THE YAM FARMER WHO LOVES PIZZA

ByMoyo Okediji

THE YAM FARMER WHO LOVES PIZZA

The naira is getting weaker daily and the poor man is suffering.

The problem of the Nigeria naira/dollar exchange crisis seems to me like this: a farmer produces yam tubers worth $1 a day, but has cultivated a taste for imported pizza worth $10 a day.

The farmer can do two things: curb his taste for pizza and learn to enjoy his yams, so he stops ordering pizza from Pizza Hut; or produce ten times the number of tubers of yam to support his taste for pizza.

There is a third option: that farmer could start manufacturing his own pizza and stop being a yam farmer.

But he cannot find any solace in complaining that the price of pizza should be subsidized so he could afford eating pizza; or that he should be paid $10 dollars for the tubers of yam that he now produces, so he could barter his income for pizza.

Nigerians have to learn to produce what they like, or like what they produce.

That’s the solution to the fall of the naira.

If, according to the CBN plan, they stop giving forex to the banks–and no doubt they are getting their own cut from the current arrangement–it does not take a fortune teller to know that the naira will be 1000 to $1 in December 2022;

Politicians would have $50 billion dollars to give each Nigerian $250 to buy the election.

The population of Nigeria is 200 million. If you divide $50 billion among 200 million people, each person has $250.

The politicians can afford that.

At the rate of 1000 to 1, $250 will buy the soul of any poor Nigerian who would be too happy to vote anything or anybody into power come 2023.

*****

The picture shows me admiring my yam–that’s the painting that I made.

Nigeria has to be proud of the yam that he makes, and stop yearning for other people’s pizza; or we have to start making our own pizza.

Does that make any sense?

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