Economic Issues
It is not the economy; it is a power game, stupid -By Jimanze Ego-Alowes
The Guardian just reported that the finance minister was advising Nigerians. In the words of The Guardian of December 18, 2014: Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has expressed the need for Nigerians to henceforth view the country as a non-oil producing nation, and declared that efforts were on to explore other sources of revenue.
On paper, that is worthy. But on the streets of Lagos, Abuja and other Nigerian capitals, that admonition is not observable. It is futile to so demand of Nigerians at this late hour. And the reasons are simple. Modern and post civil war Nigeria is constructed as an oil-boom, oil-bonanza state. And that Nigeria has since General Gowon lived, as a state where reward or punishment has neither logic nor relationship to one’s labours or malfeasances. Crooks emerged as celebrated and celebrative billionaires and to compliment that, murderers were marketed as nationalists and even sages, and thugs who preceded Boko Haram by burying folks alive were tagged as revolutionary humanists. Apparently, everybody endured the lie because there was oil bonanza to loot. And Nigeria was constructed along those lies.
But like in all organic systems, the Nigerian environment itself and its inhabitants, in short its whole ecology evolved and adjusted their beings to live and prosper in a bonanza state. Now, no amount of preacher man’s skills or feminine charm offensive can alter the situation. Only one thing can. And it is hinted in the holy books. It is destroy this temple, and we will rebuild it. Nigeria must be reconstructed to work as a normal society. The society Gowon constructed was built on the philosophy that war is an economic gain to the victors. So, Gowon consciously or otherwise instituted war and the threat of war as permanent policies. Perhaps, what was not known to Gowon, his sages and his overrated super perm secs, is that wars and their plunders don’t pay, not even the victors. Wars never made for a sustainable economy. No economy was ever built on war and the worst is internal war. The reason is simple. War destroys humanity. Thus if the cost of your prosperity is your destroyed humanity, you need to consult your babalawo and ask what has gone wrong, why am I prosperous?
Simply put, Gowon and successor Generals completely and disastrously mismanaged their victories and in consequence ruined Nigeria, virtually beyond repairs. Rather than use the victory to build the whole they chose to use it to rob the part, perhaps, not suspecting that the part is in the whole. Only time was needed and the part, the purpose damaged part, metastasizes, and infests the whole. And that is exactly where we are now – ebeano. To reverse that order you don’t need economic reengineering. You need political bulldozers and caterpillars. The economy is an arm of the polity. Yes it is the economy that ‘kicks’ the polity but the polity is the mother and womb of the economy.
There is no way we can have a healthy economy in a diseased body, within our diseased polity. It is like wanting to have a healthy fetus in a sick womb.
The first healthiness of the fetus is in the health of the mother womb. Truth is that our obsession with the economy is ill guided, at least, at this historical time. A man is not and does not begin from his stomach or alimentary canal. The real man is upstairs, in his heads and in the things of the higher havens.
Let us end with concrete examples. Abuja and the 36 states were conceived and erected on the logic and bonanza of oil. It is thus clear Abuja and the states cannot be advanced or maintained on the revenue inflows of coal, a lower economic and value carbon. So, Abuja has to scale down or be scaled down first. We can’t be building a capital of gold on the earnings of coal. Even the bizarre bid of Lagos for a special status is built on the scramble for oil bonanza. Now, oil money is gone can’t we quickly go back to the regions? These are political decisions that have little to do with economy, stupid.
In all these, there is nothing ponderous. There is this little saying in Oru language. Ulo wu chi. It may be loosely translated to mean house or home is destiny. But at a more appropriate level it means (basic or base) construction is destiny. If we want a great destiny, let us first construct great basic or axial (power) architecture. Prosperity, sustainable prosperity is trapped or released in your basic or power architectures. It is power architecture, stupid. Ulo wu chi. Ahiazuwa.
