance and wastages, focus on power, transport, and housing –the three areas that would create wealth. She claimed that fuel subsidy majorly benefited the rich and recommended it should be removed to allow government spend on infrastructure, housing, education, health among others and also warned against obtaining more foreign loans which was already hurting the nation’s economy! Imagine if the catastrophic fall of the naira against the US dollar lingered longer than expected, the nation would have suffered tremendous economic hardship because all activities in the areas of import and export and all overseas financial transactions in both the public and private sectors would have gradually grounded to a halt; but we thank God for quick divine intervention! Presently the Federal Government is battling to unravel how 34.000 ghost workers had been collecting monthly salaries without detection and how to block all leakages as the 2016 Appropriation Bill is about to be passed by the National Assembly!

For the sake of those who are the majority of the 170million Nigerians, the time to re-establish the Commodity Price Control Board could not be better than now in order to save these set of vulnerable people from their PREDATOR BRETHREN who cared less whether they lived or died when it comes to issue of money! We are certain that the Price Control Board (PCB), when legislatively positioned in this present regime, would set maximum prices and protect consumers from devious exploitation as prices would no longer rise above certain limit and also create the environment to purchase commodities at lower prices. Price limitation above certain point would also be helpful to producers to increase their production proceeds and eliminate transaction costs. Gains of the legislation would trickle down to the farmers who would be protected from exploitation of the middle men as well!
The Price Control Board would afford transparency in pricing of commodities as government would have set the maximum or the minimum prices for a commodity therefore creating awareness in the economy on the prices of different commodities and also would eliminate the UNCERTAINTY CAUSED BY FLUCTUATION IN THE EXCHANGE RATES as recently experienced in the country!
Did you know that there were no excessive demands for goods and services (which was one of the factors that could trigger aggressive inflation), and no scarcity of commodities in view of a generally weak purchasing power among the masses in over 24 months, yet Nigerian Shylocks had a field day and forgot that divine judgment is at their door!
Thus saith the LORD, “A false balance is abomination to the Lord; but a just weight is His delight.”(Proverbs.11:1).
“Diverse weights are an abomination to the Lord and a false balance is not good.”(Proverbs. 20:23). The Price Control Board in now a PRIORITY, it must be established NOW!

Please look forward to more divine revelation in the next edition of Zion B-BC Newsletter as you share this with friends and remain blessed in the Lord. [For weekly access, to this newsletter, log on to:  facebook.com/zionfaithbible.believingchurch or http://www.zfbbc1.blogspot.com, https://www.google.com/+zionfaithbiblebelievingchurch.
If you have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour, don’t miss this great opportunity as you pray this prayer: Lord Jesus; I confess that I am a sinner who needs to be saved through the grace of the New Testament of your Blood, shed on the Cross at Calvary; I renounce every sin in my life and accept you as my Lord and Saviour. Please forgive me and write my name in the Book of Life. Amen. If you prayed this prayer, you have been admitted into the family of sons and daughters of God, who are born-again. Congratulations.
I am, yours sincerely, Dr. David B.A. Olufon, Resident Pastor and Editor. 08130669886, 08098194390.  08080243066   g-mail- dvdolufon@gmail.com.