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By Owei Lakemfa

The World Bank’s Lead Economist for Nigeria, Alex Sienaert on Wednesday, December 13, 2023 said he was sniffing around for fuel subsidy that the Tinubu administration might still be paying. Like a headmaster warning an errant pupil, Sienaert told the Nigerian Government it does not appear to him that    petrol prices are fully adjusting to market conditions so he suspects a partial return of the subsidy. In his talk down on the Tinubu government, the Cape Town University- Oxford    graduate claimed that “the cost reflective of retail PMS price” should dictate far higher prices. He added: “We think the price of petrol should be around N750 per litre more than the N650 per litre currently paid by Nigerians.”

The World Bank which like the International Monetary Fund, IMF and World Trade Organisation, WTO exercises power in the underdeveloped countries without responsibility, thinks nothing about    the suffocating cost of fuel which is strangulating the economy and people. In fact, Sienaert says even his new price is not high enough: “These are just estimates to give you a sense of what cost-reflective pricing most likely looks like.”

Ordinarily, Nigeria as a self-respecting sovereign nation, should by now have thrown the arrogant Sienaert out of the country.

First, there is nothing wrong or criminal in a government subsidising its people as is done in the West. Secondly, the World Bank approaches fuel pricing in Nigeria not as an economic issue, but as a belief that it must continuously rise. It was N173 per litre in May 2022, one year later it was N545 then, N626, yet the bank wants it to rise further.

The ‘expertise’ of Sienaert is not anchored on sound economic principles. It is based on the fact that he works for the World Bank and is a product of another shark American institution, JP Morgan. As we know, the latter is ever enmeshed in fraudulent schemes from unlawful trading in precious metals, criminally trading in US Treasury to financing international sex trafficking like the Jeffrey Epstein racket. JP Morgan is so fraudulent that it was caught deleting 47 million files to hide its fraudulent activities in the 1970s and 1980s.

The World Bank itself is notorious for giving loans to countries like Nigeria and spending the money on their behalf including on American ‘experts’ machinery and vehicles. In other words, the funds never really leave American shores.

In the late 1980s, the World Bank convened a meeting of African leaders in Nairobi and told them Africa does not need universities. That Africa does not need university graduates but technicians. Kenyan President William Ruto    revealed in June 2023 that underdeveloped countries pay far more to borrow money from the World Bank than the Western countries. He added: “We want to pay equal to everybody.”

In reality, the World Bank is simply a US racket called the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IBRD established in 1944 to further American interests in the guise of assistance.

The world does not own a bank, so there is no such thing as a World Bank, what is so-called, is a US racket entrapping many countries. This is why only the US President appoints the President of the World Bank, and only American citizens can be so appointed.

The European version of this international racket is the International Monetary Fund, IMF. Only Europeans can be the Managing Director of the IMF. Both bodies see the role of underdeveloped countries as that to provide raw materials, and Europe and America, as that to manufacture goods and provide intellectuals to run the world. Their aim is to continually under develop Africa and turn its countries into scrapyards. They have the same aims and often, the same unimaginative methods. For example, on fuel, they encourage importation, not local refining, and then instruct on prices. In 2011, the then IMF Managing Director, Christine Madeleine Odette Lagarde toured some African countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Kenyan instructing them to drastically increase the price of PMS.

The decision of the Jonathan administration, prompted by then Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to implement the directive, led to the historic January 2012 mass street protests in Nigeria in which a number of people were killed.    Today, Madam Lagarde is the President of the European Central Bank, and    Madam Okonjo-Iweala, after dumping her Nigerian citizenship for an American one, is the Director General of the WTO. The racketeering goes on amongst the Europeans and Americans while the lives of the poor, continue to be devalued.

By the way, that was not the first time the IMF was giving clear instructions to Nigerian governments. The IMF in the late 1980s  visited then military ruler, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida in Dodan Barracks. In 1983, the dollar had exchanged for about 72 Kobo, but the World Bank had in 1986 insisted the Naira was “overvalued” and the military in compliance had devalued it N9 to the dollar. But the IMF told Babangida the Naira was too strong, so in compliance, Babangida announced an immediate devaluation of the Naira from N9 to N18. In 2000, it was N85 to the dollar, ten years later, it was N150, another ten years down the line, it was N360. As at Wednesday, December 20, 2023, the Naira was N1,230 to the dollar. Anybody arguing that this conscious and willful devaluation of the Naira is economics, must be engaged in witchcraft; that is the white and black magic of ruining an economy and presenting it as junk that can be privatized as scrap.

Have Nigerians forgotten how we got here? Let me tell the new generation. It fully began in1986 when the Babangida regime imposed the IMF-contraption called Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP. It was deceptively presented as restructuring and diversifying the economy, attracting Foreign Direct Investment, stimulating growth, reducing the cost of governance, allowing free trade by dismantling the commodity and agriculture boards, and enhancing the Naira by allowing it float freely with other currencies. But in practice, SAP destroyed the Nigerian economy; inflation  rose from 5.4 per cent in July 1986 to 40 per cent   in 1989! Rather than job creation, the local industries collapsed, social spending was   drastically cut, the cost of production rose drastically and the Naira was drowned. To repress protests against this willful destruction of the economy, the military regime decreed that ‘There Is No Alternative’ to SAP. Those who disagreed like Michael Imoudu, Wahab Goodluck and Gani Fawehinmi , were detained without trial, and many were shot dead in street protests.

Today, inflation runs at 28.20 per cent and the government continues to dig deeper into Hades. Development will come only after we throw off the shackles of the World Bank, IMF, WTO and other vampire organisations.