₦airaland Forum

Weak

This Akala is very dumb. How can he be associating Jonathan with JEGA. This is height of stupidity. I'm sure Jega and even GEJ himself will not be happy with this.
What a dumb statement from a governor. Where is INEC independence when you are abbreviating GEJ's name to mean Jega in an open campaign like this.
OMG, Akala is a fool

Watching the programme now. A few observations:
1, I like Bukola Saraki's absence. He has been able to demonstrate he is a man of his own. A couple of days ago, 18 northern govs met, 10 voted anti-GEJ, 8 for. But today even the pro-zoning, anti-GEJ northern guvs are also here, obviously out of fear of GEJ. Bukola Saraki shows he doesn't send.
2, Sokoto governor Wammakko refused to wear RC-GEJ hat like other guvs. Obviously, a number of govs there are just doing eye-service. They are not for GEJ.
3, It is glaring that the Hausa factor in Nigerian politics cannot be shoved aside. Ignore Hausa at your own peril. More than any other language, Hausa appears to be the 'official language' of this GEJ declaration. This is an obvious attempt to impress the northerners, given the fact that Hausa people don't joke with their language
4, Much as I don't want him, it is becoming more glaring that GEJ is an aspirant to beat

@Andre Uweh,
Buhari and Yar'adua are full blooded, 100% Fulani. Does someone need to be told that.
I forgot to also add that Atiku is also Fulani.

And they are also far more educated and brilliant. Yar'adua, Buhari, Shagari, Ahmadu Bello, Sanusi, Buhari etc are all fulani

@Mistakay, where do I stand. I used to be and still anti-GEJ. I was just doing normal analysis there. Affirming that GEJ is PDP's best bet doesn't mean I am switching support for GEJ. I don't support IBB, Saraki or Atiku either. I have always rooted for Ribadu, but I think Buhari stands a better chance than Ribadu

We may have for the first time in history a sitting president losing in primary. But as I dislike PDP, the reality is GEJ is their best bet. If opposition party can make a good move, this is an opportunity for them.

Mikeansy, I agree with you that here is a golden opportunity to dislodge PDP. No widely acceptable aspirant, GEJ, their pointman, doesn't appear to have the liver to crush opposition like Obj; if lost, other aspirants may team up against the ticket winner; this INEC appears somehow credible and we expect minimal rigging. All these factors may make things difficult for PDP.

Once the major parties name their candidates we will put up an official Nairaland Poll, but in the mean time you can play around here.

While we await parties to name their candidates so we can put up Official Nairaland Poll, let's work with this.
Who do you want to clinch PDP ticket?

Because the question was very strange, and the first time your comment on me didnt appear negative, not to say insultive.

Fulani are not minority. I even heard they are more than Hausa.

Barka Juma'ah my brothers and sisters

oyb:
maybe he has quit

no, i still saw him recently . .
the speed at which he sees and comments on Glo/Adenuga threads is legendary

more than 90% of his posts are on Glo/Mike Adenuga: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria?action=profile;u=209376;sa=showPosts

I'm surprised this thread has reached page 2 and Zombie, Glo/Adenuga's NL PR agent, has not showed up here.

This is very strange from you, but I want to believe this could be the beginning of our mutually known but loudly silent beef since 2008 and the occasional clashes .

I know you know my NL history, when I joined, my ife-eco-06 username days etc. I enjoy NL like any other frequent visitor and active member. That's all.

Beaf is illisterate. he dont know me, he think he can kill me. Look, .com have more member than nairaland. seun is ibo, hausa man gave him 10 pounds, nairaland is hausa. my 3 years old son know map.

when jonathan came to canada, earthquake happen, what did that tell you? jonathan can not win. jonathan cannot win me. i am more pupolar than jonathan.
ribdau can not win too. ribadu's uncles cousin was my schoolmate in unilorin. even i know idi-agbon daughter ronke

all of you are wrong here, i am still on nairaland, beaf is nothing but a small boy, who doesn't know me. i laugh

Africa countries. and I would list other later.

