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Tinubu/Edun’s renewed economic hopelessness!

Prince Justice Faloye

The Coordinating Minster of the Economy, Wale Edun recently spoke of finding ways to increase the foreign exchange inflows from the Diaspora. It was embarrassing to hear the Economic minister of the most populous Black nation lauding our brain drain, known as Japa, expecting to profit from the continued selling of our labour force for a pittance to foreign lands since 350yrs of slavery that made the world label us the Slave Coast. It is mind boggling how he expects to double our Diasporan remittances, most of which comes from those struggling abroad to eke out a living while supporting their family in Nigeria, unless he plans to worsen the plight of those in Nigeria, forcing those abroad to send more to sustain their families. Is it rational economic sense for those abroad to invest in Nigerians current economic reality of mismanaged falling Naira value when immediately they buy the house or invest in business it loses its international value?

Democracy becomes kakistocracy, the rulership of the worst, if the electorate are mentally and economically arrested. An epistemic democracy is the rule of the majority based on wisdom of the multitude, without which majority of democratic choices can’t be based on rational political choices towards progressive collective aspirations. We sometimes focus too much on corruption and moral issues while we overlook the hopelessness of our Neocolonialist leadership. Due to the coloniality of knowledge and power sources, our leaders are more than often bereft of ideas to free us from economic slavery and poverty. Like Fela sang ‘Oyinbo don free us but we never free ourselves’. Economically, we remain in the slave plantation economics state of mind. We talk so much about agriculture but can’t fathom how to build an industrial complex needed to provide jobs for tens of millions unemployed.

Tinubu is a bookkeeper cum tax collector while Wale Edun that had a stint with World Bank is an expert of Western financial instruments, and not a development Economist. Both concentrate on absolute values and financial instruments, with little or no knowledge of the real economy, talk less of revolutionizing the economy from a colonial economy to a progressive economy. When they make statements that their outrageous cut in subsidies are a sacrifice for a rosy economic future, they sound like religious practitioners/ motivational speakers that give baseless hope.

Out of the over 60 Black nations of Africa and the Caribbean that have implemented the IMF structural conditionalities of removing government subsidies since the late 1970s till date, not a single one was successful in turning around their economy. The nations all faced political instability due to the exponential increase in poverty. Yes, the neocolonial politicians cut government expenditure but kill local demand and the economy. The neo-liberal economics being prescribed to developing nations are never proposed to developed nations when they have economic problems. How can you tell a responsible government to withdraw a $10 billion a year subsidy for a $500 billion economy? The multiplier effect of the fuel subsidy in the economy is astronomical, especially since the government has failed to sustain local refineries, nor provide other sources of energy and transportation, especially railways. The withdrawal of the $10b subsidy, which is about 2% of the economy, will result in at least a 20% drop on the economy. Pennywise pound foolish by the Ogbons/Smartasses.

Out of all the developing nations facing huge debts and IMF structural demands since the Eighties, Brazil has been the only country to move out of the neo-liberal poverty trap. Following years of IMF prescriptions that stagnated the economy, it was President Lula DaSilva that turned around the economic fortunes, not by cutting subsidies that have negative multiplier effects on consumer demand, but by increasing subsidies to every economic sector. He gave welfare benefits to the poor, pushed affirmative action in education and employment for Afro-Brazilians, gave both indigenous peoples and big business support, and within a few years the Brazil economy even overtook the British economy.

This is not to say that the Nigerian government should dash out money, especially since the subsidies would only sustain the current local production but not advance the production structure without the necessary economic liberating infrastructure in place. It is clear in Economic History that railways have been the springboard of industrialization and economic development in industrialized nations, being the largest contraption of iron and petrochemicals which spurs growth in related industries, with a multiplier effect of about 20. Therefore any serious Nigerian government should have railways at the very top of it’s economic development plan. The Lagos-Calabar railway is by far the most important economic liberating infrastructure with the ability to increase the local economy tenfold.

Unfortunately, our Neocolonialist leadership are modern day slave foremen whose aim is not to increase the size or advance the structure of the plantation but to wring more out of the slaves doing the same thing. Like has been done in Lagos for the last 24yrs, Tinubu and his economic team only increase taxes and reduce government expenditures and responsibility. For propaganda purposes, they throw in a few tokenist projects like laying a mere 16km of rail out of the 250km Metroline in the masterplan since 2002, twenty one years ago.

So when they mouth their religious economic faith of sacrifice on Earth to enter future heaven in Nigeria, a discerning mind can’t but ask how? Is it by cutting the living standards of the people, changing the age long way of calculating unemployment to hide the real figures, reducing the disposable income of workers, farmers, traders and other businesses, or what exactly are they sowing that they expect to reap the benefits? There is nothing on the table to justify renewed hope of economic development, apart from making the people poorer while making the government coffers swell and ripe for sharing among the political class.

Without an accelerated railway development program to build within four years at least 4000 kilometers of rail – Lagos-Calabar, Ilorin-Yola, Sokoto-Maiduguri – we would be at the same developmental spot in four years time, with the people much poorer and unemployment increasing. For a team that could only build 16kms in 24yrs, it is a tall order to expect them to give Nigeria the Big Push up the industrialization ladder.

Instead of going to China, the world’s manufacturing center, and only nation known to build across Africa and South America economic liberating infrastructure like railways, powerplants, refineries, Tinubu and Wale Edun engaged in economic propaganda in India, UAE etc. Unlike the Chinese, Indian business practices are like the Western imperialists – predatory and exploitative – and many a times conspire with the West to exploit Africa, like in Zambia with Verdant mining company. This is the same Indian mercenary economics called to revamp the Ajaokuta Steel Complex but was devoured, broke up parts for sale and racked up huge debts before they disappeared.

If Tinubu and Wale Edun are decolonially disposed about turning around Nigeria’s colonial economic structure of North-South export-import colonial trade to our civilizational West-East domestic production and markets, they would talk railways with the Chinese that raised a billion of their people from poverty, not dodgy Western favored Indian billionaires whose wealth has not reduce Indian poverty. But then again, Tinubu is in bed with France and the West, so why not their dodgy indentured globalist middlemen to maintain the global status quo of Black poverty?

A truly renewed hope of economic and political liberation can only be hope for the decoloniality of the new generation, only after which Nigeria can be free from the arrested economic and political development of the Black Race.

