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economics

Tinubu’s Sufferhead Abrahamic Hope

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…

The Economic History and Future of The Black Race

The Black Race will attain global prosperity when its major groups can fully exploit their socioeconomic advantages in their largest market – Nigeria – the Negro Area! With the largest and most diverse Black population based in a naturally rich and fertile West African sub-region, this has been the springboard of the majority of ancient and current global economies and empires.

Africa

Cradle Of Civilisation

Proven to be the origin of humanity, it has been the source of resources both human and natural through the various stages of human evolution and development. Initially it’s rich ecosystem full of protein building DNA foods like palm oil and kennels, flying termites etc was used to advance the Homo species. It is noted that different homo species that migrated out of the area lost the opportunity to further evolve and evidence shows that the more advanced species always evolve from the area to colonize their less evolved that had spread across the globe.
The first agricultural tools were devised there 70,000 yrs before it spread to Eurasia. After Homo Erectus evolution to Homo Sapien Sapien and the Ice Age, when Eurasia defrosted, structured thought and analysis was passed from Nigeria to as far as China, in the form of the Ifa divination system that formed the basis of I Ching and other knowledge bases.
The two world population centers, due to their fertile natural habitats, were the Indus Valley and present day Nigeria. From the Northern Nigerian grasslands eastwards to Kashmir, India all that was available was desert land, through which the first global trade network was established and known as the Trans-Sahara trade route.

African gold and cotton was exchanged for Asian silk. Midway trading empires were to evolve in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, which synergized the civilizations of the two fertile regions into technological feats and religions.

Due to their scant environments Egypt, the Middle East and later Southern Europe were to survive exchanging West African gold brought to the North African coast with Indian Spices and food. Though the trade between Africans and Indians were initiated by Black Africans, Eurasians in the Caucasian Mountains of Iran and Russian eventually drove back the Black Africans from the Black empire, Elam on the northwest of India, to Mesopotamia and then to the Nile Delta in order to control the trade.

shackleWhen Eurasians took over the Greek islands across the Nile Delta, the trade route of African goods switched to Ethiopia and later Carthage. Eurasians then shifted from Greece to Rome directly across Carthage in order to once again control the trade. In what is solid proof that the main source of African produce came from West Africa, subsequent empires after the destruction of Egypt and Carthage were westward along the North African coast.

The westward spread along the North African coast led to a corresponding population increase in Southern Europe. Also, the coming together of the races in Egypt and along the North African coast led to the creation of Semite/mulatto groups like the Jews, Arabs and Berbers. The Eurasians were to adopt African practises from Ancient Egypt, especially religion to create an order of knowledge and laws to unite and focus their people, in the form of Christianity and the Holy Roman Empire. Africans were labelled the Worshippers of the Dead – Nekro Manteia in Greek, which later became Nigro Mantia in Latin and the mantia was later dropped and it became Negro, Nigger, Niger in modern European languages.

However the adaptation of African Religion led to the corruption of revering ancestors to that of money and scare resources, as people with resources were labelled unbelievers and marked out for attack, domination and exploitation in the name of God. Due to the intermarrying and the creation of mixed races, Eurasians were to leave their Afro-Asian offspring in charge of their occupied African territories. This led to the Arabs, with the creation of Islam, taking over from their Mesopotamian strongholds through Egypt to Northwest Africa, ultimately to control West African gold trade routes.

The Arabs were to extend their empires to Morocco and through Tunis (Carthage) invaded Europe, where they were to rule for 500 years until Europeans were able to convert Chinese recreational gunpowder to military use. From about 1276, Europeans were to push out the Arab and Black Muslims and Portugal gained its first foothold on African soil in 1415 with the capture of Ceuta. They slowly moved along the coast and by 1440s reached West Africa where they were to meet the two largest Original African kingdoms – Bini and Kongo.

symbol2From 1440s to 1500, Europeans engaged in mutually beneficial trade with the African kingdoms. At the time they discovered that West Africa had a wide range of goods apart from gold that could be traded with the sub-Indian continent. There were natural and semi-manufactured products like cotton and most types of clothing, sugar cane and tobacco as well as beads. Among the various African goods copied was the sugarcane planted on the islands off the Africa coast.
However, with the stumbling of Colombus upon the Americas, the Europeans decided to turn the Americas into plantations to duplicate tropical African goods. Unfortunately, due to the harsh rich insect life on the plantations, only those with sickle traits could survive and Africans were the only ones with such immunity. Hence, the birth of Trans-Atlantic Slavery and the beginning of the African Nightmare!

