Opinion: Sanusi, who is backing the Naira? (Part 1)

by Niyi Shomade

Sanusi-lamido-Sanusi2Have we been devalued with the Naira and are we still devaluing? If there is a correlation between culture and economics, does that mean that our value as Nigerians is also related to the Naira valuation?

Who are we and what have we become? To become who we were, we must study history. History has become a controversial subject. In Chinue Achebe’s book, “There Was A Country”, he articulates the decline of Nigeria as it relates to the Biafran war. Some critics have remarked that why go back 50 years to recall atrocities when we can go forward. As if 50 years is a starting point of knowing who we were. At the root of who we were is our economics or the economics of culture. The greatest repository of history and culture in the world today is the Library of Congress in Washington DC. The Library of Congress contains the largest collection of knowledge in the world with over 25 million artifacts and receives over 13,000 items every week.

The most famous work in the Library of Congress is the painting of a time clock done by an artist named Edwin Blashfield. The painting depicts the great civilizations that contributed to the development of the United States of America. The clock begins with Kemet or Egypt in its historical clock as the beginning of civilization which gave the world written records and ends with America which gives the world science. Kemet means the land of black people or what we mainly refer to as Egypt today.

So the greatest repository of knowledge in the world, the Library of Congress in Washington DC, recognizes Egypt as the oldest source of all knowledge in the world. An ancient Kemetic quote says “there is no past, present or future but that they all exist simultaneously.” How do we become serious students of history when we don’t see ourselves or history as valuable? The Roman philosopher, Cicero said, “To not know what happened before one was born is to always remain a child.”

The first European to write a book, Homer wrote “The IIiad and the Odyssey” around 832BC. To put things into perspective, Kemet is documented as the oldest civilization on earth all the way back to 5,200BC. This is over 5,000 years of philosophy, science, architecture (building of pyramids), literature, etc., and thousands of years before the first European to write a book. It was after the 25th Dynasty ended around 300 BC that Alexander (the Great) invaded Egypt and Egypt began its decline and the people for the first time began to change from black Africans to look more European. To access one’s cultural memory is to be who we were.

Tom Burrell, who was the first African American to start an advertising agency in 1971, authored a book called “Brainwashed, Challenging The Myth of Black Inferiority.” Tom Burrell owned one of the largest advertising agencies in the world grossing about $200m a year before he retired. “Brainwashed” articulates how we’ve been conditioned to be consumers and spend our money in places that don’t benefit us. Common sense is not a common commodity. El hajj Malik Shabazz aka Malcolm X said “Of all of our studies, history is the best qualified to reward our research.” The life of a historian is often underestimated because it teaches a person where they came from and where they’re yet to go. Another way to put it is that history is not just names and dates but a current event. History follows certain patterns and cycles and therefore repeats itself. History tells us what we’ve done and what we need to do in order for us to get out of our condition and correct the wrongs of the past.

This brings me to my topic of discussion of money or the Naira valuation as it relates to Nigerians. Have we been devalued with the Naira and are we still devaluing? If there is a correlation between culture and economics, does that mean that our value as Nigerians is also related to the Naira valuation? After the invasion of Kemet, we had nations that later became civilizations of their own such as Mali, Songhai, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. Africans from the Nile Valley began to build ships and travel to the Americas according to the detailed research of Dr. Ivan Van Sertima (“They came before Columbus”) from around 1,200BC to 600 BC. Since then, we’ve had to not only pay for visas to travel out but we’re also paying to be educated outside of our land and culture. A community is where people live and control their own economics, education, culture and agriculture. A hood is what people put over their heads when they don’t wish to be seen. Most of Africa now lives in hoods. We’ve developed an inferiority complex despite thousands of years of achievements in our history.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was established during colonisation, with the Central Bank Act of 1958. In addition to rendering monetary advice to the Federal Government, CBN regulates banks in Nigeria including the conditions for issuing licenses to banks. It continues to exist as a tool of the original Bretton Woods Agreement. Any Institution that is set up while in a position of weakness will likely only work for those institutions beneficiaries. In this case, the beneficiaries were and are the Europeans that set it up.

The Bretton Woods Conference was set up in 1944 to establish the rules for monetary and exchange rate management. The 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement solidified the dollar as the preeminent world reserve currency replacing the British Pound. The dollar was defined as 1/35th of an ounce of gold and convertible to all foreign banks at that rate. The US printed more dollars than there was gold until the French in the late 1960’s demanded the US to pay one ounce of gold for every $35 they delivered to the US Treasury. Since he couldn’t pay enough gold for the dollars printed, President Nixon ended the gold standard completely in 1971 to avoid paying out the remaining 280 million ounces of gold. A new system was then devised which allows the US to print USD with no restraints.

The US then struck an agreement with Saudi Arabia in 1974 and later OPEC to price oil in US dollars exclusively. In return the US promised to protect the various oil rich kingdoms in the Persian Gulf against threats or overthrow of their dictatorships.

 

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Read this article in the Leadership Newspapers

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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