Class interest and Nigeria’s political economy (II)

• Friday, Apr 25, 2008

Cont’d from yesterday

The economic team has for the past five years been pushing for bourgeois reforms which are essentially designed to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. The economic team has been mouthing that Nigeria will join the big league of the first 20th most industrialised economies come 2020. Vision 2020 is a strange postulation for a country wrestling to provide basic infrastructure such as electricity and health infrastructure. In fact, the technocrats propagating such heresies are either Eurocentric capitalist apologists or bourgeois pretenders who have failed to tell Nigerians that economics is an organic discipline, not a phenomenon that is susceptible to some metaphysical manipulations. These are the IMF fifth columnists the Obasanjo administration put together to privatise all the assets of the country. On the surface the argument in favour of privatisation is to make such corporations work. But the real intention of the capitalist is to use privatisation as a trick to buy-up these corporations to establish cruel monopoly, muzzle competition and engage in profiteering to the sorrow of the masses.

With the adoption of market capitalism in education the same class of super rich politicians owns the private universities and charge exorbitant fees which deliberately alienate children from low socio-economic class. The private universities in Nigeria operate on Pay-As-You-Go basis as the basic criterion for admission into those schools is the financial capacity of students.

It is true therefore that the so-called educational reforms are not designed to ameliorate the poor plight of the entire system but to cater for class interest. This was evident in the Obasanjo administration when all the “Unity Schools” were almost sold out to the higher bidders without regard to the fact that education is supposed to be a public or merit good which consumption cannot be determined by the market forces. Ex-president Obasanjo exploited the educational reforms to establish Bells University of Technology, which no doubt will be transformed into massive money spinning business enterprise like the Ottah Farm.

The political class has deliberately bastardized the mainstream of public education because it serves its class interest of selling ignorance or at best low quality education to the masses and at the same time exploiting the opportunity to buy up the all, important education sector. Teachers in Nigerian universities are grossly under rewarded and anytime matters of teacher welfare is discussed the same political class will constitute ineffective committees to scuttle deliberations. Rather than advise government to improve on the funding profile of universities and motivate the manpower to superior productivity behaviour, the political class is dilly-dallying with the welfare of academic staff. When the academic community makes very moderate demand, they are subjected to public debates and endless controversies. For example it is trite argument that workers can exercise their freedom of association and embark on industrial actions within the limits of the labour laws of the country. It is therefore ridiculous for government to foot-drag on the reinstatement of the 49 lecturers who were expelled from the University of Ilorin. A problem that can be tackled by mere commonsense, deductions does not need the intervention of the community oracle. The reinstatement of the 49 lecturers does not require the rule of law, as it can be executed by mere executive fiat. That explains why Mr. President’s insistence on the rule of law in a matter that is patently illegal is not only ridiculous but a demonstration of inability to distinguish between what is legally justifiable and that which is politically expedient.

One of the tools employed by capitalists is to paralyze public institutions and create the impression that the institutions are not workable so that individuals can buy-up these corporations. This is what the capitalist class led by Obasanjo tried to accomplish when the administration tried to privatize all Nigeria’s national assets including the refineries and other choice assets. But up till now the National Assembly has not concluded investigations on the privatisation of these assets and the $16 billion wasted on power supply.

Our leaders seem to have been stupefied by the ideologies that are only workable in the West. These ideologies and programmes are used to benchmark our development. For example it is ridiculous for Nigerian leaders to talk of meeting the Millennium Development Goals when we cannot provide uninterrupted power supply. Only the leaders are convinced that by the year 2020, Nigeria’s will rank among the 20 greatest economies in the world. But the ordinary Nigerian knows that borehole water is hawked in the streets of major towns and cities either in sachets or jerry cans; kill and go generators have become a permanent source of power supply while some faceless Nigerians who import polluted fuel into the country to damage vehicles and such brazen acts of economic sabotage are not investigated. Unemployment is ravaging the land and retirement has become a nightmare. A nation operating at this level is certainly many light years away from meeting set development targets, let alone attaining greatness.

The National Assembly is not exempted from this conspiracy. While law-makers at the national level devote much time and resources to discuss their welfare, they have not given even a scant attention to the higher education sector. The higher institutions have a responsibility for human capital development which is the most vital missing link in our development efforts. Federal law makers can compel government to declare emergency in many sectors such as power supply, education and health and put things right, but they are watching the system die slowly like a man dying under euthanasia.

Forty-eight years after independence, Nigeria is still in dire need of genuine leadership. As a nation, we have had mediocre leaders and poorly trained managers at the saddle who wear the garb of reform to cover-up their mediocrity. We are blessed with huge resources in oil and gas but we are running a generator economy- a confirmation of Marxist theory of increasing misery. In our land everyone can steer and tinker with the ship but it takes a leader to read the compass, control the rudders and chart the course. Nigeria needs visionary leadership that can exercise huge discretion in taking pragmatic steps to move the nation forward. So far the actions of the Yar’Adua administration are too slow in efforts at re-positioning the polity and fixing the economy. Emphasis on the rule of law alone cannot save the nation from the stagnation and mediocrity foisted on the masses by the past dictators.

John wrote in from Yenagoa.