By Christopher Godwin Akaba
According to today’s Daily Trust (Wednesday, 16 October, 2024), “the Nigerian naira is among the worst performing currencies in sub-Saharan Africa in 2024”, says the World Bank in its latest edition of Africa’s Pulse report.
Ordinarily, Nigerians have long hoped that the so-called ‘beautiful’ policy reforms packaged by the World Bank and IMF since Nigeria joined these Bretton Woods institutions on March 30, 1961, and sold to our leaders, would by now have brought about significant economic improvements for the citizens; however, the reality has been quite the opposite.
To be candid, I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh when I read today’s Daily Trust story with the caption: ‘World Bank lists Naira among Africa’s worst performing currencies’. This is coming from the same institution that advised the government to devalue its currency.
This goes to say that the World Bank has misled us to devalue our currency, yet mocking us, and comparing the naira to the unfavourable South Sudanese Pound. This is a big slap on us.
Truth is, the neo-liberal policies propagated by Bretton Woods institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, have had devastating impacts on numerous economies worldwide. The loans they offer are often accompanied by stringent conditionalities that impose harsh and anti-people policy reforms, including structural adjustment programmes, which have often resulted in austerity measures.
Prominent critics of the World Bank, such as Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, including the Bretton Woods Project, a critical watchdog, have argued that these neo-liberal policies have intensified poverty and inequality across the globe, including in countries like Argentina, Indonesia, Brazil, Venezuela and Honduras, etc. The World Bank has spread nothing but poverty.
Moreso, these policies have undermined democratic institutions, making many governments unpopular among their citizens, and often resulting in protests, regime changes, or coups. In essence, the IMF and World Bank can be seen as destabilising forces.
Additionally, the institutions have facilitated the exploitation of both human and natural resources in developing countries, trapping borrowing nations in cycles of debt. This allows the World Bank and other creditors to exert significant influence over many government policies.
In Nigeria, one of the tools of this exploitation is the IPPIS payroll system, which has destroyed the education and health sectors. Because it is neo-liberal in outlook, the IPPIS system has led to the migration of many accomplished academics and medical professionals in search of better opportunities abroad—a strategy that appears to be a deliberate aim to siphon our best talents.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has consistently opposed the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) due to its detrimental impact on university autonomy. The system fails to accommodate key aspects such as the remuneration of university dons on sabbatical, external examiners, external assessors, and Earned Academic Allowance.
Additionally, it does not address the frequent movement of staff, including visiting, adjunct, and part-time lecturers, making it challenging for universities to recruit for new programmes and replace departing staff.
Newly hired employees often face delays in receiving their salaries until they are registered in the IPPIS database, a process that can take considerable time. This has severely affected academic programmes in our universities, leaving some without qualified lecturers and driving top talent away, exacerbated by the constraints imposed by institutions like Bretton Woods.
The frustration with IPPIS has driven many of our brightest academic minds to ‘japa’. The example provided is just one of numerous instances of the harm inflicted by these neo-liberal policies on Nigeria. No thanks to the evil Bretton Woods cartel.
It is, therefore, imperative that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu abandons all World Bank and IMF-related policies, which harm rather than benefit the country. It may interest the president to know that the World Bank consultants, donned in elegant suits, often receive kickbacks from the loans they help facilitate for various nations, indicating that their work in securing conditional loans serves their own interests rather than those of the countries they claim to help.
Christopher Godwin Akaba, an International Relations Scholar, first published the above in Daily Trust, October 18, 2024