Nigerians are not crash dummies, please!

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The Subsidy is dead. Subsidy has resurrected again. The Nigerian political leadership is treating Nigerians like mumus. In local parlance, it’s like they are using us to catch cruise. Won fi ose pa wa in Yoruba, they are soaping us. For several moons this year, we underwent a currency change and cash illiquidity. Instead of stopping those using money to corrupt the electoral system, they stopped us from using our own money to run our families and businesses. At the end of the day, both new and old currency notes remain in circulation with nothing achieved, except unnecessary inconvenience for some people and economic deprivation and even extreme poverty for the masses.

Then in the name of continuity, passing from one Sufferhead APC government to another, it was announced that subsidies are dead and Naira can float to the Moon. Once again instead of stopping the subsidy cheats, namely the oil companies owned by them, the people were made to pay exorbitant prices for petrol. Millions of Nigerians were tossed into an economic washing machine and dryer, only for the government to now stylishly reverse and resume pay subsidies. As Fela sang we go dey parambulate and still dey same same place. We have become as Fela sang, one yeye (aimless) ball that one yeye wind has blown to one yeye corner.

When some of us criticized Tinubu after his inaugural speech, his followers cried it was too early, not knowing that economic direction like a strong wind is easy to know. You simply can’t remove subsidies without breaking the social contract of government to make life easy for the people. Not just about theories and political grandstanding. For crying out loud, how can $10 billion be too much to subsidize a $500 billion economy and 200 million people, amounting to a mere 2%. Yet you want us to pay 25% taxes. No good roads, no social justice, no water, no light. Nothing. The only thing the government can say they are doing for everyone was the oil subsidy, yet you want to tighten the tax net. It’s like Nigerians have no brains.

President Jonathan came out to remove oil subsidies after agreement with various stakeholders, but it was opposed vehemently with weeks of protest organized by those who are now implementing it. While on the Jonathan line, another thing nobody is talking about is the sudden increase in electricity supply. Jonathan was determined to bring to an end to power failures, or at least provide 18hrs of electricity, and went about increasing electricity generating capacity to 13 gigawatts by recruiting the likes of Professors Nnaji and Nebo. President Jonathan came out and announced that there would be light for 18hrs. There was light for a month or two, then darkness. Prof Nebo revealed that there were Gas Wars as gas pipelines were being sabotaged by unknown persons.

When Buhari came into power, he commissioned Siemens, a German company to study the electricity issues and they wrote a report that yes the capacity had been increased to 13 gigawatts from 5 gigawatts by Jonathan but we could only supply gas to generate about 4 gigawatts due to sabotaged gas pipelines. Who was sabotaging and why, we were never told as the electricity power cuts cost us billions of dollars in lost production and lost lives over the last decade. Then suddenly, May 29th 2023, we begin to have electricity like it’s going out of fashion. Did President Tinubu fart the gas now supplying our thermal electricity plants, or are the saboteurs now in government and gone international to sabotage Niger Republic electricity. Is it a case like Asari Dokunbo has come out to confess that he has a private army used to conduct some deep state or illegal actions.

Talking of which, for several years we had terrorists everywhere. Even bold enough to attack our military infrastructure in Kaduna State. Kidnappings everywhere. From a whole school being kidnapped to a whole train derailed and it’s passengers kidnapped. Then suddenly everything went quiet when the elections came around. Come on now, you dey wind us? The African political classes are taking the masses for fools. This is why the armies are being killed in large numbers by terrorists who the political class and Western governments are protecting.

The political class claim subsidy fraud is the problem and reason subsidy has to be scrapped. Instead of killing corruption, they decided to kill Nigerians with overpriced fuel. They claim we can’t afford cheap petrol and have to make collective sacrifices, but they go ahead to increase cost of governance with 48 ministers, getting free petrol to drive around with huge entourages and award themselves huge salary increases and holiday bonuses. They want to increase the tax net but not the job employment net. Fanciful Western economic theories but not practical solutions to create an industrial takeoff. They don’t even have an idea, instead of building railways to spur industrial growth, they would rather conscript the youth to farms or the army to go fight for the Western imperialists in Niger.

Not only Tinubu but the entire Nigerian political classes are pushing us to the wall. They don’t even know that they exist because of a social contract to make our lives better, not for them to get rich. As Prof Obasi Igwe rightly stated the ESSENCE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO SUBSIDIZE LIFE and SOCIAL CONTRACT IS SOCIAL SUBSIDY AND A GOVERNMENT REMOVING SUBSIDY IS IN BREACH OF THAT CONTRACT.

Tinubu proudly announced the death of subsidy and increased the price by 300% to N600. However due to his ignorant policy of floating the Naira, there has been a 20% fall in Naira value since the last petrol price increase which logically translates to a corresponding increase in the price of petrol, but due to the warning signs that another increase in fuel prices might spark anarchy, he has found a roundabout way to offset the costs, thereby reintroducing subsidies through the backdoor. As well as indirectly stopping the floating or sinking Naira. However, the prices are not reversed to what they were before his economic adventurism whose bill is paid by We the people.

The sociopolitical commentator Dele Farotimi gave a profound analysis that the problem of Nigeria is not corruption but impunity. As we say ‘See Finish’ leads to patronizing and contemptuous relationships. Our leadership is taking the piss, excuse my Cockney. Hmmm, one day the African monkey leadership will go to the market and not return, ending up in someone’s pot. We are not crash dummies and mumus that they can be using to test one chance buses driven off cliffs. I can’t shout, I can’t be bothered, but it will get to a point that if pushed to the wall, we would headbutt you.

Those of us that study the trends have heralded the 250 year return cycle of Oya revolutionary change that brings down unjust global political structures. The last Oya cycle in late 1700s brought the Haiti, US and French Revolutions, before that we had the early 1500s revolutionary change to the Roman Catholic, Ife and Nri civilizations, before that was the late 1200s revolutionary change against Islamic rule in Europe etc

Right now, political, economic and cultural revolutions are brewing.

ESSENCE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO SUBSIDIZE LIFE

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To make life worth living, whether under a communal, capitalist, socialist or whatever order, people surrender some of their individual freedoms and liberties to a central authority, sometimes a ‘Leviathan’ that would apply the economies of scale to harness all the potentials to create a better level of individual and collective freedoms and liberties called civilization.

