Baron von Clausewitz, the great German military historian and philosopher of war, had noted that war was the continuation of politics by other means. Had he lived in our brave new world of modern technology where you don’t actually need to put troops on the battle ground to subdue an enemy, he would have learnt that economic contention among nations is the continuation of political warfare by other means. Economics is the brutal game of market domination that human societies engage in to maintain political control.
In this war of all against all, there are nations like Nigeria that are singularly unlucky in the sense that they also boast of enemies within in addition to external adversity. As this column once noted, Nigeria is crawling with enemy nationals who are bent on bringing the nation to heel either economically or religiously if they fail to bend the political configuration to their will or whim.
A nation is particularly vulnerable to economic brutalization if a significant section of the populace or fractions of the political elite query the basis of its political foundation or reject the socio-economic architecture on which the authority and legitimacy of the state is anchored. Such barely veiled hostility often eventuates in an armed critique of the state which leads to an outright destruction of the economy or in creative sabotage and more covert forms of aggression which take their toll on the economy. For any nation, internal peace is the first precondition for internal prosperity.
This past week, Nigerians watched helplessly as their national currency and supreme symbol of sovereignty, the naira, engaged in a duel unto death with the world’s major currencies. It was an unequal struggle; a futile and ultimately senseless contention. It was like watching a puny paperweight enter into the boxing ring with a primed heavyweight at the zenith of agonistic exertions. It was like watching one’s own economic funeral.
The national currency was taking a cruel pounding. The apocalyptic meltdown of the naira, long predicted, appeared finally on the way. An eerie disorientation seems to have descended on the entire nation. There was a feeling of utter despair and despondency. Anybody who was in Nigeria this past week would know what is it to be suddenly caught in the equivalent of an economic tsunami.
Helplessness and fright seized the nation particularly since no one appeared to be in charge. There was no economic communiqué; no bulletin of strategic efforts to reassure a dazedand distraught citizenry. Beyond President Buhari’s stout and patriotic refusal to devalue the naira which was made on a foreign soil, there was nothing else to hold on to, and even this in itself was not nearly enough.
While Buhari’s compassion for the poor and the Nigerian masses is not in doubt, it is also becoming obvious that seventeen years after the termination of military rule, successive Nigerian rulers often treat the citizens as if they are errant children of some paternalistic ruler who is often bemused or exasperated by their demands for accountability and transparency. In the face of a crippled economy and rising tension, this demand for open government is going to be a flashpoint of confrontation in the coming months.
While the British pound sterling appeared to have completely disappeared from open bidding, the naira suffered sharp and significant losses against the rampart and relentless dollar. By midweek, one dollar was rumoured to have been exchanging for four hundred naira. It was the worst moment for the national currency since independence.
By Wednesday morning, Nigeria’s legendary luck seemed to be on a fortuitous rampage once again. The naira seemed to have miraculously rallied against the dollar. Word went round that the naira had firmed up at about two hundred and fifty to the single dollar. There were smiles of relief. Hitherto obdurate and obstinate banks were calling on customers to renegotiate abandoned forex demands. Suddenly, the Basic Travelling Allowance which had long kicked the dust became available again, or so it seemed.
But it was all a cruel hoax. What is not available is simply not available and cannot be conjured by any fiscal humpty dumpty. By Thursday, the naira was exchanging for three hundred and fifty naira to the dollar and the downward spiral seemed set to continue. Never in the history of the nation has the national currency been subject to such steep gyrations in the pit of fiscal hell; such wild fluctuations of fortune. It was as if Nigeria of the seventies was another country entirely.
Indeed, it may well be. Having smelt blood, the IMF started calling for the massive devaluation of the naira. It is a text book shibboleth straight out of the con book of monetarist economics and utterly lacking in society-specific rigour. The IMF has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. In the brutal game of economic domination, any non-Western country that listens to the economic subterfuge of the IMF and other accessories of western economic and political hegemony has willingly obtained a suicide pill.
It is instructive to note that while the western powers have been urging China to revalue its national currency to bring it at par or at parlousness with international economic imperatives, the Chinese authorities actually went ahead to devalue theYuan renminbi. By dint of hard work, foresight, hyper-nationalism and prudence, the Chinese hold all the aces whereas a profligate and promiscuous nation like Nigeria holds none at all.
It is indicative of the grim fiscal calculus even among economic allies that America is asking Britain not to contemplate leaving the EU while the Americans would never contemplate joining a comparable union on their own continent. America needs an EU-compliant Britain as a buffer against the hordes from the European backwaters. Let them tarry first in good old Britain, the island of state compassion. As big and spacious as it is, America encourages immigration only if the immigrant is ready to work and lift himself by the bootstraps without eyeing state largesse.
