Prince Justice Faloye
The quintessential President Tinubu is all the keen eye can see with the rash of economic policies since inauguration, despite incurable optimists proclaiming a Messiah is here. To save $10billion in fuel subsidies, you destabilize a $500 billion economy with wage and cost push inflation that is bound to push tens of millions of poor people into extreme poverty. Despite the razzmatazz, it has been Tinubu’s modus operandi in Lagos for twenty four years to cut government expenditures and raise taxation, with no social net for the poor nor massive infrastructural development to spring open the poverty trap.
With Tinubu, it appears Economics should be relocated from social science departments, where it has a human face, to departments of mechanical and physical sciences. Fo mo le, Eko o ni baje, smash it on ground, Lagos won’t spoil. Yeah Lagos didn’t die but became retarded economically and politically. The question is can Nigeria that is suffering economic and political retardation survive Tinubus abusive exploitative governance.
Those with a neocolonial economic perspective would argue there is no other way out of the mess created by the political class. This is a view limited by slavery plantation economics. In times like these what we need is an energetic focused and determined leadership to mobilize the masses to march towards Eldorado Promised land, not with cuts and further deprivation of the poor, but through massive infrastructural development, like the building of three West to East railway lines to free us from colonial economic trade routes, restablish our civilizational economics and spur industrial development. This is what other serious leaders in other nations have done during pivotal times like the one currently faced. Unfortunately, Tinubu is not dynamic nor pro-people with a dream to improve their plight.
For argument sake, let’s even assume that removal of oil subsidies was necessary, did it have to be done the same time with devaluation, withdrawal of education, electricity and all other social services subsidies, in a nation of 100m desperately poor, and without any social nets? There has been no attempt to cut the cost of governance which he and the rest of the political class feed on. They get free petrol to ride around in massive convoys. Nor is he cutting the subsidies and tax cuts given to the super rich. No, it is the poor that must sacrifice for the mindless mismangement of the political class that couldn’t manage refineries for our god given free oil. For eight years APC mismamaged the electrcity privatization model, which the masses now have to pay for with higher tariffs.
The increased cost of living is always obvious to all in Tinubus economics, unlike his increased cost of doing business in which he introduces various schemes for multiple taxation of the poor. He has announced the return of the infamous marketing boards that killed our agriculture, as politicians creamed off farmers profits in price and control regulations schemes that disguised their exploitative motive. Tinubu’s idea of economic governance has always been warped by the belief that the state belongs to the winner or rigger of democratic victory, and he can do what he wants. He used to refer to himself as Eko. When he wants to go to bed, he announces Eko is going to sleep. Now, I guess he is Nigeria and he can decide what he can exploit from the masses, and collect a percentage for doing so.
To tell the truth, Tinubu is the best president Nigeria deserves despite losing but rigging the election. Nigerians have celebrated such behavior for too long, or weren’t we globally known for 419? This is kakistocracy, the rule of the worst for the worst. We were enslaved in the Americas for 300yrs, but rose to fight in the Haitian Ogun Revolution that brought about the beginning of the end of slavery, globally. Colonization replaced the plantation slavery model with the colonial nationstate model, keeping the same underlying economic arrangement of exploiting the people and environment. The control of the sociopolitical plantation lasted in the hands of the slavemasters for about 50yrs before the wheel was passed to the local Black neocolonial guards, who retained the basic master servant economic relationship between the masses and themselves.
Though it doesn’t appear the West and neocolonial guards backed Tinubu into power, he has set out to prove himself to be the quintessential foreman willing to starve slaves for the pleasure of the master. Ironically, pushing the masses to the wall is what is required to agitate the masses against the Western slavemasters and African neocolonial guards to regain true and complete freedom. As often said Easy never does, but pain and persistence bring the goals because the sufferer will make a concerted effort. There is no nation that has developed without severe pain of wars and revolution. China went through almost hundred years of upheavals. Russia, UK, France all went through social upheavals that made their people promise never again. So Tinubu is doing well right to inspire a revolution that will engulf him and the entire political class. Obo ni o para e, the monkey always self destructs.