This social contract is not only the greatest good for the greatest number, but actually the optimal benefits possible for everyone under each circumstance, and such cannot be realized without subsidies, so-called, for the generality.

SOCIAL CONTRACT IS SOCIAL SUBSIDY AND A GOVERNMENT REMOVING SUBSIDY IS IN BREACH OF THAT CONTRACT!

Governments across civilizations must subsidize the major arteries of life, especially:
1. Security
2. Food
3. Health
4. Education
5. Housing
6. Energy/Fuel
7. Transportation
8. Sports, recreation, entertainment.

Some governments even go much further than the above.

These are basic necessities, otherwise called public goods which, not every citizen can provide adequately if at all for themselves and therefore obligatory upon governments to either procure or ensure the most optimal conditions for their existence in fulfilment of their part of the social contract. Subsidies are the _raison_ _d’être_ of governance and substance of the social contract. When citizens have these basics, others can go on buying private aircraft, bulletproof engines, bunkers called houses, and so on, and pay heavy taxes on them.

Nigerian rulers fully understood the need for subsidies, budgeted for them in abundance, BUT stole or embezzled the monies. Nigerians demanded an end to this scam, not an end to subsidies (which would amount to an end to governance itself).

Ideological emptiness, colonial mentality, pathological corruption, inferiority complex, actual lack of patriotism, and functional political illiteracy, all interconnected, are the actual problems of the post-1970 Nigerian comprador or clientele bourgeoisie and their intellectual cohorts waxing all manner of apologetics in favour of imperialism; hence the mistakes upon mistakes that President Tinubu started making from the very word go, both in domestic and external policy. He should not have removed subsidy, because there was none in the first place; all he needed doing was to end the thieveries operating as subsidy, arrest and jail the perpetrators, snatch the accumulated profits from them, plough the proceeds into education, further reduce fuel costs and, by so doing, jumpstart the economy into actual growth, jobs, etc. But, they have to work by the IMF/World Bank playbook, not Nigerian aspirations.

– Prof Obasi Igwe.
Professor of Political Science, University of Nigeria Nsukka

Tinubu’s Sufferhead Abrahamic Hope

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Prince Justice J Faloye

Millions across Nigeria pray fervently every day for prosperity and against enemies, yet we remain the poverty capital of the world. Some say our brand of Abrahamic religions robs us of critical analysis. After a long sojourn abroad, coming home to be woken up everyday by fervent morning prayers, eventually made me accost one of the loudest voices, that of an househelp. I genuinely asked her what she really wanted from God, what was her vision and it’s obstacles, promising to help if possible. She opened her palms helplessly and responded, ‘he should just bless me oo’. What about the enemies? She didn’t know specifically but believed they were the ones hampering her visionless dreams?

This type of spiritual slavery is also prevalent in the collective, as Tinubu stated that it was the spirit of courage that took over him on the podium that made him announce the removal of all fuel subsidies at once, contrary to his manifesto with well laid plans of phased subsidy removal depending on Dangotes refinery production. Fela rightly linked the suffering and smiling in our religious personal lives to the collective suffering and smiling nationwide. Yet, nearly 50yrs later, we are being given baseless hope that the current hardship caused by Tinubus neo-liberal economic policies of fuel subsidy removal and devaluation would miraculously lead to economic prosperity. The how and when we don’t know?

With the Naira to devalued to the point that a Naira to a dollar is heading to over a N1000, Pounds Sterling nosing towards N1500, our imported petrol will pass N1000, grinding the economy to halt due to cost push inflation? How Tinubu’s planned 300% increase in taxation and removal of government subsidies spur economic growth, when the very sector, the private sector that needs money for investment is drained by a government that doesn’t do business. Who will create the jobs, or better still can government jobs distributed mainly through partisanship and nepotism provide more jobs than private investors and industrialization?

Tinubu raised tax revenue (IGR) by 500% in Lagos with no corresponding increase in social welfare or change in our colonial styled economy based on retailing of imports and light manufacturing and processing of foods, beverages and tobacco. The only change in the Lagos economy in the last decade is globally inspired digital economy, through the likes of Instagram and other global social media networks that spurred our digital retail marketing, as well as international ideas like Uber that brought about internet ordered transport and delivery services. With no government support, the youth that had relied on internet scams gradually moved into digital services also buoyed by Afrobeats and Nollywood. That the unemployed youth of Yaba became the silicon valley of Africa was out of necessity is the mother of invention mantra. Nevertheless, though the IT sector could increase income for a few, it often replaces jobs in the retail, transport and other industries.

In 24yrs of his Lagos hegemony, he never provided the key to industrialization, Railways, being the largest contraption of iron and petrochemicals, which could also resolve the traffic that costs Lagos 20% of it’s production, not to talk of pollution and quality of life. Instead all we got in Lagos was an agbero political economy. On a lower level, an agbero doesn’t care whether the car needs a new tire or repairs, his job is to collect money and distribute to the driver, unions, law enforcement etc. Tinubu’s Elite agbero Omo onile rent seeking governance perspective is not about increasing nor improving the scale of production but to share what’s on ground. Kilo wan le, e gbe kini yi wa, whats on ground, bring it let’s share it.

Like the Abrahamic Pastors and Imams that use religion to sell people visionless hope, Tinubu uses tribalism and personal greed, backed by political thugs, terrorists and now institutional violence. There are a few truly Eurocentric misguided proponents of Tinubu’s neo-liberal economic policies but they have no logical ground to stand. Those that propound theories backing removal of subsidies and devaluation can’t show us a single nation that became developed or industrialized by applying these measures anywhere in the Global South. The same IMF structural policies in the Eighties led to the destruction of 66 African and Black Caribbean economies, which were only revived by Chinese investment from 1999.

They can’t show us how these policies ever helped UK, USA, Korea, Japan and the rest of them. Or even one instance where IMF/World Bank advocated such destructive polices to any of the White nations when their economies are in trouble. Why are USA, UK and France fighting oil wars costing trillions in the Middle East, if not to keep the oil prices low for their economy and people, but $10b is too much a subsidy to spend for a $500b economy and 200m people? Why do all these advanced nations make welfare payments to the poor and unemployed? Why do they heavily subsidize agriculture and the millionaire farmers to the point that they subsidize each cow more than the cost price of one cow in Africa? The neo-liberal economists should take a running jump after the slave ships into the blue seas with these racist economic theories that prescribe agriculture as the means to industrialization, instead of the military industrial complex from railways!