On the other hand, Britain, the wise and wily survivalist, is strategically ambivalent about the bogus confederation of unequal states that is the EU. The British authorities have noted that the Welfare state is not designed for mass-migration because the whole tradition is based on the ethics of work and thrift without the prospects of immediate gratification. It is not for Balkan no-hopers looking to latch on to the apron strings of a nanny state.
Britain has also faulted the wisdom or desirability of foisting a unified currency like the Euro on countries with different national cultures and economies. It is a recipe for economic disaster the like of which has hobbled mainland European continent in the last decade. Even the Greeks, bearers of Hellenic Civilization and descendants of Alexander who went all the way to Asia, are shouting that their country should not be turned to a “warehouse of souls” and haven of choice for migrants stranded by choice.
Having been ringside spectators in their own economic funeral this past week, Nigerians must now know what it means to be at the receiving ends of the punitive game of economic domination that nations play. The weak and the meek will not inherit the earth or its abundant resources. If they do temporarily, they will fritter them away or be forced to surrender them by superior economic forces.
This is not a new game in town. It has been happening ever since man emerged as homo economicus. The original impetus for a protective state came principally out of the need to protect and guard the fruits of human labour and rudimentary entrepreneurial endeavour. Those who are historically minded will now recognize Lord Lugard’s infamous “Dual Mandate”—obtained without any duality—and the sudden appearance of Commodore Matthew Perry’s frigate on Japanese shores as acts of bullying and economic aggression by stronger states against weaker nations. By the same token, the Boxers’ rebellion in China was not a sartorial uprising but an instance of fierce resistance against economic bullying by the dominant imperial power of the age.
As we have hinted above, the economic destruction of Nigeria rests on both external and internal factors and forces. The combination of external forces and enemy nationals can be very devastating indeed. Externally, the international conspiracy to bring the oil bonanza to an end is too well known to delay us here. But it was good while it lasted. At least it gave the world the countervailing economic centre of Dubai and its glittering emporium.
But this is small beer compared to the modern hell-hole of Nigeria in all its seething homophobic aggravations. Oil has ruined Nigeria. While the immediate internal cause of the economic meltdown of the nation and the run on the naira is the wholesale looting of the economy by the last administration in perhaps the most criminal and treasonable example of state larceny ever witnessed on the benighted continent, there other equally pressing factors.
The first is the existence of anunproductive and unimaginative political elite that has not progressed beyond the hunter-gatherer phase of human existence. The consequence of this is the reliance on oil and a monocultural economy which made it impossible to grow other productive sectors of the economy. Second, the activities of enemy nationals who engage in covert economic sabotage or who actively take up arms against the nation such as we have seen in the Boko Haramwar or the resurgence of pipeline vandalization in the Niger Delta.
To all this, we must add the hilarious incompetence of the Central Bank of Nigeria which rather than add the value of intellectual sophistication and conceptual rigour to the macro-management of our economy often hands out humongous donations from our national till when it is not funnelling scarce foreign exchange to Bureau De Change on a weekly basis. This is then shared out among smugglers and other crooks who import second hand goods which thus killsoff the urge to produce what we must consume. With such enemy nationals, a nation does not require much external adversity to come unstuck.
The conclusion we have been avoiding must now be pressed into service. Nigerians are collectively in denial, unable to confront ourselves with the hard evidence. The truth must now be told if only because of its invigorating and liberating tonic. The truth is that as it is at the moment, Nigeria is broke and broken; economically defeated, politically vanquished as a result of structural debility and has only survived being militarily defeated by a rag tag religious insurgency by the skin of the teeth.
Being in denial will not set us free. Nigeria at the moment resembles a land that has suffered a saturation bombardment in addition to carpet bombing. The moral, political, economic and spiritual devastation reminds one of Hiroshima after the nuclear holocaust of the Second World War.
When a people are this roundly defeated, devastated and deflated, they need to go back to the drawing board and to first principles. The change Nigeria requires is both internal and external. This nation will not be cleansed of corruption and graft until we have internally purged ourselves and reordered or reengineered the Nigerian psyche. Apart from leading the war against corruption, President Buhari should also be at the vanguard of a campaign for a wholesale ethical reorientation of Nigerians and the fashioning of a new national ethos that will drive development and democracy.
Whether the retired general has the temperament or the wherewithal for this Herculean project remains to be seen. Modern contention among nations has shifted largely to the market place and one can now see why in certain countries economic sabotage is treated as grand treason punishable by death. If the retired general from Daura fails to confront the political, economic and intellectual debris of a collapsed nation, the fear is that he will be setting the template for a routine dissolution of whatever remains or for the emergence of an even more radically ruthless and uncompromising ruler in the long run. Next week, we bring thoughts about how to regrow a shattered nation.
