HOW NIGERIAN POLITICS SHAPED A NEW BRAND OF MILLIONAIRES

Before 2015, nobody would have known what freelancing was going to become in future for Nigerians until President Buhari was elected into power.

The turn of events that followed made it even worse for the present government and today, freelancers in Nigeria are benefiting from it.

Oil prices nosedived to an all-time low because Iran came back from sanctions, the market became saturated, and the US started producing its oil.

Internally, Nigeria began fighting the Niger-Delta militants who utterly destroyed federal government and individual oil properties in the South-South.

Desperate times they say calls for drastic measures. The government with a shortage of Forex and in it's bid to curb the excess demand for Forex by Nigerians decided to ban certain goods and services from accessing Forex and from being imported into the country.

This move, furthermore raised inflation prices, and the hunt for dollars became a real deal.

Freelancers who earn foreign exchange became better for it. A Freelancer who use to exchange his $100 for N160/$ before 2015, was now trading it for N500/$ which is about a 205% increase.

New brands of millionaires started to emerge owing to the fall of the Nigerian currency. Today we find more Nigerians on Freelancing platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer and People per hour offering one service or the other in the hope of cashing in on the downward spiral of the Naira.

The fall of the Naira has all been helped by politicians who refused to accept defeat in the 2015 election, thereby sponsoring some of the attacks on the Niger Delta oil. APC and PDP politicians contributed to the decline in several ways, but mostly because some of those who put Nigeria in this position from PDP jumped ship to APC as soon as they won the general election.

It was also because te previous government failed to save when oil prices were $200+ plus per barrel.

We are now in the world of Freelancers offering digital marketing, socialmedia management, email marketing, graphics design, writing, and translations, etc.

Some of these Freelancers have gone on to become overnight millionaires with the digital skill that would have been worthless assuming everything I mentioned didn't happen.