Algeria
Angola
Benin
Botswana
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Central African Rep
Chad
Congo
Dem. Rep. Congo (Zaire)
Djibouti
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gabon
Gambia
Ghana
Guinea Bissau
Guinea
Ivory Coast
Kenya
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Niger
Nigeria
Reunion
Rwanda
São Tomé and Principe
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Somalia
South Africa
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Togo
Tunisia
Uganda
Zambia
Zanzibar
Zimbabwe

I have to go

ifyalways:
How was our Jumai today?Mine was wonderful,one of the bests i have had.
@Illusion how farz?Since the break of Fasting u never show,wetin happen?

Great. So what was the subject of sermon?

Thread retitled to pass the message better and make suitable for this section.
Thanks

Now I believe why my friend left Glo(paying him 2.7m per annum) for GTB(paying him 2.5m) in 2008. He also had a very nasty story to tell about Glo. He complained bitterly - no structure especially for Finance people, a Chartered Accountant having to follow bus around in the name of warehouse/store whatever - he even had an accident. It was a nasty experience he had, as he narrated to me then.

This guy must have become extremely frustrated to write such a letter. At times, things could be so frustrating that you don't feel relieved until you spill out your grievance, and you feel even more satisfied when it gets to the right people(the copied people are the backbones of Glo).

Obviously, the guy must have been ready to damn the consequence, and most likely, he may be quitting paid job for his own business. The satisfaction of having let out his grudge will surely make him feel a lot unburdened.

And Glo too will be forced to examine themselves. This will no doubt be a subject of discussion in their management meeting, and I'm sure the mentioned 'slave drivers' will also be called to order, no matter how subtle.

Horayce:
^^^ Oga do u still buy newspapers in this age, u alluded to that. All your favorite columnists can be found online.

ill bookmark your list, I only read Simon kolawole and Ruben, but ill be giving the others u mentioned a look in. Okey Ndibe was someone I liked reading too when I was younger.

Online reading doesn't substitute paper buying.
I buy and keep for reference purpose. Got loads of it in my apartment.

With SLS now serving under GEJ, will he support Buhari for 2011?

Buharism Beyond Buhari: A Response to Mohammed Haruna
By
SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 6, 2002
(All views personal)
lamidos@hotmail.com




When I chose the sub-title “economic theory and political economy” for my essay on Buharism, it was with a clear purpose in mind. “Political Economy or Economics”, wrote Alfred Marshall a very long time ago in his Principles of Economics, “is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” Although the definition has been considerably narrowed, it seems to me evident that no one who delves into this area can pretend to be a neutral and impartial observer, since every one has a position in the scheme of things and everyone has an explicit or implicit interest in what happens to mankind. Indeed I have never written on a matter about which I am indifferent, for to do so is an exercise in futility. As I wrote in one of my earlier articles, language is a moral medium and writing is a means of education and exhortation aimed at inviting the reader to act for his freedom and liberate first his consciousness, then his person, from the obscurantist cloak of myths, superstitions and outright fallacies invoked by those responsible for his state of alienation. This theme runs in the writings of several intellectuals, from Marx and Trotsky, to Sartre, Chomsky and Eco. My intervention was not the contribution of an impartial arbiter but, as stated clearly in the piece, an attempt to unveil the “exact locus or nexus” of the Buhari administration in “the ebb and flow of Nigerian history”. To this extent, that is to the extent of stating that I am not a neutral party as far as Buharism is concerned, my friend Mohammed Haruna is dead right in his rebuttal titled “Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and Buharism”. Beyond that, however, he seems to have made a number of unsubstantiated logical leaps, which need to be pointed out as part of the process of moving the discourse forward.



