Globalisation’s last dagger

What had happened to Goodluck Jonathan?  Is he so callous and unfeeling?  Or why shut down the economy, in order to lose even more that the money it purports to want to save in order to revive the economy?  In one week of shutdown, Nigeria lost at least N650 billion in terms of its GDP, if one considers that a total GDP estimate of $400 billion, translates into about $1.2 billion daily, (N180 billion) and if one takes a conservative estimate of 50% reduction in activities, countrywide.

It wasn’t until I got information that Nigeria and Ghana were not the only African countries that carried out such drastic economic exercises on their hapless people in the past few weeks, that I realised that the decision was actually not from President Jonathan.  Madame Christine Lagarde of the IMF was in Nigeria a few weeks back and must have read the riot act that made our economic decision makers to hurriedly implement a policy which Nigerians had accepted as a fait accompli, to kick in sometimes around April.  The reckless utterances of some government operatives did not make things better for the president and caused the country to cavort into several days of inertia.  It was then that I realised that what was happening was an attempt to drive Globalisation’s last dagger into the heart of Nigeria.  And of course the black race.

Many lame arguments have been proffered for the removal of subsidies really, but the best one has come from Malam Sanusi, to the effect that subsidy should be placed ONLY to promote productivity and not consumption. Convincing as it sounds, empirical facts prove otherwise. I have a little book titled ‘Making Globalisation Work’, written by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, former disciple of Milton Friedman (Patron Saint of Globalisation), in which he stated that ‘IT IS BETTER TO BE A COW IN EUROPE THAN BE A POOR PERSON IN AFRICA’. Why? Cows in Europe are given a direct subsidy of $2.00 daily, whereas most Africans can hardly afford to live on $1.00 daily! There you have it. Now, the cows so subsidized in Europe, are meant for local consumption, not just exports. The subsidy given to cows, among other subsidies on food, transport and what have you, even in Europe and America, is meant to create employment, guarantee food availability locally, create safety nets for their people among other reasons. Here in Nigeria, NONE of these exist. Everybody sorts himself out. Ours is a dog eat dog society. The USA certainly subsidises food, hence it comes cheap to consumers. Ditto for most of Europe. But government is still not convinced!

In the UAE for example, they have over 20 refineries. Having a refinery is no big deal. In fact, these days they come more compact and manageable that you could pop out a few under two years if only you cared. Nigerian government has ensured that it did not put up ANY refinery, or give considerable incentive to any local big man to do so – like giving out the damned crude oil for free if it has to. To our dear government, the citizens are resilient enough to bear anything that’s piled on them. I should be saying ‘I TOLD YOU SO’, because I urged Nigerians to voted differently, to no avail. By and large, Dr Goodluck appears to me to be the victim, effectively captured, not only by a local CABAL (for those who loved that world since Umaru’s days), but by the strongest of international CABALS – the same guys who recently killed Muammar Gaddafi and destroyed Libya. We were warned after Libya was destroyed that Nigeria is next, but as usual, we pay no heed to any warning!

Back to the UAE, who last December celebrated their 40th Independence Anniversary, and who twenty years ago were begging to borrow money from Nigeria – which Nigeria declined. Since they refine their own oil, it is a non issue that it sells at about N65 at the pumps. But the country is also wise enough to give all its public taxis FREE PETROL in order to SUBSIDISE TRANSPORTATION for locals, foreigners and tourists alike!

The thing about subsidy is that ultimately, it is not about consumption or production, but about how a people retain their sanity. A government needs to subsidise several things, so that its people will not go mad from poverty and difficulty, so that if they don’t become mental cases by the hardship they face, they may become productive and therefore the country may become great. What we have heard thus far are FINANCIAL, not ECONOMIC arguments.  There is a reason why our nationalist first set of leaders in Africa chose to tend towards socialism – and were promptly removed by foreign governments.  They were in touch with their people and knew that more than 90% of their people were illiterate and economically disenfranchised back in the day, and so leaving them to the devices of capitalism will lead to total ruination.  We must not deceive ourselves that we have arrived today and so do not need to subsidise some, not all, services for our people.  We may choose not to concentrate the subsidies in the oil sector, but my fight is to ensure that crass capitalists don’t descend on Nigeria and Africa, who will push for total removal of subsidies from all sectors of the people’s social life. What is going on in Nigeria today is a total demonization of the word ‘subsidy’, and we are entirely wrong!

A few weeks ago, I wrote here ‘NIGERIA INTERNATIONAL DECEPTION MEETS LOCAL GREED ‘, in which I mentioned some of the games played in the international trade/maritime scene. On the high seas, most people are pirates. What is at play in Nigeria today is the culmination of centuries of fraud in maritime and petroleum sectors, coupled with our own local stupidities. But say, how can Mr President and his lieutenants expect Nigerians to pay for the frauds? When a fuel importer forges Bills of Lading, when an importer loads SEA WATER and comes to berth in Nigeria and calls it Fuel, when the importer discharges half of his fuel in Cotonou and comes to collect subsidy on the full load from PPPRA, when a fuel importer loads from Port Harcourt, sails 50 kilometres into the sea and makes a U-turn to come and berth in Apapa, and then claims subsidies, when any fuel importer just shows up at PPPRA with a forged document falsely claiming to import fuel and collects billions of dollars in subsidy, WHY SHOULD POOR NIGERIANS PAY FOR THESE? What Nigerians need is a clean-up of that sector, the jailing of untouchables, like it happened in the banking industry. Anything less is fraudulent! Anything less is inhumane! And the government has the people’s mandate to go after these guys. Yar’adua did it in the banks. And died for it…

Thankfully, this issue has further united Nigerians, as more of us are realising that we are not each other’s problem.  Nigeria will yet be redeemed…