Putting aside the lame propaganda of an additional 500,00 hectares to be committed to agriculture by Tinubu federal government that constitutionally doesn’t own land, it is mental slavery through coloniality of knowledge to continue pushing the rhetoric that increased Agriculture and agro-allied industries can bring about heavy industrialization needed to employ tens of millions of youth to wipe out poverty. If you plant yams, all you will develop are yams snacks and food processing, not electronic industries. If you plant oranges and other fruits, all you will get are soft drinks and beverages industries, not car factories. The only thing that can spur heavy industrialization is the iron and petrochenical production systems of railways whose byproducts and skills will spur the growth of related heavy industries.

Nigeria currently ranks fifth in the world and highest in Africa in value added agriculture indices. China – $1.23trillion, India – $487 billion, USA – $196 billion, Indonesia – $145 billion, Nigeria – $104 billion, Brazil – $85 billion followed by Pakistan, Russia, Japan etc. Nigeria ranks high in the world because we have more than averagely exploited all the multiplier effects tied to Agriculture, especially with Foods, Beverages and Tobacco manufacturing subsector that is the largest contributor to our manufacturing gross domestic production. However, the utilization of our Agriculture sector, it has not been able to provide the required employment for our huge population.

It is only heavy manufacturing that can provide jobs for the tens of millions unemployed, whereby a single company can provide a million jobs on its own, like railways, arms and aircraft industries sectors in USA and other advanced nations. The foundation for these type of industries is not mega agricultural farms that are often mechanized, but in the construction of an expansive railway system.

In Yoruba philosophy and spiritual sciences, common sense shows it entails laying Ogun rails to nearly every neighborhood for it to reproduce various steel and petrochemical industries. Ogun, iron is the blood that circulates every minerals in our body and made us function like humans. When we became a collective, it was iron tools used to develop agriculture that fed our civilization. Therefore, without the need of closing our eyes and praying to an Abrahamic God for what is in us, to facilitate our mega population collective transportation and economic development, it is only Ogun that can do.

For an industrial takeoff, Tinubu needs an accelerated building of three West to East lines – Lagos to Calabar, Ilorin to Yola and Sokoto to Maiduguri, which will spread organically to every nook and corner and reconnect our civilizational economics discarded for the North to South railways to coast colonial economics. While every job created in agriculture has a multiplier effect of creating about 2 other jobs in related industries, every job created in railways has a multiplier effect of creating 20 other jobs in other steel and petrochemical industries. But our politicians and academicians are stuck in the slave plantation economics mentality of providing raw materials to our Western Masters in the blind hope of heaven on Earth.

Felas Colomentality, academically known as Coloniality, affects every aspect of the Black Race. We have coloniality of knowledge sources, whereby our leadership models are dependent on Western approval and acknowledgement through their academic, business and media institutions. We have coloniality of power sources whereby we adopt governance models from the West, and fail to correct the maligned institutions left behind after decolonization like the army, Judiciary and neocolonial guards. We have coloniality of being due to our cultural derailment through colonial epistemicide that results in not knowing our true identity as a bonafide civilization and global relevance. We have coloniality of the ecosystem whereby we produce cash crops and raw materials just to fulfill the needs of the Western Powers and consume everything from the West as they dictate the fashion and trends.

Ultimately, Tinubu is a child of coloniality, and all he has to offer is Abrahamic heaven while he continues to make hell out of our current existence. Suffer suffer for world, enjoy for Heaven…

Pan Africanism or nationalism fails without civilizationism

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By Prince Justice Jadesola Faloye

Prof PLO Lumumba, Dr Ifatunde Umar Johnson and Julius Malema speeches raise the passion and consciousness of Africans worldwide, especially with their Pan Africanism that touches on Black political leadership, economic deprivation and cultural disorientation, caused by White Supremacy doctrines and the international financial caste system. I recently watched a video of Prof Lumumba questioning the fate of Pan Africanism and being the solution to many of our problems. He stated that if Africans don’t get rid of their Pan Tribalistic perspectives, many African nations will break up within the next few decades and will be recolonized. The question arises that if we Africans can’t cohabitate peacefully and progressively in our present neocolonial straitjacket nationstates, how are we expected to unite into a bigger conglomeration of Black African peoples? Is it not a case best understood from Karl Marx Social Reproduction theory, that regardless of the institutions and constitutions adopted by Africans, it will be a case of garbage in garbage out?

Pan Africanism has mainly been a geographic concept without much attached to the different cultures and civilizations. The Pan Africanist masterplan has been economic unification followed by political union, but as Dr Roger Amos rightly stated in his book, Blueprint for Black Power, culture, economics and politics are intertwined since Culture is the way we do things, politics is the way we organize to do things while economics is the means used to organize to achieve things, so without culture taken into consideration, economics and politics will fail.

Pan Africanism push for continental unity makes one ask what is a continent and it’s relationship with politics and culture. As Confucius stated the first step of good governance is the rectification of terms. In reality Europe is not a continent, since a continent is a large landmass surrounded by water, and therefore part of Eurasia. Europe is more of a civilizational and racial concept that differentiates it from Asia. Europa meaning the Eu (good) Op(face) is (area) like Ethiopia, the Burnt face area, the land of Blacks. Infact, Western academia input the civilizational considerations of naming the Indigenous African area as sub-Saharan.

Indigenous Africans underwent colonial epistemicide, the denigration and killing of our episteme, the knowledge of our origins, true identity and aspirations, which if not addressed we can’t successfully engage in nation building. There are two civilizations across Africa – the Afroasiatic civilization made up of different peoples that underwent various Eurasiatic imperialism but united by Abrahamic dogma, while the other is the Indigenous African civilization made up of the 2240 tribes that are a continuum of dialects, known as the Niger-Congo ethnolinguistic family, who share the same genetic and cultural origins traced to Nigeria. It was European imperialism that broke the Original African civilization into artificial tribes, whereby a dialect is chosen out of a multitude of dialects in an area to become th standard language of the new social construct called tribes. The dialect chosen as the standard tribal langauge was institutionalized by having the Bible written in it and making it the language of colonial communication. The difference between the standardized languages of two adjacent new created artificial tribes became pronounced since the continuum linking the them are obscured. However, despite the tribal standardization, and the epistemicide that trashed our true history and identity, we like all the three other major civilizations – Judeo-Christian, Afroasiatic and Buddhist – still retain some of our civilizational philosophical attributes.