The principal error is to confuse my clear partiality in favour of Buharism with a glorification of Buhari the man. The economic principles and the political ideology underpinning the Buhari government transcend Muhammadu Buhari and they formed the kernel of my paper. It is the sad element in Mohammed’s rebuttal that precisely when he addressed himself to the substance of my paper, the economic theory and political economy of Buharism, he ran into logical conundrums that left one silently bemused at what is best described as a most eloquent articulation of incoherence in economic matters. Take for instance the following statements: “Nigeria, Sanusi would argue, quite rightly, has since taken its bitter pill of devaluation, but seems to be getting worse, not better. Devaluation, therefore could not possibly be the correct prescription. But then the problem with social behaviour is that it is impossible to predict with certainty for the simple reason that too many variables are involved….” My initial reaction is to wonder if Mohammed read my paper. The point was clearly made therein that this issue had nothing to do with the unpredictability of social behaviour. The results of devaluation in an economy with the characteristics of the Nigerian economy were a foregone conclusion. I have discussed the theory at length and shown that we knew, ab initio, that things would get worse. After Buhari was overthrown, for those who remember well, economists like Dr Ibrahim Ayagi (who braved opposition given his post as the Chief Executive of Chase Merchant Bank), Professor Eskor Toyo, Professor Sam Aluko, Professor Ikenna Nzimiro and Dr Bade Onimode, as well as radical intellectuals like Dr Bala Usman, Dr Yusuf Bangura, Dr Claude Ake etc. were vocal in their opposition to the so-called “IMF conditionalities.” Founded on this fallacy of unpredictability is also Mohammed’s assertion that “there are… economists who are no less patriotic than Buhari who would support the contrary position that although devaluation may be a bitter medicine, it is inevitable for…Nigeria, which produces little of what it consumes.” Were this statement not coming from a writer for whom I have the most profound respect, I would have dismissed it as the unserious ranting of a demagogue. What, pray, is patriotic in prescribing an economic policy that is bound to condemn the majority of the populace to great poverty and hardship, with the only “positive” effect of handing the economy over to foreigners and creating a very small clique of the super rich? The only rational understanding of this statement is to say that patriotism in this context has not been defined. Perhaps Mohammed means that these economists are as patriotic in their loyalty to the United States, the IMF, the World Bank and Multinational Corporations as the Ayagis and Bala Usmans are to Nigeria. But even more objectionable, given the implicit insult to their intelligence, is the insinuation that those who say devaluation was bad for Nigeria did so simply because it was “good for the IMF or the World Bank”. We rejected IMF conditionalities because they were bad for Nigeria and for Nigerians. Those who supported them did so because they favoured international capital and a small clique whose interest they represented. Behind the sophisticated theorisation was a unclothed, violent struggle for “market share” with consequences for the creation of wealth and affluence, as well as their concentration or diffusion among countries and among individuals, institutions and groups within each country.



The final direct response to Mohammed is on his argument that we have had good dictatorships and bad ones and that we could therefore not divine the likely direction Nigeria would take had Buharism been pursued to its logical conclusion. This argument is dangerous and it suggests that the article on Buharism had supported despotism for its own sake, rather than acknowledge it as a negative, if sometimes necessary corollary to certain policies in specific contexts. To bring in the likes of Mobutu (Haruna may well have added Abacha) as examples is mischievous when dealing with an administration that spent its short life punishing those involved in precisely the kind of looting that these tyrants were guilty of. Contrary to Mohammed’s assertion, I do not have an “apparent blind faith in Buharism with no questions asked.” In what remains of this intervention, I will substantiate this proposition.



The first point I will make is that even though Buharism rejected the “big bang” approach of what was known as “the Washington consensus” (the IMF, the World Bank and the US Treasury) it did not pursue a regime of fixed exchange rates (another false item in Mohammed’s paper). It argued for a gradual process that would maximise the benefits and minimise the costs of managing a severe economic crisis. Indeed the exchange rate between 1984 and late 1985 depreciated in a gradual, controlled manner. The question now is this: Which, between the gradualist approach to deregulation, liberalisation and privatisation on the one hand and the big-bang approach would have taken Nigeria down the same path as the “Asian tigers”? I call to witness Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel prize for economics in 2001 and until January 2000 Chief Economist at the World Bank. I will quote at length, because of its lucidity, a passage from a book he published this year, Globalization and its Discontents (p. 92):



