YNaija Editorial: This is what the election postponement continues to cost Nigeria

To match Interview NIGERIA-ELECTION/

Prior to the postponement of the general elections, speculation about a possible breakdown of law and order as well as social security had been mounting all over the country, a development which made a lot of citizens relocate from urban areas to their ancestral communities.

The delayed elections have thus brought some relief to the citizenry, as normal hustling and bustling appear to have returned to the urban areas.

In the intervening period, some people who were opposed to the postponement have started to appreciate the move in the light of fresh revelations that more than 20 million Nigerians have yet to get their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).

Nonetheless, the delayed elections will have an adverse impact on the economy as investors, both local and international, need a stable macro-economic environment to plan and make investment decisions. This is particularly very imperative for investors who are desirous of making long-term investments in the country.

Beside this, the development is also putting enormous pressure on the exchange rate of the naira as some Nigerians continue to intensify efforts to travel out of the country until the situation stabilised.

Consequently, the exchange rate of the naira dropped to N204 to the dollar at the interbank while it is exchanging for about N230 to the dollar at the black market, thereby forcing bureau de change to shut down operations as at last Wednesday. International airlines have also raised fares on account of pressure by Nigerians seeking to jet out of the country.

In fact, just contemplate and imagine the cost of such uncertainty to the exceedingly jittery naira or to the highly volatile stock exchange, where shares have been taking a beating since the beginning of the year, crystallizing ion a 12% drop in overall value.

Indeed, just juxtapose the consequences of such national uncertainty, in a nation already in a state of war or at least that is the perception out there in the western world and the declaratory postponement pronouncements rescheduling the polls is confirming and concretizing it.

Try rationalizing how a foreign investor, already fearful of the Nigerian business environment, will be reassured by the likelihood of an evolving constitutional crisis, where elections cannot hold and most importantly, even set the future time for elections is not a virtual certainty, as operational requirements of conducting military battles, they are simple not projected and estimated with certainty, due to the nature of adversarial armed conflict.

It should also be noted that the National assembly has been distracted due to the elections fever, for it to sit down and pass the budget, thus leaving all economic forecasts and projections hanging in the air. So also is the likely harsh but also necessary monetary decisions , which could not be taken in the thick of the election season, the Central Bank of Nigeria has to keep it in abeyance pending the passage of the elongated time for elections.

Thus making it difficult for businesses to make strategic economic decisions as one cannot predict the movement of the Naira to the dollar for the next day. What does this portend for Nigeria? It’s quite simple to forecast an economy slowing creeping into recession, what looms in the horizon is an inadvertent stagnation

Governors aren’t also exempted from this brouhaha; some have even left governing duties since November last year pitching tents with presidential candidates and spending most time devising strategy as to how defeat its opponent. This has led to excessive waste of state resources, and it’s not anything new when one hears that state governments still haven’t paid its workers many months salaries.

What the INEC failed to consider while trying to please the different political parties is the economic interest of millions of ordinary Nigerians who would be at the receiving end of the financial hard times.

For a shaky economy like Nigeria’s, election postponement should never have been an option, worse more as the country’s economy would even need months to recover post elections.

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