Weaker Naira and Foreign Demand for local products

In classical Economics, a weak currency drives Exports. For this reason, those who argue that our weakening Naira will drive demand for

our exports are right 

The question is why are Nigerians groaning?

The Chinese deliberately weaken their currency and their competitors are complaing. Why are our trading partners not complaining?

The answer is that our main export is priced and sold in Dollars, so it has no salutary effect on our Naira.

Nigerians are groaning because we are an import dependent economy so we need more Naira to purchase Dollars to satisfy our craving for foreign goods.

Truthfully, our weak national currency makes our exports very cheap. But the question is, what have we to export?

Oil and it is priced in Dollars. The other thing we have is manpower. 

This is why people prefer to Japa, to get dollars to buy Naira.

Once upon a time, some thinkers in Nigeria, decided to change our educational system so that we can be more productive.

The manifestation is the 6-3-3-4 system. But it was dead on delivery.

I was a Secondary School teacher at its inception in 1986 in Lagos State.

For clarity, the kernel of the change was the introduction of Introductory Technology.

At that time, the Lagos State Government acquired Introductory Technology equipment for each of the Secondary Schools in Lagos State.

How did I know, it was dead on delivery?

The essence of the change was to expose the pupils to technology up to the third year in Secondary School so as to make the economy more productive by introducing pupils to the rudiments of technology before going to vocational schools or continuing in the secondary school.

Confidently, I attest to the sabotage of the system and the effect today.

In the Local Government where I was teaching, of all the schools in the Local Government it was only the School, where I was teaching that successfully deployed their equipment.

The reason is interesting. The machines needed reinforced floors for successful deployment.

The job was contracted at the head office for all the schools. The duty of the Principals was to certify that the floors were Ok.

The School principals were not in a position to do the certification either out of ignorance or fear of incurring the wrath of the big wigs in the office.

Thus, it was only my Principal who insisted that the proper thing be done and eventually it was done and the equipment was put to good use by the students who showed much enthusiasm.

The other schools could not deploy their equipment and not even the government raised an eye brow.

I won't be surprised if the same thing happened in other states too as our lack of technical expertise is so glaring that our crafts are now dominated by artisans from neighbouring countries while our potential artisans are preoccupied with riding bikes, tricycles and taxis.

It is so sad.

Those whose job, it was to implement the laudable policy, woefully failed and today, we not only lack technical skills, we cannot even feed ourselves in spite of our arable land.

So much noise was made on rice but today, a lot of foreign exchange goes into the importation of Rice.

Until, we expand our local production to take care of our needs and reduce imports, we just have to defend our local currency lest we suffer from so much burden occasioned by expensive imports.