Let us begin with a solemn wager. It is economic destitution fueled by the absence of a truly nationalist political class that will see off many African postcolonial nations. The truth is that most of what we see as religious strife and political unrest afflicting the majority of African nations can be traced to economic malediction caused by political delinquency. In the absence of a viable solution to the fundamental economic crisis of providing life more abundant to their people, the elites simply weaponize religion and politics.
Humankind is fundamentally Homo Economicus. It was when people left the hunter-gatherer stage behind them, when they achieved a measure of self-sufficiency in food production that they began to organize and supervise themselves by building durable institutions. As it was noted, you cannot philosophize on an empty stomach. Insecurity arising from drastic shortages of food has always been the greatest threat to human society. It is an open invitation to revert to the state of nature.
Every society must explore and exploit its greatest strengths in material and human resources to provide prosperity and life more abundant to its people. It has been proved to the modern world that a society destitute in natural resources but with profound knowledge production can actually excel in food sufficiency for their people whereas societies with a surfeit of natural resources but led by knowledge-challenged rulers will come a sad cropper. This is the bane of contemporary Nigeria.
This is why it is important to set the economic agenda for the incoming administration. Let us interrogate and frisk our putative presidents about their economic mission for a nation in the throes of economic strangulation. Nigeria is truly in dire straits. In a world in which the entire paradigm of the nation-state is beginning to fray at the edge setting off unprecedented panic and chaos in many countries, Nigeria is stuck in the groove of a misbegotten unitary federalism.
The leading candidates must perish the thought that this is going to be business as usual. It is business unusual. They must come up with a visionary programme for rescuing a dying nation or the equivalent of a Rooseveltian New Deal for the injured and aggrieved of the land. Luckily, one or two of them are stirring.
One of the things that secretly thrilled this columnist about the second coming of General Buhari was the Economic Nationalism of his first coming. Alas, it has all turned out a damp squib. Except for the half-hearted and ill-coordinated attempt to turn the nation inward towards food production, there is no economic nationalism in view. The adversity of Boko Haram and sundry banditry coupled with a cavalier attitude have made a short shrift of all that.
Just as it proved impossible to argue with military dictatorships over thirty years ago about rational governance and a knowledge-based economy, it has also proved impossible to argue with a government with a unitary vision which sees the entire nation as a vast garrison to be dominated at will and reined in by force. The result has been democratic recession and economic retrogression, despite the triumph of electoralism, a chicanery in which regular voting replaces the grim modalities of true democracy.
To be sure, Economic Nationalism has its metropolitan detractors. But it is a reflection of a western agendum of perpetual domination of vulnerable countries and their fragile economies. Forgetting their own iconic statesman and humane economist, Lord Maynard Keynes, the London-based Economist, a famous listening post of western economic intelligence, has gone as far as dismissing Economic Nationalism as an unrivalled example of economic illiteracy.
But just say that to the Singaporeans, the Indians, Malaysians, the Vietnamese or the sturdy Chinese who actually closed off their borders in the most extreme instance of autarchy that the modern world has seen and watch their reaction.
The unarguable fact remains that vulnerable economies of developing nations need massive state intervention to jumpstart their economies and safeguard the interest of the most vulnerable sectors of the society. But this is not the same thing as turning the state into a huge economic almshouse. In multi-national nations, leaders without ethnic agenda always know where to draw the fine balance.
It is a telling reminder of a fundamental failure of governance that the subsidy hoax has reared its abominable head once again after the last and “final” removal. For the last thirty five years, this columnist has argued about a permanent subsidy trap that has ensnared the nation.
As long as the nation relies entirely on proceeds of oil sales without local refinery, as long as we operate a mono-cultural economy without any tangible productive capacity in other sectors of the economy and as long as there is a run on the naira as a result of untrammelled kleptocracy and the worst instance of executive and legislative larceny that postcolonial Africa has witnessed, a phantom subsidy will subsist. Whenever the naira hits a thousand naira to the dollar, the economic sorcerers and their apprentices will be back. And so will the ASUU people.
This morning, we bring to our readers a piece published thirty three years ago about SAP and its dire possibilities for the nation while the columnist was a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Birmingham. The anti-SAP riots were just a few days away then. Now, the full gale has hit us in the face. Lack of knowledge and the humility to admit wrong kill a nation indeed. It is a good place to begin the economic debate about the future of the nation.