Bestseller of English literature, with fifty translations and more than 10 million copies sold since its publication in 1958, things fall apart (Everything is collapsing Actes Sud, 2016) by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, tells the story of the decomposition of a world. The one based on a set of rules, beliefs and traditions, forever upset by the arrival, at the end of the 19the century, British missionaries and settlers in Igbo country, in present-day south-eastern Nigeria.
It is not insignificant that the World Bank has chosen to refer to this famous and tragic novel, in its last sum devoted to the Nigerian economy. “Continuing on the same path – that of business as usual – is a choice”indicated the institution in this report published in December 2022. But a perilous choice, risking to provoke “a scenario that we could call: everything collapses ».
The warning is addressed to the leaders of this nation, the most populous in Africa, with nearly 215 million inhabitants, where voters must cast their ballots on February 25 to elect a new president. The erosion that threatens the giant of West Africa is of a different order than that, civilizational, depicted by Chinua Achebe. But its consequences – anemic growth, stalled development, instability on all fronts – are just as drastic. But a few days before the election, the signs of economic chaos have never seemed so concrete. Gasoline shortages, recurrent for a year, have worsened. Queues have swelled disproportionately around service stations in the country, yet one of the main producers of black gold in Africa.
Ordinary Nigerians got poorer
In recent weeks, another famine has penalized Nigerians even more severely: that which affects banknotes, which are almost impossible to find under the effect of a monetary overhaul launched in October by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The institution had announced outright the introduction of new denominations and warned that the old tickets would no longer be valid from the beginning of February, a deadline postponed in extremis to April 10 under popular pressure.
The decision, according to the CBN, aims to limit cash in circulation to enhance the effectiveness of monetary policies. Others see it as a strategy to prevent vote buying. But for now, the messy implementation of the reform has above all disrupted daily life in a country whose economy remains largely informal. The near impossibility of swapping old banknotes for new ones has sparked riots and could, analysts say, weigh on first-quarter growth numbers.
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