Since Portuguese and Spanish Jewish were the initial merchants, Portugal and Spain were to become world powers under the auspices of the Holy Roman Empire. Pope Alexander was to allocate West Africa and Brazil to Portugal and all American lands to the west of Brazil to Spain in 1497. This angered Northwest Europeans like the British and Francis, the King of France that demanded, ‘I should very much like to see the clause in Adam’s will that excludes me from a share’. This led to the breakup of Catholic Church within 50years of setting foot on the West African Garden of Eden as the British and French attacked the Catholics on sea and created their own religious sect called Protestantism.

By 1568, the Jews in Spain and Portugal revolted and moved to Holland to create a vibrant economy based on African slavery and American plantations. Away from the vagaries of monarchs, the Jews in Netherlands created the first modern joint stock companies to free their trade from political decisions. Hence, the Dutch built a global economy and dominance that lasted nearly a hundred years.

The English and French were to take over from the Dutch due to the fact that their political backing pursed a policy of offloading their citizens to the Americas where they built ‘colonies of settlements’ as opposed to the Dutch colonies of trade. Eventually, they were to get an upper hand as they restricted trade to their nationals which killed off Dutch business. The British were to dominate the world since they easily converted their slaves ships to warships used to attack and seized territory.

West AfricaThe bulk of the slaves were initially taken from the Senegambia and Angola grasslands on the outskirts of the Black heartlands situated in the forest. However, at the peak of the slave trade majority of slaves were to come from the Nigerian coasts called the Slave Coast, where 400,000 guns were dumped every year to fuel anarchy and war that produce more slaves. The British were by far the largest slave dealers followed by the French.

Just like the Romans that got kicked out of Africa by their offspring left in Africa, the European offspring in the Americas were to kick out the British, create their own state and brand of Christianity. The British and French had overstretched their resources fighting with each other and their attempt to pass down the costs resulted in French and American Revolution.

The French Revolution at home gave Africans in the Caribbean Islands the chance to launch their own Ogun Revolution in the worst slave island. The Africans launched the revolution with an Ogun festival in August 1789, which led to the freeing of Africans across the Caribbean and chasing the colonists from South America.

US President

In the meantime, the USA grew rich on slavery used to plant cotton and tobacco, of which a sizable proportion was sold in West Africa, and the production of arms. However, there were numerous bloody revolts and from the experience of the Haitian Revolution, the European merchants began to rethink their business structure. The push really came from the British merchants that realized that their cousins in the Americas now possessed a huge unfair cost advantage with their large slave labour. So they pushed for colonization, whereby Africans would be enslaved in their own lands to produce the crops required, instead of being shipped to the Americas where they caused bloody expensive revolts. Eventually the business classes concentrated in North USA overwhelmed the Southern farmers, who had used the economic power derived from slavery to wield enormous political power over them, as most presidents came from Virginia to the South.

As the arms industry had grown with the slave trade, the initial fall in the trade had seen the iron diverted to other means like the building of railroads which opened up the North American market. When slavery ended and the building of railroads had reached an optimum level, the likes of JP Morgan and Carnegie were to fully turn to the arms industry as they took over popular sovereignity and governments.

Africa4The British, having lost its American markets turned to China, and in order to give them a nearby Launchpad they built every infrastructure in Japan in the late 1800s. Also, with the creation of the machine gun, they and others began the SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA officially launched with the Berlin Conference. The British, being more knowledgeable thanks to the Royal Geographic Society, took the juiciest parts of Africa – the Gold Coast (Ghana), the Slave Coast (Nigeria), the Gold Desert (South Africa) and Egypt. Although the French took the largest landmass, most of their colonies were desert lands with less people and resources combined than the single British colony of Nigeria.

The huge Congo Basin, mostly on less fertile highlands, was not desired by the Western powers and was given to Leopold of Belgium, being a nephew of Queen Victoria. The Germans were to take Tanzania, Namibia and Rwanda. The Europeans, especially the French and Germans, were to exploit Africa and use the money to develop Eastern Europe and Russia.

The partition of Africa was not equal and lead to a war among the European colonists called the First World War. The war was to be won by those with African colonies with the most human and natural resources. Most important, it became obvious that capitalism was not capable of moving the economy forward without government investment through the war machinery. Private investors were naturally unwilling to move the required investment into the research and designing of new consumer goods, so the government had to go to war to divert resources. This was to be known as the military industrial complex.

wrldWr1Before the First World War, designs of the automobile and radio had reached an advanced stage but private investment won’t support. However with the war, the government invested in what could be used to transport military personnel and their communication, which after the war became consumer goods in form of cars, radios and television. When the cycle of new products came to an end, there was a Great Depression which was only brought to an end with the Second World War and the development of war planes.