Africans philosophy is mainly based on binary complementarity while those of the other civilizations are based on Binary Opposition. Africans in the real sense don’t do religions whereby they worship an Almighty God, but practice what is better described as African Spiritual Science. African belief systems don’t separate God from Satan since we scientifcally know that you cant separate negative from positive, from the small atom to humans and Almighty God. To us, God is both good and evil, just like all human beings, and there is no Satan that monopolizes evil nor is God good all the time.

European coloniality has robbed us of a vital stage of aggregation, which is the one between tribalism and universalism called civilizationalism. This is why we arrived at the concept of Pan Africanism without taking cognizance that Africa is made up of two civilizations. Despite it been clear that the first imperialists in Africa were the Asiatic, and most recently while fighting for the African decolonization, we fought under different umbrellas of the Black Power movement brought back by Nnamidi Azikwe from Philadelphia universities and spread to Ghana’s Nkrumah before East, Central and Southern Africa, while Afroasians united under the Pan Arab Movement.

Today, we have the Maghreb North African nations push the Pan Arab Lobby in the African Union while the Original African civilizations made up of numerous Black African tribes and nations cannot unite to save their souls. Afroasians being half African and half Asiatic, either by blood, language or social organization, naturally take to their richer and more successful family side, which is why they work with the European Union to set an immigration boundary to keep away indigenous Africans from the Mediterranean coasts. Yet we talk of Pan Africanism of uniting the whole continent of Africa regardless of the different races and irreconcilable philosophical differences. Even though some Africans are Black, we would find that African Americans not only respect their African origins and have a higher Niger Congo DNA of 75% than groups like Fulani that push the Afroasiatic civilization and have just 49% Niger Congo DNA.

Nnamidi Azikwe made the mistake of Pan Africanism without civilizationism when due to colonial divisive social engineering between Yoruba and Igbo, the two most populous Indigenous African groups, he choose to align with the Fulani led Afroasiatic imperialistic civilization, which resulted in their undue power and hegemony used to subjugate the entire Indigenous African civilization that made up 70% of the Nigerian population. The Fulani Afroasiatic civilization is more geared towards unity to the Maghreb and Middle East that they claim are their origins than to indigenous Africans, which is why Nigeria has not been able to throw it’s full weight behind Black African unity.

It was Archimedes that stated give me a place to stand and I will move the world, unfortunately our academia has failed to give us a civilizational platform to stand and unite. As known, it is who pays the piper that dictates the tune, so our academia continue to push the coloniality of knowledge sources that only serves to obscure our common Original African genetic and cultural origins and linkages. Not only did they disfigure our true origins and identity in their history books, but even tried to confuse us with genetic studies that clearly show the origin of humanity and our culture to be those now called the Yorubas in Southern Nigeria. Even without linguistic evidence that shows that the larger subgroup of the Niger Congo ethnolinguistic family called the Benue-Congo ethnolinguistic family evolved from the confluence of River Niger and Benue, listening to the accent of Prof Lumumba and Malema shows close similarities to those of northeast and North Central Nigeria.

We have more than enough evidence to show the West African origin of humanity, and how the Volta Niger subgroup later evolved into the Benue Congo subgroup that migrated out through the River Benue and Lake Chad’s River Chari into Cameroon, down the Sangha River via Gabon into the Kongo River basin, where those known as Western Bantus settled, then up the Ubangi River to the Central Africa lakes/River Nile area where the Marshariki Bantus spread to the East African coasts and down to the South African Ngunilands. Our genetic and cultural linkages have to be taught to every African to free us from the restrictive Pan Tribalistic perspectives, as well as our common philosophical attributes. Like every Afroasians knows the Crescent of the Moon/Scimitar as their civilizational totem and the European Christians recognize the Cross/Spatha as their civilizational totem, every indigenous African should know that the leopard/cheetah/panther is the African civilizational totem.

It is only after understanding our civilization that we can gainfully employ it as the foundation of our institutions and nations, and also develop civilizational goods and economics to uplift ourselves. Currently, all African governments are run by a neocolonial guard that owes it’s allegiance to foreign civilizations which is why they have not uplifted the people they are supposed to represent. We at ASHE Foundation have suggested that to make our electoral commission truly independent and political.system truly representative, our long term cultural leadership and stakeholders should be the ones to choose leadership and membership of the electoral bodies and serve as the guarantors of the system run by professional politicians who are short termist by nature. Modernism prevents us from understanding that Western democracies were formed and backed by their monarchs.

Following the 1832 abolition of African slavery, under the auspices of Queen Victoria, European conservatism was born, to keep Blacks at bay, leading to the mid 1800s formation of the UK Conservative Party, US Republican Party as well as Christian Democratic Parties across continental Europe. About fifty years later, the working classes created worker Parties to push for the rights of White workers from their Conservative landlords and employers that were apt to use cheap Black labour to keep wages down. All other civilizations also back their governance systems and keep out other civilizations, with China even forming a civilizational state. Unfortunately, Africans could only move from tribalism to universalism which made a mess of their sociopolitical and economic existence.

It is only after Original African civilizationism has been well articulated and disseminated to every African that we can save our nations and unite on the international stage for global racial parity. A united Original African civilizational lobby is required to come to the negotiations table in the African Union, to counter Arab Lobby imperialistic designs, like making the East African Afro-Arabic trade language Swahili our official language. A united Original African civilizational unity can negotiate better in the UN for the Black Race. Afroasiatic civilizations use Caliphates as geographic demarcations, while the concept of nationstates is a product of European imperialism first used by the Dutch in 1600s to keep it’s proceeds of African exploitation to itself away from the Roman and French empires, and globalized after the Napoleonic wars and the independence of Haiti, so we should concentrate on civilizational states.

