Emmanuel Ukudolo
January 5, 2016 – Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) has advised the Federal Government to exercise caution in dealing with officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
A team of IMF, comprising its Managing Director, Ms Christine Lagarde, arrived Abuja Monday on a four-day working visit during which she is scheduled to meet President Muhammadu Buhari to discuss some of the challenges facing the nation’s economy.
But in a statement, President and Secretary of TUC, Comrades Bobboi Kaigama and Musa Lawal said the warning was informed by the bitter past experience of Nigeria with IMF.
“ Our country is already in dire state and cannot cope with the IMF’s characteristic Shylock conditionality attached to its credit facilities, and must not accept same if that is what the visit is about”, it warned.
The TUC wondered if it is true that Nigeria cannot solve current challenges as a nation without foreign intervention.
“Must the Bretton Woods institutions be the ones to always determine and tell us when our economy is doing well and when to devalue the Naira? Why must they suggest to us how our economy can be fixed, whereas their recipe has consistently tended to end up impoverishing more Nigerians than ever before?
“Why has it become so difficult to produce good and quality rice and other local products for domestic and export needs? Since when did it become rocket science for our once functional refineries to produce at more than 30 percent of installed capacity and make petroleum products available”, TUC queried.
It argued that Instances abound of countries that were hitherto nowhere in terms of development in the 1970s/80s but have successfully transformed into giants and premium net exporters of goods and services.
“Instead of exploring its other natural resources, our country has stayed glued to its blase identity as a mono-cultural oil-based economy. Conversely India, China, Malaysia, South Africa, Indonesia, etc. are all doing well today because they looked inward to all their potentials.
“Meanwhile biggest buyer of our oil, the United States, has become a large exporter of the same product, clogging the market and causing our economy to gasp for air”, the union noted.
The union was sure that the IMF team would definitely meddle in Nigeria’s fiscal and monetary challenges and seek to sell to government self-serving, ill-adaptable theories and policies that are sure to further impact negatively on the country’s revenue and increase the pressure on the Naira in the foreign exchange market.
“While we are not adverse to genuine mutually beneficial partnership with the Fund or any other body, we shall fight any agenda inimical to the economic and other interests of the Nigerian masses.
“The proposed meeting with President Buhari should yield improvements in our business environment, promote opportunities for growth in the private sector, accelerate job creation and strengthen social cohesion. Policies that do not work for the country should not be embraced. Additionally, we advocate re-negotiation of our current loans in the light of the burden that debt-servicing constitutes to our budget, which is about 23 percent of the total budget.
“Congress warns that no devaluation of the Naira should be countenanced unless the percentage of devaluation is equivalent to the percentage increase in the national minimum wage”, TUC said.
