President Bola Tinubu has flown with one wing of the naira-for-petroleum transaction bird by asking the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited to sell petroleum to local refineries, including Dangote Refinery, in naira. This may lead to the renaming of Nigeria’s currency as the petro-naira.

Of course, the deal is not properly implemented. Some saboteurs within the NNPCL and its ecosystem, who are working in the interest of foreign paymasters, have made sure that it will not be properly implemented so that the President will be forced to abandon it.

Even with the sabotage, Nigerians cannot deny the advantages of the policy as they have recently witnessed regular announcements of steady reductions in the price of petrol by Dangote Refinery, which is compelling NNPCL to reduce the price of its (albeit) imported petrol.

The other wing of the naira-for-petroleum deal, which is the real McCoy, is the sale of petroleum to foreign buyers who will be expected to first buy naira from the Central Bank of Nigeria, through approved protocols, and then use the acquired naira to buy petroleum from NNPCL.

By this novel payment protocol, which North American and West European economic interests will fight with weapons, including insurrection, Nigeria will still receive the convertible currencies, and the naira will also return to the Nigerian financial system.

So, Nigeria will still have the convertible currency in its foreign reserves, which can always be used to pay Nigeria’s foreign obligations and pay for goods imported by citizens and corporate organisations. You could say that Nigeria will be able to eat its cake and have it.

Soon after he was sworn in for his second term as President, Donald Trump openly threatened 100 per cent import tariffs if BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and five other associate countries—replace the US dollar with any other currency as the reserve currency.

His words: “We are going to require a commitment from these seemingly hostile countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency, nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar, or they will face 100 per cent tariffs.”

A video of an unidentified Kenyan that is making the rounds on the internet explains that the current international economic and financial architecture is made to serve the interests of the probably 50 or so nations that set it up. That is not surprising.

For sure, former colonial countries that were not part of the deliberations of the metropolitan powers should not expect the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to serve their interests.

But the best way to go is for Nigeria to find a way to join BRICS as a full member, and not as an associate so that the acronym will change to BRINCS, as some had speculated in the past before some of Nigeria’s previous presidents chickened out.

What are the advantages of this move? The metropolitan economies, including Uncle Sam, will think very deeply before taking any steps against the economy of BRINCS. For their support for Ukraine in the war against Russia, Germany and Italy were compelled to pay for Russian gas with the Russian ruble.

The economies of the BRINCS nations should be on the north side of 40 per cent of the global economy, and their population, more than 55 per cent of the world’s population, cannot be disregarded by the International Monopoly Capital that is perennially looking for investment markets.

It will be a good win for Nigeria if the President can find the courage to implement this policy. But by far, its most important advantage is that as demand for the naira increases, the naira will gain strength. As every Economics 101 university student knows, the law of demand and supply promises to raise the price of a commodity when there is an increased demand for it.

Another advantage, albeit in the long term, can be achieved if the Minister for Industries, Trade and Investments joins “hardknocks” corporate players from the bricks-and-mortar sector of the economy with the intellectual PhDs economic advisers to devise a template to revitalise the comatose manufacturing factories of Nigeria.

The expected increase in local production of consumer goods will eliminate, or significantly reduce, the need for Nigerians to import such consumer goods and the need to procure foreign currencies to pay for the imports.

This reduction on foreign convertible needs will significantly reduce the pressure on the naira and make it even stronger. In any case, the current financial and payment structures of the world are not written in concrete. They were devised to serve the interests of the Western metropolitan economies.

If this structural pressure is removed, the prices of consumer goods will crash and the high cost of living will drastically fall, to the advantage of poor Nigerian citizens who are still struggling daily with the negative impacts of the removal of subsidy from petrol, electricity and the naira.

Also, if the manufacturing firms and the agricultural farms can be more productive, they will be able to pay higher tax revenues to the government and reduce Nigeria’s dependence on foreign loans and the sale of petroleum to finance its annual budgets.

The President, who has belled the cat by ordering the sale of petroleum by NNPCL to local refineries in naira, should go the whole hog and sell the commodity to foreign buyers for naira. He must seize the moment in the interest of Nigeria’s economy.

After all, American President Trump is already disrupting old landmarks of given economic assumptions and payment protocols of the world. Every country should be able to play the game of disruption. Who dares, wins, according to an old saw.

If the international monopoly capital responds with venom, as is to be expected, Nigeria should respond with bolder steps. You would have observed that when President Trump imposed a 145 per cent tariff on Chinese imports, China retaliated with a 125 per cent tariff on American goods.

Soon after, both nations, knowing that they need each other, were compelled to tone down their rhetoric and issue a joint statement declaring a 90-day suspension of the tariff war, to further explore a more sanguine approach to resolving their trade differences.

The suspension of hitherto uncharitable words against each other shows a degree of mutual respect and recognition of the strength of each other’s economy. Everyone knows that the two economies are intertwined, even if they do not openly acknowledge it.

Let no one lose sight of the fact that China Inc. and America’s Wall Street are opposite sides of the same coin, economic Siamese twins that have been in business even before the days of the anti-imperialist and anti-Christian Boxer Revolution in China between 1899 and 1901.

If these economic policy suggestions are diligently followed, Nigeria should have a steady inflow of convertible currencies, strengthen the naira, drive higher revenue into the government’s exchequer, reduce debts and make more consumer items available to Nigerians—in the medium to long-term.

Though Uncle Tom economic experts of Nigeria will argue vehemently for the given economic theories that serve the interest of the West only, President Tinubu and his economic team should look beyond them and do everything necessary to right the unilaterally given economic wrongs done by the West.