This shouldn’t be viewed as divisive like the Western nations are apt to categorize pro-Black as anti-White. We are not discriminating against our Afroasiatic cousins but only trying to accentuate our common civilizational origins, experiences and aspirations, which would help them to appreciate their African side, ultimately towards a loose federation of African ethnicities for the self determination of our culture, free from cultural imperialism within and from outside.

Prince Justice Jadesola Faloye, President ASHE Foundation is the author of The Blackworld: Evolution to Revolution and other books, documentaries etc

Tinubu will kill Nigeria for others to resurrect it

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If care is not taken, Nigeria will go through tribal, religious and economic class upheavals and revolutions over the next few years.

Though I have spent the last few decades trying to educate people through books, documentaries and a think tank towards a peaceful progressive development, I am gradually losing hope and reassessing some of my peers logic that a bloody revolution is necessary to change a system rotten from head to tail. They argued that no nation has become great without long spells of instability before finding the best way forward. China went through decades of upheaval, so did England, USA, Russia where millions were killed or displaced before they finally settled down to sustainable development. It appears Nigeria has exhausted all gentleman’s agreement to progress towards an egalitarian society.

Rotational presidency was to create a culturally fair and just leadership selection, however a Tinubu presidency has effectively killed the egalitarian dream. And, also that of restructuring since his main backing is the anti-restructuring Northern Afroasiatic powerbase. Igbos, Deltans and Middlebelters are no fools to continue with a system biased against them. So, what we will see is a cultural revolution led by the minorities whose combined numbers are greater than that of the Northwest or Southwest.

Tinubu presidency has not only served a death kneel to our just political coexistence by going against cultural justice and cooperation of rotational presidency, but also against religious tolerance and cooperation. In addition to the Southwest taking Southeast’s turn, his Muslim-Muslim ticket will create long term problems since the Christians won’t support a return of power to the Muslim North nor would the North support a Northern Christian after Tinubu’s regime, otherwise the Christians will believe they are giving way to Islamic hegemony.

The most common way to ignite a revolution has been economics – tax and exploitative governance by an opulent insensitive regime. In USA, the American Revolution started with the Boston Tea Party, protesting British exploitative taxes without representation. In France, the revolution was ignited by the loss of it’s Haitian slave colony that provided the bulk of it’s foreign income, leading to fall in the income of the middle class and masses, while the monarchy still flaunted the trappings of wealth. In Russia, the First World War deprivations felt across the society led to the Bolsheviks Revolution, even though there had been rumblings over the immoral opulence of the Tsar ruling class.

President Tinubu’s irresponsible removal of the oil subsidies that the masses and production system relied upon, with no accompanying noticeable cut in the cost of governance and exuberance of the political class, is pushing the masses to the brink. Based on his precedence, Tinubu can’t give what he doesn’t have since for 24yrs of Tinubu’s direct and indirect governance of Lagos, the thrust of his governance was increased taxation of the poor and reduce government social responsibility. This is the economic trajectory of Tinubus leadership which on a national scale can rightly be called neo-liberal economics.

Neo-liberal economic policies came from the early 1980s Reagan-Thatcher conservative era backed by the Chicago School of Economics led by Prof Milton Friedman. It postulates the removal of government socioeconomic responsibility, removing subsidies to small and medium enterprises while allowing monopolies to fester. Trickle down economics, some called it. This is an economic ideology that has failed across Africa and brought huge income inequalities that destablizes the political systems, and brings governments down.

Unfortunately, the coloniality of knowledge has miseducated Tinubu and the political and intelligentsia to blindly follow the neo-liberal economic model. While the USA, UK, France have gone to wars to keep petrol cost down for their local production, Africans are advised to remove government responsibility to keep petrol prices down for their own local production.

Tinubu in one swoop removed petrol subsidies upon which the economy’s production system rested. Removed educational subsides and exponentially increased school fees in a country of 50% literacy rate. Removed government administration of the forex system, resulting in the crash of the Naira when over 70% of our raw materials and our durable manufactues like cars are imported. So imagine the negative multiplier effects of a follow follow neo-liberal economic policy across the economy.

Despite removing government socioeconomic responsibility, he still intends to increase citizen socioeconomic responsibilities by increasing direct and indirect taxes and fees by 300% in the poverty capital of the world. He has announced the widening of the tax net, especially to the markets, and to farms with the reintroduction of marketing boards known to sap profits of farmers for politicians and bureaucrats. With the complete implosion of our economic system, it doesn’t take a psychic to see we are fast moving towards a class revolution whereby the poor will rise to destroy the rich political class.

However, despite the economic deprivations through reduced Government socioeconomic responsibility and taxing the poor, Tinubu could still avert a revolution if he had the knowledge and will to not only drastically reduce the obscene cost of governance, but most importantly build the economic liberating infrastructure to bring about an industrial takeoff to provide employment for the tens of millions unemployed and in abject poverty.

There are only two ways in times like these that the political class can mobilize the people away from revolution, which is either by going to foreign war for resources or to engage in massive economic liberating infrastructural development, coupled with sloganeering and the posture of a leadership with it’s sleeves rolled up, leading the sacrifice and war against poverty/underdevelopment from the front.

Obviously, Tinubu can’t go to war like Western democracies do, and nothing in his 24yrs of governance shows that he knows or is interested in building massive industrial infrastructure. In his 24yrs of governance, Tinubu only built a mere 16kms of Metroline out of a possible 160kms that would have transformed the Lagos economy.

Only, and ONLY, an accelerated industrial development by declaring an economic state of emergency for three years to build at least 3,000kms of standard guage railways, three West to East Railways – Lagos-Calabar, Ilorin to Yola, Sokoto to Maiduguri, could provide enough employment through iron and steel sector. Anything else is mere management of a neocolonial economy. A complex railway network being the largest steel and chemical framework, is globally known to start the process of innovation that births technological development and industrialization.

Unfortunately, Tinubu vision is limited to conscripting 500,000 youth to the army with Agbado, Gaari and Beans. Once again, the coloniality of knowledge sources has miseducated him to believe that agriculture and agro-allied industries is the route to industrialization. In reality, Agriculture byproducts and multiplier effects are limited to processing of food, beverages and tobacco, while railways multiplier effects and byproducts are heavy industries of automobiles, electronics and production of durable manufactures. Comparatively, for every billion Naira spent in agriculture and railways, railways will produce at least ten times more jobs.