“There were problems in the way the Asian economies developed, but overall, the governments had devised a strategy that worked….which had but one item in common with Washington consensus policies- the importance of macrostability. As in the Washington Consensus (hereafter WC- my abbreviation, not Stiglitz’s) trade was important but the emphasis was on promoting exports, not removing impediments to imports. Trade was eventually liberalized but only gradually as new jobs were created in the export industries. While the WC…emphasized rapid financial and capital market liberalisation, the East Asian countries liberalised only gradually….While the WC….emphasized privatisation, government at the national and local levels helped create efficient enterprises that played a key role in the success of several of the countries. In the WC view, industrial policies in which governments try to shape the future direction of the economy are a mistake. But the East Asian governments took that as one of their central responsibilities….While the WC policies paid little attention to inequality, the East Asian countries did, believing that (this was) important for maintaining social cohesion, and that social cohesion was necessary to provide a climate favourable to investment and growth…Most broadly, while the WC emphasized a minimalist role for government, in East Asia, governments helped shape and direct markets.”



Thus while it is fair to compare Nigeria under Buhari to Singapore under Lee or Indonesia under Sukarno, it is those governments that came after him that are comparable to Zaire under Mobutu or Indonesia under Suharto. The issue is not the fact of authoritarianism, but authoritarianism in pursuit of what? The parallel drawn by Mohammed is a mischievous attempt at reducing all dictatorships to one common denominator, thus creating a false moral equivalence between one regime and the next.



There is a second line of argument that will reveal to us the true nature of the Harunaesque “patriotism”. Events since 1985, not just in Nigeria but also in other nations, have shown that those who stood firm against the Washington Consensus were the true patriots everywhere. When the British financial markets were deregulated in 1986 under Thatcher this was presented as their opportunity to “compete and win in the global market”. By the close of the century the last of the UK’s major financial players was in foreign hands. Mohammed Haruna should read a book, The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, written by Philip Augar, one of the City’s top brokers, for an analysis of how this happened. It is not for nothing that from Washington to Prague to Nice to Quebec to Gothenberg and to Genoa the anti-globalization movement has staged protests and engaged in violent riots. In her book, The Silent Takeover: Global capitalism and the Death of Democracy, Cambridge don Noreena Hertz makes the following frightening revelation: “ Propelled by government policies of privatisation, deregulation and trade liberalisation… in the past twenty years a power shift has taken place. The hundred largest multinational corporations now control about 20% of global foreign assets; fifty-one of the hundred biggest economies in the world are now corporations. Only fourty-nine are nation-states. The sales of General Motors and Ford are greater than the GDP of the whole of sub-Saharan Africa; the assets of IBM, BP and General Electric outstrip the economic capabilities of most small nations; and Wal-Mart, the US supermarket retailer, has higher revenues than most Central and Eastern European states including Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Hungary and Slovakia.” (p. In other words we have all become “banana republics”, courtesy of our “patriotic” economists.



At the heart of the problem is the emergence, in Africa, of a crop of “intellectuals” who are the heirs to the old colonised minds. These are not just persons with a bougeoisified intellect. They have lost all originality in thinking and all critical ability because their minds have become standardised and commodified by the ideology of the market. Everywhere you turn you see them preaching the beauty of the market, of efficiency, liberalisation, private sector and privatisation, deregulation etc. These are concepts which they do not understand and whose roots and implications they have not studied. They do not ask how we can stop public sector corruption or make government more efficient and accountable. These anomalies are presented as necessary to all government and used as a pretext to strip the people of owned assets. “Privatisation” is not about the private sector creating new assets by investing in the economy but about selling to private persons assets belonging to the state at a price they deem “fair”. One of the world’s foremost fund managers, George Soros, wrote this about markets in his latest book, Globalization: “Markets are amoral: they allow people to act in accordance with their interests but they pass no moral judgement on the interests themselves. Yet society cannot function without some distinction between right and wrong”. This simple truth, now resounding from the very heart of global capital, is still not present in our discourse.



