The news on Monday that President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the naira exchange rate of N160 to the United States dollar for Christian pilgrims is dismaying. Viewed from all sides, this is reckless and insensitive. Economically, it is subversive of efforts to revamp public finances, manage the exchange rate, inflation and conserve foreign exchange. It is exclusionary as it ignores those Nigerians who belong to neither of the two faiths they are often forced to subsidise.

Nigeria is in dire economic straits; there is little or no room for misplaced priorities.

Except the government denies it, the news of the concession was revealed by John Kennedy-Opara, Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Christian Welfare Board, who said pilgrims headed for Israel this year would enjoy the lower exchange rate. “The President has approved $1 to N160 for the conventional exchange rate for this pilgrimage operation and he has also agreed that he will continue to encourage us particularly as we drive to ensure self-sustenance, to make sure that the pilgrims are able to pay for the pilgrimages removing government sponsorship,” Kennedy-Opara stated.

It is wrong for Buhari, who rode to power on the back of the “Change” campaign to have fallen flat for such cheap rhetoric. Buhari’s policies should be well thought out, not unfolded at a whim. It is doubtful if he weighed the impact of the rash rebate at a time the Central Bank of Nigeria is taking radical measures to conserve foreign reserves and defend the naira.

This is definitely not the change Nigerians voted for. For one of the mortal sins of Goodluck Jonathan was his addiction to pandering to narrow interests and his disdain for prudent use of resources for the higher interests of the economy. Buhari disappoints by dishing out more of the same.

The insensitivity is shocking. From N156 to $1 last year, the naira exchanged at N196.95 to $1 last week at the official market and N225-N240 at the parallel market. To maintain the official rate, the CBN has had to take hard measures, including drawing from reserves, to defend the naira from a freefall. The reserves have been declining in the wake of lower crude oil prices firming at $31bn last week after dipping to $29bn two months ago. The CBN had in the last week of June, locked out importers of 41 items, including toothpicks, rice, private jets, tinned food, among other items, from the official forex market in a desperate bid to conserve reserves, “facilitate the resuscitation of domestic industries as well as generate employment.” Buhari has made nonsense of the policy by placing religious tourism above economic activities.

It is even more disappointing at a time when lower earnings from crude have upturned government’s revenue projections and spending plans, from the federal to the states and local governments. A bail-out funding of N713.7bn to be shared among the three tiers was hammered out recently and will help about 24 state governments that have been unable to pay salaries. The Federal Government itself had to borrow N473bn to meet recurrent spending needs, including salaries, within the first four months of year. With public finances in such straits and the country teeming with millions of unemployed youths, the government should be conserving its resources, not frittering scarce funds on religious tourism.

Buhari should walk the talk of change. Nigeria is a secular state with a multi-religious population. The 1999 Constitution clearly forbids government from promoting any faith as a state religion. In practice, successive Nigerian governments have elevated Islam and Christianity to state religions, spending vast sums from the public treasury on the two. The relief that change had come when Governor Nasir el-Rufai, Buhari’s close ally, declared that thenceforth, Kaduna State would no longer dabble into religion has evaporated with the ill-advised concessionary exchange rate for religious tourism.

This government will not succeed if it fails to deliver change and instead, wastes resources on religion like its predecessors. Here is a country that has earmarked N953.62bn for debt servicing and N755bn as deficit in the N4.49bn 2015 budget, yet is set to pamper a few with forex subsidy in pursuit of religion. If the CBN was ready to sacrifice the jobs generated by importers of the 41 items that will have to source forex from the alternative market in order to defend the naira, what is the economic rationale 
for funding pilgrimages?

Saudi Arabia is said to earn $1.6bn annually from pilgrims, while Israel boosts its economy with religious tourism, earning $3.3bn in 2009. Analysts had expected Buhari to wind down the pilgrims agencies, whose operations he had slammed as corrupt recently, not to deepen the state’s involvement in religion. The Steven Oronsaye committee had recommended scrapping the two boards.

The enormity of the challenges facing the country demands a hands-on approach, a sustained resolve to cut costs, end impunity and detach the state from things better left to individuals and groups, especially divisive ventures such as religion. Health care, education and infrastructure are in disrepair and require creative thinking to raise funding for them. But religion is a private matter; those who seek to visit religious foreign sites should make their own arrangements while the state restricts itself to providing consular services. The approval is arbitrary and ill-advised. It should be reversed.