In conclusion, based on the cultural, religious and economic quagmires outlined above, Tinubu’s renewed hope is that of provoking a revolution through cultural, religious and economic injustices. We saw how the Senate joked about letting the poor breathe, which shows that the poor have to wrestle for anything they need. The current system is not self-regulating and in order to birth a new just sustainable system with a higher moral political consciousness, some analysts state there can be no birth without blood letting.

The Vampire Economics of BAT

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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.

Tinubu’s Motormouth Economic Governance

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By Prince Justice Jadesola Faloye

In addition to what appears as jumping the gun in his inauguration speech by announcing petrol subsidy stoppage, which instantly destabilized our economic lives with high fuel prices, President Tinubu also announcing his intention to unify the Black market and official exchange rates is an empty but dangerously expensive boast that would devalue the Naira and conflagrate our economic problems. There can be no unification of foreign exchange rates that would make the Black Market redundant unless the demand fed by the Black market is sufficiently taken care of by official supply, returning to the Jonathan days when your ATM could buy any currency anywhere. If he devalues the official Naira rate to the Black market rate, the Black Market Rate will further fall as long as offical supply bottlenecks remain. The key is that it’s not about the brilliance of a policy, both being good, but shoddy implementation.

There are two components that led to the present yawning gap between the two rates – civilizational corruption and the economics of it. Tinubu can reverse the first component that I had warned about when Buhari came to power, which is the civilizational economic nepotism. When the North comes to power, especially the likes of Buhari that wants to distribute the spoils of democratic victory, they knowingly widen the gap between the two rates, then get the CBN to allocate his people foreign currencies which they can sell on the Black Market for quick profit. For Southerners with a large number of Western educated elites and political jobbers, the civilizational method is to award inflated contracts. The first has no audit trial which is why Buhari way is near foolproof while there is always a paper trail for Southern corruption, I digress..

What really matters is that Tinubu will discontinue the Buhari corruption model since Northerners control the Black Market forex business. However, threatening and attacking the Black Market operators will only drive them underground and widen the gap with a risk premium. For Buhari APC government to create the yawning gap, they pushed corruption propaganda to justify tampering with the import list. They pushed the propaganda that Jonathan’s corruption had emptied our cash reserves while it actually had over $30b. The lie was the justification to tamper with the forex import list. In addition to the 41 items named by the CBN in June 2015, they went about banning and reinstating foreign school fees, removing and re-adding Bureau De Change operators among other things, all to destablize the fragile foreign exchange mechanism.

Now to reverse it, Tinubu will need more than propaganda, because the ruinous 8yrs of APC has actually pushed the economy to the brink, as foreign debt has increased from $7b under GEJ to now $47b with a large amount of extremely high interest fixed tenure Eurobonds. For Tinubu to seriously attempt to unify the rates, he must repair the economy, especially our balance of payments, then slowly re-liberalize the buying of foreign exchange. I emphasize slowly and strategically because if he fumbles into it, like with the Oil Subsidy removal that has led to a nearly 300% increase in fuel price in the last month when subsidies are still paid, the forex exchange rates will drastically crash as everyone jumps into repatriating capital gains and profits, before it finally stabilizes at a far worse rate.

As noted in my previous article on the fuel subsidy debacle, this is not an honest one off mistake but a long standing problem with Tinubu’s style of governance which is mainly propaganda. Until I started traveling out of Lagos, Tinubu had made me and other Lagosians think he was a miracle worker. When I travelled to Sarakis Kwara and saw good roads all over, went to Anambra, Imo, Rivers and other states, I realized that there was nothing special in Lagos since all governors only built and rebuilt the few State Roads, while the roads branching off them to 90% of Nigerian residences remained untarred. Tinubu’s main selling point was increasing Lagos IGR which was only beneficial to his personal account balances through agbero commissions, while neglecting the fact that it wasn’t achieved by increasing productivity nor changing the colonial economic foundations, but through multiple taxation of the unorganized sector of traders, artisans and small and medium enterprises into a poverty trap.

It was this Tinubu’s governance by propaganda that was the contribution of ACN to APC as the Chief Priest of Propaganda, Lai Mohammed became the key and only working figure in Buhari 8yrs. So it is nearly impossible to change the unserious governance of tokenism and propaganda that has worked for him for 24yrs and brought him to presidency. However, he and state governors can play the games at state level, it is unworkable at the federal level especially after 8yrs of destroying the economy. The propaganda can pay his pocket but not the hungry 133 Millon people in abject poverty that might soon explode into social unrest.

Despite the goofing on subsidy removal, someone will be profiting by lining their pockets with the monies already allocated for June subsidies, as they have tactically accepted a N500 per liter pump price. Or where does the money of the difference between N186 per liter and the now accepted N500 per liter probably worth billions go? Also, the fallacy is that if you remove subsidy, you can prescribe a pump price, so this N500 per liter is only for the month of June and we will probably experience the full and higher price of probably up to N1000 per liter in July when the subsidy withdrawals actually kicks in.

Tinubu is actually in a fix which he played a major role to create, which is why I tell Obidients to thank their stars that Tinubu and not Peter Obi has to clear up the karmatic mess. If it was Peter Obi that first came in people will blame him and the Igbos, so let Tinubu carry his double wahala of a dead body economy he conspired to kill. At least until the Judiciary delivers the judgement months down the line, by which time it will be obvious to the people how APC has destroyed the economy. In 2012, President Jonathan actually tried to remove the oil subsidies as a precondition for Chinese to build Six refineries, but Tinubu colluded with others to engineer protests to sabotage the deal. It was the vile propaganda of subsidy theft instead of the real reasons for subsidy withdrawal, that led to the corruption propaganda which APC used to ride to power in 2015.

Ten years later, petrol demand has exponentially increased, our Naira has crashed and we are in serious debts that our creditors will demand the removal of subsidies to continue our credit rating. If Tinubu and the rest of his political class had kept our refineries in good shape or allowed the removal of subsidies in 2012 to build 6 refineries, Nigeria would have been able to supply below market price crude oil to the refineries for cheap petrol for local demand. As it is, we only have Dangote single refinery to wait upon which might be too late to save Tinubus government. As it is, there is no money in APC government coffers to provide palliatives for the huge petrol price increases which will bring about wage push inflation as workers demand increase in wages to cover the increase in transport, food and other goods. It also doesn’t have the foreign reserves and favorable balance of payments to unify the exchange rates now..

