MISCHIEF INDEED

A couple of years ago, Henates was in a lady friend's car when she bought roasted corn under the Maryland bridge in Lagos at very outrageous price.

What registered then was how choice and satisfaction are personal yet they make up the two bedrocks on which the science of economics rests.

Accounting rests on double entry, history rests on reliable records, law rests on assumed existence of Justice, and economics makes sense because it is assumed that human beings make rational choice in an attempt to get satisfaction.

One was reminded of this on Sunday as a radio station quoted President Buhari spokesman, Garba Shehu as saying that the now very controversial concession exchange rate for pilgrims was approved as far back as February, this year. And he now wondered what mischief the Central Bank was up to by releasing the circular on it now?

Besides, he was reported as saying, the approval was for N199 to the dollar then the ruling rate.

After that the questions started raining like dew drops. If official rate then was the ruling rate, why was it necessary to seek presidential approval and that early in the day?

Oh, so it was N199 to the dollar reported the radio station, well was the president then expecting pilgrims to pay premium of N2 on each dollar they acquire?

At about the same period, the same government was saying Nigeria was broke and indeed, almost stopped allocation of foreign exchange for students abroad. One wonders, which deserved special treatment: Pilgrims or students who would tomorrow send dollar earnings back home or at least return home to help move Nigeria forward if only they can be allowed to practice what they learnt?

Oh sure, the approval was given back in February but then what was the approved subsidised rate last year? Was it not N160 to the dollar or thereabout?

So who indeed is being mischievous? A president and his crew who see more sense in wasting scarce foreign exchange in record breaking foreign trips? In encouraging Nigerians of whatever religious hue to go on pilgrimage at subsided expense?

Yet another question: Is the President and his crew now setting the stage for the removal or caging of the Central Bank governor?

Why for example, has it been impossible for the president to compose the boards of key establishments like the CBN more than a year after dissolving them? Is it that Mr President still wants no person or group yet to come between him and the CEOs of these bodies?

Why indeed, does the president make statements abroad especially, that tend to give the impression he is in charge of Nigerian's monetary policy?

Yet he shies away from making pronouncements on fiscal policy which by the constitution he, through his Finance minister is solely in charge of? Why  shy from being identified with seemingly unpleasant yet necessary decision but so gladly jump to the ring for populist policies that make sense only to ignorant majority in these times?

Money is man made and perhaps, because of that, it is one of the most valuable yet valueless things man must desire in order to stay alive in modern world.

How you earn it, how you spend it and on what you spend makes a lot of difference in the short period we human beings live on earth almost as if we are here for ever.

This is true of all human beings and more so, of all nations because in the case of nations, the how issue reflects from aggregate demand and supply, although the actual decision making is always in the hands of who ever is in power.

In other words, especially when the times are as trying as they are now, there should be no room for voodoo economics; voodoo politics and voodoo decision making.

Everything has to be on facts on the ground, what national benefit will accrue, what potential pain needs to be ameliorated, and how we , as a people want the future to be like given today.

It is certainly not the time for Mr president to pick quarrels with his working tools in the persons of those charged with clearly defined constitutional responsibilities.