Let me illustrate with a simple example I used often in my teaching days. The economist tells us that the price of food, for example, should be determined by the forces of demand and supply. The “equilibrium price” is that at which demand and supply are equated and the market is cleared. This is the market’s much touted “efficiency” and any other price comes with problems. This is taught as part of “positive economics”, a mythical discipline that pretends to be value-free social science. What the economist does not tell us is the following: The segment of the demand curve below and to the right of its intersection with the supply curve represents millions of poor consumers who are priced out of the market because they cannot afford to pay the “equilibrium price”. Also, the entire segment of the supply curve above and to the right of the intersection represents thousands of poor farmers who are priced out of the market because they cannot afford to produce food and sell profitably at that price. For a consumer to be in the market he must afford the market price. For a producer to sell his crops profitably he must have economy of scale. A subsidy in this market, say on fertilizers, will lower the production cost of farmers and allow some more into the market. In technical terms the supply curve shifts to the right leading to a reduction in price of food and bringing in poor consumers. But the economist will tell you: “Subsidies are bad.” The Harunaesque economist, that is. The implication of this of course is that the poor and hungry do not matter, and that the state should not bear the cost of reducing hunger. It is an ethical question in which value judgement comes into play, making exposing the fallacy of the positivist claims of objectivity. In the US and Europe the governments are spending billions of dollars in subsidy to agriculture, keeping farmers in business and making food cheap. In Nigeria our patriots tell us subsidies are bad. The US only recently introduced heavy import tariffs to protect the inefficient domestic steel industry and save jobs, in flagrant disregard of all the principles and agreements on trade liberalisation. In Nigeria, based on the advice of “patriotic” economists we have in the 2002 budget proposed a reduction in the excise duty on beer from the meagre 40k to 20k. It is through analysis of who stands to benefit from particular economic policies that the true ideological character of Mohammed Haruna and his group of “patriotic” economists (and rulers) emerges.



In conclusion, the economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote that there is no economic theory that cannot be explained in intelligible English to the non-economist. The greatest economists have always asked themselves: How does economics affect my people? In the early 20th century, what became known as Keynesian Economics was actually anticipated and implemented in Sweden even before the publication of Keynes’ General Theory. A group of economists, starting with Wicksell and continuing through the likes of Gunnar Myrdal, Bertil Ohlin, Erik Lindahl, Erik Lundberg and Dag Hammarskjold challenged Say’s Law and helped create the first welfare state in the capitalist world. These economists of the Swedish school, according to Galbraith in his A History of Economics had one thing in common: “With a knowledge of the relevant theory and a strong resistance to its constraints, they all addressed themselves to the practical problems of the Swedish economy, society and polity.” Ultimately, this is the yardstick for defining a patriot. Buharism was, in its time, a patriotic ideology. But as a world-view, it goes beyond Buhari the man and his political ambitions, and I have stated my position on that. But perhaps Buhari’s (and any leader’s) relevance, should be determined by reference to Buharism and his commitment to it.



We should, finally, state that Mohammed Haruna has given us the best possible conclusion, He wrote:” Now that he has intervened with the right emphasis on the issues rather than on the personalities involved, hopefully the debate, not just about Buhari’s entry in politics but the debate about the coming elections will move away from who the key actors are to what they can do to eliminate the country’s poverty and its divisions.” I rest my case.

BUHARISM: Economic Theory and Political Economy
By

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

[LAGOS]

July 22,2002

(All views are strictly personal)

lamidos@hotmail.com

 

I have followed with more than a little interest the many contributions of commentators on the surprising decision of General Muhammadu Buhari to jump into the murky waters of Nigerian politics. Most of the regular writers in the Trust stable have had something to say on this. The political adviser to a late general has transferred his services to a living one. My dear friend and prolific veterinary doctor, who like me is allegedly an ideologue of Fulani supremacy, has taken  a leading emir to the cleaners based on information of suspect authenticity. Another friend has contributed an articulate piece, which for those in the know gives a bird’s eye view into the thinking within the IBB camp. A young northern Turk has made several interventions and given novel expressions to what I call the PTF connection. Some readers and writers alike have done Buhari incalculable damage by viewing his politics through the narrow prism of ethnicity and religion, risking the alienation of whole sections of the Nigerian polity without whose votes their candidate cannot succeed.

