Quick one on vibes
On Freshly Pressed this morning, we talked about several stories, as always, but two stood out for me.
According to The Punch, the FG plans a supplementary budget because of rising inflation. I don’t understand. Your current budget is not even a work of fiction but a prayer to a god that isn’t listening. Rather than address those fundamental flaws, you’re issuing a supplementary with the same fucked up assumptions?
Now let us compare reality with the prayer:
Nigeria’s 2023 budget has a ₦435/$ benchmark. The reality as of this morning’s parallel market rates is that $1 will exchange for ₦880.
The budget assumes inflation at 17.16%. The last inflation rate was 20.8%, and given the problems in store for food production, and considering that food inflation (23.34%) is the largest component of Nigeria’s inflation basket, it means that inflation is only going to go up, why persist with the self-deceit?
Need I talk about oil production? The FG is basing the budget on imaginary oil production figures of 1.69 million barrels per day. In September, production plummeted to 0.94 million barrels per day.
At those prayer points, what the fuck are you budgeting?
The second story that got my goat was Adamu Adamu “directing” schools to remove sex education from the school curriculum. My first annoyance is with the editors of ThisDay because hidden in the story is the gem about Adamu acknowledging, but not apologising, for Nigeria’s out-of-school problem.
The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, who gave the directive in Abuja, yesterday, also admitted that he has failed Nigerians over his inability to eradicate the menace of out-of-school children in the country, in keeping to his vision. He also said reducing out-of-school to the barest minimum was one of his key priorities when he was appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari more than seven years ago.
Consider this: when Mr Adamu took over, the out-of-school thing stood at 10.5 million. A few years later, in 2018, that number had inched upward to 13.2 million. Now, three years later, we have added another 6.5 million kids to that number. With such numbers, effectively, the doubling of the number of kids not going to school under his watch, Mr Adamu ought to be submitting his resignation.
There is an education crisis in Nigeria, and all the country’s other problems pale in comparison to this as this short documentary makes clear, but Mr Adamu would rather focus on teachers talking to kids about sex, and in a classic case of what would become an unintended consequence, compound the problems.
Now here are some other facts: according to the Nigeria Demographic Health Survey, 32% of girls in rural areas in Nigeria have teenage pregnancies. In urban areas, it is 8%. Here is the clincher — sex education was introduced into the curriculum in 2003, so I went back to look at the teenage pregnancy rates at the time — 29% in rural areas and 17% in urban areas. What does that tell us?
For those who like things spelt out, it tells us that in urban areas where taboos over talking about sex with kids have waned, teenage pregnancies have halved. In the rural areas where it is still taboo and is as such left to parents and religious bodies, the very people Mr Adamu wants us to leave to talk about it, the proportion of teenage pregnancies has gone up.
Of course, removing sex education from the curriculum will result in more teenage pregnancies, especially considering that all those out-of-school kids will have more incentives to fuck. Still, the minister himself has invoked God, so all reason has gone out of the window.