The military regime ruled Nigeria 29 years out of 50 years since its independence in 1960, from Britain. The quest for power within the military caucus resulted in several coup d’états, corruptions and hardships on ordinary citizens.
April 1986
The unjust killing of Dele Giwa, a prominent veteran journalist by “Parcel Bomb” in order to silence him from exposing the alleged drug deal of Maryam Babangida, the late wife of former military junta President Babangida, made news headlines all over the country and the entire African regions. The manner of his assassination through a mailed Parcel bomb delivered to him sent shock waves and fear to the country.
Though I was only 12 years at the time of the incident but the horrific pictures of the victim which I saw on print and electronic media prompted me to stop eating beef. And also I became fearful whenever I see uniformed officers with the thought that they could harm or injured me.
The State of the Economy
In the same year the already tagged corrupt regime of President Babangida defied all his economic advisers by taking the IMF loan. Consequently, the structural adjustment program (SAP) griped the Nigerian society and drastically downturned the economy of the country. This triggered national debate between the military regime and the economists in the country. Social advocates such as late Chief Gani Fawehinmi a renowned attorney and a social crusader was one of the leading voice against the IMF loan.
In the 1970s, the country had its best economy record with income coming from high volume of crude oil sales. There were job opportunities for college graduates and high school certificate holders, most importantly at that time, hardly would you see any citizens of Nigeria looking for a greener pastures in foreign countries.
But with unstable governance, and ruling of tyranny by the military coupled with mismanagement of public funds and mishandling of nation’s natural resources, a once buoyant economy became worst. Many lost their jobs, some fled to other Western States, Poverty rate was alarming and the country never recovered from depression.
The recent ranking of Nigeria, by Human Development Index (HDI) is 142 out of 169’s least prosperous countries in the world despite that the country is one of the oil producing countries in the world.
The unemployment rate as reported by TradingEconomics.com is 19.8% (2010).
The table below shows the estimated Unemployment rate.
Year | Rate |
1985 | 8.7 |
1986 | 9.1 |
1987 | 9.8 |
1988 | 7.3 |
(Courtesy of the Office of Statistics)
How it affected me
At that time neither the word IMF or SAP or Austerity measures meant anything to me, but the painful memory of suicide committed by a close family friend which I understood was as result of the hardship he suffered after he was retrenched from work prompted me to develop interest in Politics and Finance in order to understand how this institutions works.
Be warned that the video link below contains some graphical image that might be disturbing.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNnn2u-Ln90
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