I saw the foreign reserves news and remembered something my father told me in 1986

I was reading the Guardian this morning on my veranda, and I saw the report about our foreign reserves falling to $51.96 billion. The naira declining again against the dollar. My daughter came out with her tea and asked me if I remember when the naira was stronger than the dollar. I just laughed and told her to sit down.

In 1986, my father was still alive. He was a teacher at St. Patrick's in Ibadan. One evening he came back from work and just sat on this same veranda, looking at the sky. I was a young clerk then, just starting in the ministry. He said to me, "Kunle, the price of palm oil at Bodija market has doubled in one month. When the naira falls, everything follows." I didn't understand him fully at that time. I was young and I thought money was just money. But now, forty years later, I sit here watching my own children wrestle with the same problem. The prices have changed, the numbers are bigger, but the story is the same.

The Yoruba say, "bi oba ti ri ni mo ti n ri" , as the king sees it, so I see it. We have seen this dance before. The question is whether we have learned anything from the last forty years, or we are just waiting for the next cycle to repeat itself.