Patrick Obahiagbon: BUHARI: FROM DISORDER TO ORDER

Friday, February 06, 2015

BY PATRICK OBAHIAGBON

When sometime in 2009, I joined my voice with those of the progres­sives and other well-meaning Nigerians to demand that President Goodluck Jonathan, then Vice-President to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, be sworn into office as Nigeria’s President, at a time when Yar’Adua’s cronies were play­ing the “Nigerian roulette” with Yar’Adua’s illness, I did so believing in the spirit and letters of the Nigerian consti­tution. I did so, believing that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan will excuse the failures of past Nigerian leaders, given his intellectual background, with a doctorate degree, and give the country a robust, focused, responsible and responsive leadership.

Six years in the saddle, President Jonathan has proven to be incapable of managing the dynamics of the intricate and complex web of Nige­rian politics. Either, he chose delib­erately to bury his head in the sand like the ostrich or he is simply in­capable of grabbing and managing the dynamics of Nigeria’s complex socio-political and economic prob­lematics. What has become glaring to all, Nigerians and the interna­tional community at large, is that more than ever before, Nigeria is haemorrhaging to the marrow. The country has become more divided along religious and ethnic lines. Ni­geria is once again on the edge of a precipice.

Yes, one can argue that the crisis of the Nigerian state today is not the making of President Jonathan. One can make the point that the man in­herited the mess of the Nigerian rul­ing class: lootocracy, cabalocracy, incompetence, political grandstand­ing, culttology and sheer political baby-sitting. But, the point remains that “leadership calculus” has com­pletely disappeared from the politi­cal turf in the last six years.

Well over 70% of Nigerians are still living below poverty index of the World Bank. Several industrial and manufacturing concerns that started collapsing way back in the 1980s remain fallow. The govern­ment’s so-called economic manag­ers led by agents of imperialist in­stitutions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have continued to implement the neoliberal economic policies, which frustrate growth of the national economy. The government theoreti­cians and so-called technocrats are committed to the market economy policies, which promote liberaliza­tion at the expense of growth and protection of the country’s infant in­dustries. And so, what have we seen in the last six years of the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency? It is a slow, non-committed attitudinal predilec­tion to investments in infrastruc­ture, expansion of the real sector of the economy, and economic eman­cipation of the Nigerian people. What Nigeria has witnessed in the last six years of Jonathan presiden­cy is the promotion of higher stakes of the philosophy and principles of economic liberalism of Adam Smith, and the latter-day followers of free market ideology led by the late Professor Milton Friedman of the Chicago School of Economics in the United States of America. For the economic managers of the Jona­than government, the only known economic management theory is the market theory. Most countries are not denying liberalization or the so-called free trade philosophy. The experience in today’s international economic relations is that they are embracing the philosophy of nation­alism and adopting economic pro­tectionism.

But, the economic policies of the Jonathan administration have turned Nigeria to a dumping ground for the goods of Europe-America- Japan axis and now Chinese goods at the expense of the country’s small and medium scale businesses. While the government opens up the Nige­rian economy for foreign capital prioritization, local capital and local initiatives are sacrificed. Of course, the budgets are never expansive of massive infrastructural develop­ments which will put the economy on the pedestal of progress.

Nigerians can now see that all the noise about Harvard-trained econo­mists knowing it all, and branding other ideas as “old fashioned” is but propaganda of neoliberalism and opportunism of its worshippers.

More countries are now inebri­ated in their nationalistic aqua, the hoopla and brouhaha of globaliza­tion, notwithstanding. Even the celebrated advanced economics are going to be more concerned about their skins than pandering to the dictates of neoliberalism and its surrogates. Nigeria cannot continue to open its doors and windows to manufactured goods from the ad­vanced economics while the coun­try’s emerging small and medium scale enterprises suffer neglect and their products lack patronage. Nige­ria cannot continue to be a dumping ground while Jonathan’s economic macossa spin doctors continue to front for imperial institutions which have become monochromatically monothematic in solving the coun­try’s economic challenges.

Nigeria’s failure to make a quan­tum leap in socio-economic growth and development with plenty of oil money that rolled in when the price of oil was good smacks of the failure of the market policies of Jonathan administration. It smacks of the failure of privatization, marketiza­tion and liberalization of the econ­omy. It simply shows that time has come for policy change. Time has come for new thinking and fresh ideas. Time has come for commit­ted patriots and nationalists to run the country’s economic and political affairs. The World Bank and IMF-imposed economic policies of Presi­dent Jonathan, which largely favour so-called foreign investors while the local markets in Nigeria are closing up, cannot bring the desired eco­nomic prosperity the country needs. Such policies cannot even promote the so-called diversification of the economy, which the government cronies merely sloganize as state policy.

The present disorder of Jona­than’s administration has come to its end. Additional four years for Jonathan will deepen the country’s calamity. The Nigerian ruling class therefore has a responsibility to rescue the country from the moral decadence, economic quagmire and political phantasmagoria, which the Jonathan administration has plunged the country into. To say the least, elite consensus for change is crystallizing a great deal.

The APC and the Buhari presi­dential campaigns have fast become a socio-political movement, a na­tionwide phenomenon which must crystallize to a change of guards at Aso Rock come May 29, 2015. The General’s records of self-discipline, incorruptibility, Spartan simplicity and anti-imperialist commitments over the years will serve the coun­try’s national interest, especially now. The Nigerian voters must therefore take advantage of this moment in our national history and vote for this political and economic martinet to rebuild our battered, shattered and marooned country