To compound our problems is the tendency of Tinubu and his APC to trivalize and tribalize issues to deflect responsibility. We see their ongoing Tribalistic propaganda to blame their electoral losses in Yorubaland on Igbos. They painted the Oil Subsidy thieves as Deltan militants. And, blamed the whole country consumption patterns in 2015 when there was the 300% fall in Naira, despite no proof of increase in importation of consumer goods within the same period, all to distract from Buhari machinations to widen the Black markets rates. They are already pushing the rhetoric that marketers are greedy and unpatriotic for selling their petrol stock at expected replacement costs, and that a forex exchange cabal wants to sabotage the unification of forex rates without increasing supply to fulfil the demand for Black market Forex. So, we might have Northern forex dealers colored bad.

The greatest issue apart from the oil subsidies and forex debacles, is that they show no sign of knowing how to deal with our huge unemployment and reliance on durable manufactures, which can only be tackled through industrialization with an emergency massive railway construction of three East West railway lines. So one can’t but wonder how there won’t be anarchy and revolution of the teeming millions unemployed and in abject poverty. First thing first is for Tinubu to put aside cheap propaganda and Motormouth economic governance. Enu o se, talk is cheap, and he must be serious. But just like Buhari of 1983/2015 you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Is Tinubu’s failed first day in office a sign of things to come?

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By Prince Justice Jadesola Faloye

In a democracy, constructive critical appraisers start work the same time a president is sworn in. The removal of fuel subsidy is a good policy but it’s implementation was woeful. Fuel scarcity and price increases is the first fruit of President Tinubus victory. It was gross information mismanagement to announce the removal of oil subsidies in an inauguration speech, especially since it wasn’t with immediate effect. This will spur inflation in food and consumer goods across the board, unfortunately dippimg more people in abject poverty without the necessary social security nets and palliative measures. Tinubu should have known better that immediately you announce a future price increase of any commodity, hoarding and prices increases occur anywhere in the world. Economic policies should have a human face and brain.

With this obvious socioeconomic insensitivity,Tinubu has shown that he is a continuation of the socioeconomic insensitivity of Buhari APC government. If Tinubu was renewed hope of bringing a new type of responsible governance, he would have waited a few weeks to study and allievate the social impact of such a monumental policy which the outgoing government knowingly proposed on its way out. If it was any other party that came into power, the wise move would have been to revisit the issue and not blindly follow a known socially irresponsible government.

Then again, some would argue that it wasn’t an oversight or mistake, but this is how Tinubu has been known to increase the tax or debt burden on poor Lagosians, without any means or sensitivity test. It’s on record how he stubbornly introduced tolls on roads built with government money. The ignored cries of agony of traders and artisans against various multiple taxation schemes, without any corresponding social benefits. We have seen videos of Tinubu advocating reducing the disposal income of the poor and SME (small and medium enterprises) by increasing taxes, from which he takes a percentage through Alpha Beta.

In addition to unjust taxes and removal of subsidies, his announcement of marketing boards should send shivers down the spine of the agricultural sector. In Lagos, Tinubu organized the informal sector not for increased production or social benefits but solely to provide the bulk of his taxation and IGR, and now he has proposed the reintroduction of a failed Marketing boards policy that resulted in politicians milking poor farmers for political funds. Isnt this the nationwide spread of his Agberocracy and economics whereby he will extort farmers with multiple taxation collected by an agbero Marketing board.

Marketing boards of the sixties and seventies were blamed for the destruction of our rural agricultural sector and mass rural to urban migration since it was obvious that the city dwellers were making more from their agricultural produce like cocoa than the farmers in the rural areas. This brought an end to groundnut pyramids and cocoa rich farmers until President Ibrahim Babaginda started the slow liberalization of our agriculture sector, enabling farmers to enjoy their full profits. Over the years, our agriculture sector has grown with more informed and financially able farmers. No informed investor wants to engage his funds in a market controlled by the government. However Tinubu wants to return us to the era of marketing boards, instead of further aiding private market structures for finance, seedlings and fertilizers. The pertinent question, away from empty political rhetoric, is what percentage of our youths want to go into rural peasant agriculture. Agriculture in developed nation is a bigman business like Dangotes. Pushing agriculture as the greatest emoloyer and mainstay of an economy is colonial slave plantation mentality that has never uplifted any Black nation.

It is only though industrialization that we can stimulate enough employment for our teeming millions of unemployed youth. Unfortunately, when one reads through President Tinubu’s inauguration speech, it is obvious that he and his team have no idea of how to uplift the Nigerian economy through industrialization. The Oldman is basically focussed on the improved exploitation of the colonial economy, especially the food, beverages and tobacco that accounts for over 70% of our manufacturing sector. Iron and steel subsector, the foundation of an industrialization, currently accounts for less than 5% of our manufacturing production. President Tinubu is unaware that it is the emergency building of a railway complex, known to have the highest employment multiplier effects, that can stimulate heavy industrialization.

Throughout the world, building railway complexes precedes industrial and technological development simply because a railway network is the largest iron/steel and chemical framework to start the process of innovation that births technological development. Just as he took 24yrs to build a mere 16 kilometers of rail, the same time span USA used to build 14000km of rail that launched their industrial revolution, Tinubu is unaware that he needs to urgently change the colonial economy constricted by the North to South railway system, to a self sustaining economy with three West to East lines – Lagos-Calabar, Ilorin to Yola and Sokoto to Maiduguri to reinstate our civilizational economy before the advent of the British.

It appears Tinubu’s Lagos model of weaponizing poverty is continuing and he will only focus on increasing control and taxing of our agriculture sector, of which he will claim a percentage through his Alpha Beta, to finance his political empire. Hopefully this is not a one chance bus that might end up being Buhari ProMax. As Yoruba say, ati kekere lati n pitan iroko, we hail iroko tree from scrubs, so these anti-people policies on the first day of Tinubus presidency shows what to expect for the next few years, unless the Judiciary grabs the wheel before we plunge off the cliff into socioeconomic hell. The unserious and not ready for governance complain it’s too early to critic the government, but We won’t wait until we are pushed off the cliff. Hey, been here since morning, Emilokan to buy fuel oo!