This was a war and boom cycle continues till today since after the 2nd World War came the Cold war, which brought government investment into computing technology and the internet that are at the core of todays’ world economy. In periods of low consumer demand, usually experienced every 7-14yrs, overheads were balanced through the emptying of existing stock and the development of new stock by going to war.

Nations that failed to push their economies with war planning and the military industrial complex were to face revolutions in their countries, like Russia and China, and had to evolve communist/socialist central planned economies to override the problem of moving private investment into required areas. Also, the Western nations developed welfare systems to pacify their masses from revolutions. With France and others having heavily invested in Russia before their revolution, Russia was able to maintain its level of development while helping China build its infrastructure. However, Russia was also to use military investment to keep its economy going and unemployment down.

African PrayDue to Africans saving their European masters from the Germans and others in the two world wars, Africans worldwide had the moral capital to defeat the oppressors, or at least to gain more political freedoms if not economic freedoms. In the 1960s, most Africans got their civil rights and political independence, but which didn’t count for much without economic independence.

Their economies were destroyed and left moribund by the end of the 1990s, but thankfully in the 2000s were to enjoy high commodity prices from the Chinese, who also built up infrastructure.

China, unlike the Europeans, was to devise a better way to deal with its overheads and employment demands by sending ‘construction soldiers’ instead of military soldiers to Africa and South America. Although built at profit margins much lower than global rates and without imperialistic ambitions, China has been able to keep its economic engine going without a military industrial complex.

Lagos Nigeria
It is hoped that with the building of infrastructure, Africans will able to exploit their largest market, Nigeria, which all above mentioned empires had gained global prosperity from exploiting its human and natural resources. Nigeria at the core of a unified Pan-African market and government would be used to uplift the race and most importantly bring about an era of global economic justice.  

Anti-Eshu Libel Campaign

Yoruba God

Esu (Eshu)

There is brewing controversy over what Original African traditionalists call the libelling of Eshu by Christians and Muslims, who equate Eshu to Satan or the Devil.
There are plans for educational, intellectual and especially legal challenges to stop the wrong usage. Eshu is not SATAN but the God of Information instrumental to the creation of the Ifa divination system – a system transferred to Asia nearly 6,000 years ago to form the basis of the I-Ching, Buddhism and Western Astrology.

Original African belief systems never had a SATAN figure, or believed that there was a diametrically opposite of God. From the smallest bit of nature, known as the atom, reflected in every other thing, positive and negative attract and exist side by side. Original Africans, Chinese and Indians believed in the natural laws of retributive justice known as karma/Yorubas Esan/Igbos Ofo and Ogu.
To them God was almighty and encompassing both good and evil, and that it was for each individual to decide which to choose and be prepared to reap what they sow.

The blame is laid at the foot of the likes of Samuel Johnson, Ajayi Crowther and other Christian returnees that translated the Bible and later the Koran into local languages using superficially similar but fundamentally different concepts and words.
Original Africans reckon that Abrahamic religionists used the misconception to label vast African knowledge bases evil by mischievously equating them to the work of the devil, thus scaring Africans from their true histories, sciences and philosophies.

Also many blame the concept of the Devil, and the relegation of personal responsibility, to the prevalence of corruption in modern Africa.
africa_godsSince the 1970s upsurge in pseudo-conservative Pentecostalism and Islamic Fundamentalism in Nigeria, there has been an upsurge in corruption, Prince Justice opined.
If we complain about the fall in morality, we must question those who set the moral standards, which is no other than the Abrahamic religions.
If every single character in the Bible from the one that 419’ed his father for inheritance, to David that sent a man to death to take his wife was a flaw character/criminal but forgiven and blessed by God, while the only erring character in Yoruba mythology, Shango, a king was pushed to suicide for a simple misdemeanour, it is obvious which sets a higher moral standard.
Every single Nigerian admits that corruption will fall if officials are made to swear by local Gods, instead of foreign permissive unjust Gods.

esuWhile Original Africans continue to profess their ancient freedom to worship and tolerance tenets, they seek fairness in
the portrayal of their beliefs based on live and let live and wonder why they have to be publicly misrepresented.
Talks are on-going to launch legal suits to stop the wrong usage, while some people want to go further by seeking punitive damages against CAN and Supreme Islamic council equal to the amount realized from the sale of Yoruba Bibles and Korans, since Eshu as Satan was the key selling point in converting Africans.