SELF-LIMITING beliefs challenge the possibility of achieving the Nigerian Dream outlined in my last article. The article prescribes that within four years, the government should build about 20 million housing units to create immediate employment and income and pass generational wealth to the masses, while simultaneously build a railway complex, starting with three East-West railways, to spur growth in heavy manufacturing that will have huge income and employment multiplier effects across every economic sector. The same self limiting mindset believes President Bola Tinubu had no choice due to foreign debts, but to cut real wages through devaluation and withdraw energy subsidies, a key input in our national production. It is economic slavery when your creditor holds you to ransom and prevents you from attaining basic elements of life that include housing, employment, health, etc. It becomes more alarming when this act of economic slavery is being perpetuated by those that physically and politically enslaved us, Nigeria being the source of the largest amount of slaves that built the Western economy, without the historic costs ever repaid. Therefore, Nigeria has the moral capital of our African nightmare building their American Dream to ask for a moratorium of five years to restructure and double our economy for our own African Dream.
President Tinubu should have declared a war on poverty since in a war, all debts are suspended, instead of succumbing to IMF/World Bank pressure to devalue and cut subsidies, thereby digging us deeper into economic slavery. He should have torn up the Slave Rulebook and engaged in economic and political restructuring, cutting imports and cost of governance immediately, reschedule debts and like Roosevelt’s 1933 New Deal engage in a massive deficit budgeting to build wealth for consumer and production markets to fulfill the Nigerian Dream. The true cost of the American Dream was African slavery used to build the American economy and Western global economic hegemony. For the American Dream to be attained, there had to be the African Nightmare. Therefore, the real cost of the African Dream is waking from the African Nightmare. We woke up to free ourselves from exploitative physical slavery on slave plantations across the Americas, starting with the August 14-21- 1791 Ogun festival that became the Haitian Revolution. Due to the end of Transatlantic slavery, the economic slavery was switched from the Americas to Africa, in form of colonization, whereby we were divided into political plantations as colonies, created to produce the crops and raw materials, which were also to serve as dumping grounds for the manufactured goods of the colonists. Eventually, we woke up to free ourselves from colonization through a political process known as decolonization, however, the economic slavery switched into neocolonialism.
The question is, how do we now free ourselves from the remaining vestiges of economic slavery preventing us from attaining the African Dream of prosperity and freedom for the majority? In all Black nations across Africa and the Americas, just like plantation slaves had to pay for their freedom, debts are used to prevent our leadership from fulfilling social contracts to achieve the global standard of housing, employment, health which is the dream of every free people in pursuit of happiness, fulfillment and global economic parity. This struggle is different from abolition of slavery and decolonization, it is called decoloniality. While decolonization won us psuedo independence, the remaining vestiges of colonialism are coloniality of knowledge and power sources, as well as coloniality of being and economics/ecology. These chains of economic slavery made President Tinubu and other presidents since the Seventies tighten the poverty trap on us. It took Yoruba, Igbo and other Babalawos to fight to end slavery starting with the August 1791 Haitian Revolution. The likes of Herbert Macaulay, Nnamidi Azikwe, Obafemi Awolowo etc fought to end colonization. Therefore this generation must use our human and natural resources to end Neocolonization. However, unlike the previous struggles against Whites, this struggle is against Black neocolonial leadership.
The coloniality of knowledge has wrongly educated our leaders to follow the dictates of Western banks, founded with the proceeds of our slavery and colonisation, otherwise we are labelled socialists or communists. The coloniality of power sources ensures that only those that follow the ‘free market’ dictates of the foreign banks are allowed on our political spectrum, otherwise if they take Chinese or Russian developmental help, they are viewed as enemies. Then there is coloniality of being that disorientates us from making rational political and economic decisions and alliances. Lastly, there is coloniality of economics that restricts us to the colonial economic plan of being producers of raw materials and importers of manufactured goods. Instead of a focus on heavy manufacturing that can employ millions with better pay, we are kept in the slave plantation mentality that focuses on agriculture and unrefined primary products for export.
The coloniality of knowledge and power sources makes us believe socialism and communism are permanent anti-West political systems, instead of phases that must be undergone to restructure our colonial economic foundations. Neither IMF, World Bank nor private investors undertake long term socially beneficial production. Non-slaving like Russia and China undertook economic restructuring, using a command economy to channel their collective resources into building massive social housing projects, railways and heavy industry. The Russians took a bit too long to reopen their economy unlike the Chinese who after the restructuring of their socioeconomic and political foundations by Chairman Mao, had their economy reopened by his successor, Deng.
However, the coloniality of knowledge delinks the economic restructuring that was labelled socialism/communism, to the capitalist opening up to the world that spurred their economic growth astronomically. The success of economic restructuring is dependent on how fast and cost efficient it can be conducted and the economy reopened for normal business. This can only be achieved with a lean government and the Army.
The only organisation that can efficiently manage this nationwide program is the army through its Engineering Corps and defence industries corporation. Regardless of ideology, there is no nation that didn’t involve its army in the building of its industrial military complex. While Mercantilism was used to build the slave economy, post-slavery Western nations resort to war and military subsidies (Military Keynesianism) to build their most important economic growth drivers – cars, planes and computing – Military Subsidies Theory. The first step would be a drastic cut of our imports bill made up of fuels and oil (33%), cars (21%) foods (10 per cent). An emergency Army driven action on our refineries within 90 days to cut the largest chunk of our imports. Simultaneously, cut the importation of vehicles, and decree all government tiers to buy only Nigerian produced cars. These import substitution techniques will not only free our foreign exchange but provide huge employment as the local car assemblies would have to increase production exponentially. Imports must be restricted during the timed phase of economic restructuring to prevent monies from the budget deficit construction from sipping into imports and causing inflation. The accelerated housing and railways development program must be built with nearly 100% locally sourced raw materials, in record time and lowest cost, to achieve immense surplus value required for debt settlement and growth.
With economic restructuring, there must also be political restructuring. While economic restructuring of building the necessary infrastructure can only be done centrally, there must be political restructuring away from a unitary government that was created to siphon resources for neocolonial purposes to a decentralized government that devolves most power for the efficient management and sustainable development. As the government builds the national grid of railways, devolution to states is necessary to fuel the building of feeder railways to every nook and corner, to enable the local development of maintenance industries like rail, electrical and chemical sectors, as well as multiplier effects in haulage and all other industries. The surplus value gained through lowest cost and time will offset our debts and stimulate the economy.
- Prince Faloye, President, ASHE Foundation Think Tank, is Afenifere National Publicity Secretary.
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