 

With one or two notable exceptions, the various positions for or against Buhari have focused on his personality and continued to reveal a certain aversion or disdain for deeper and more thorough analysis of his regime. The reality, as noted by Tolstoy, is that too often history is erroneously reduced to single individuals. By losing sight of the multiplicity of individuals, events, actions and inactions (deliberate or otherwise) that combine to produce a set of historical circumstances, the historian is able to create a mythical figure and turn him into an everlasting hero (like Lincoln) or a villain (like Hitler). The same is true of Buhari. There seems to be a dangerous trend of competition between two opposing camps aimed at glorifying him beyond his wildest dreams or demonizing him beyond all justifiable limits, through a selective reading of history and opportunistic attribution and misattribution of responsibility. The discourse has been thus impoverished through personalization and we are no closer at the end of it than at the beginning to a divination of the exact locus or nexus of his administration in the flow of Nigerian history. This is what I seek to achieve in this intervention through an exposition of the theoretical underpinnings of the economic policy of Buharism and the necessary correlation between the economic decisions made and the concomitant legal and political superstructure.

 

Taxonomy
 

Let me begin by stating up front the principal thesis that I will propound. Within the schema of discourses on Nigerian history, the most accurate problematization of the Buhari government is one that views it strictly as a regime founded on the ideology of Bourgeois Nationalism. In this sense it was a true off-shoot of the regime of Murtala Mohammed. Buharism was a stage the logical outcome of whose machinations would have been a transcendence of what Marx called the stage of Primitive Accumulation in his Theories of Surplus Value. It was radical, not in the sense of being socialist or left wing, but in the sense of being a progressive move away from a political economy dominated by a parasitic and subservient elite to one in which a nationalist and productive class gains ascendancy. Buharism represented a two-way struggle: with Global capitalism (externally) and with its parasitic and unpatriotic agents and spokespersons (internally). The struggle against global capital as represented by the unholy trinity of the IMF, the World Bank and multilateral “trade” organizations as well that against  the entrenched domestic class of contractors, commission agents and corrupt public officers were vicious  and thus required extreme measures. Draconian policies were a necessary component of this struggle for transformation and this has been the case with all such epochs in history. The Meiji restoration in Japan was not conducted in a liberal environment. The Industrial Revolution in Europe and the great economic progress of the empires were not attained in the same liberal atmosphere of the 21st Century. The “tiger economies” of Asia such as Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand are not exactly models of democratic freedom. To this extent Buharism was a despotic regime but its despotism was historically determined, necessitated by the historical task of dismantling the structures of dependency and launching the nation on to a path beyond primitive accumulation. At his best Buhari may have been a Bonaparte or a Bismarck. At his worst he may have been a Hitler or a Mussolini. In either case Buharism drawn to its logical conclusion would have provided the bedrock for a new society and its overthrow marked a relapse, a step backward into that era from which we sought escape and in which, sadly for all of us we remain embedded and enslaved. I will now proceed with an elaboration of Buharism as a manifestation of bourgeois economics and political economy.

 

 

The Economic Theory of Buharism
 

One of the greatest myths spun around Buharism was that it lacked a sound basis in economic theory. As evidence of this, the regime that succeeded Buhari employed the services of economic “gurus” of “international standard” as the architects of fiscal and monetary policy. These were IMF and World Bank economists like Dr. Chu Okongwu and Dr Kalu Idika Kalu, as well as Mr SAP himself, Chief Olu Falae (an economist trained at Yale). At the time Buhari’s Finance Minister, Dr Onaolapo Soleye (who was not a trained economist) was debating with the pro-IMF lobby and explaining why the naira would not be devalued I was teaching economics at the Ahmadu Bello University. I had no doubt in my mind that the position of Buharism was based on a sound understanding of neo-classical economics and that those who were pushing for devaluation either did not understand their subject or were acting deliberately as agents of international capital in its rampage against all barriers set up by sovereign states to protect the integrity of  the domestic economy. I still believe some of the key economic policy experts of the IBB administration were economic saboteurs who should be tried for treason. When the IMF recently owned up to “mistakes” in its policy prescriptions all patriotic economists saw it for what it was: A hypocritical statement of remorse after attaining set objectives. Let me explain, briefly, the economic theory underlying Buhari’s refusal to devalue the naira and then show how the policy merely served the interest of global capitalism and its domestic agents. This will be the principal building block of our taxonomy.

 

In brief, neo-classical theory holds that a country can, under certain conditions, expect to improve its Balance of Payments through devaluation of its currency. The IMF believed that given the pressure on the country’s foreign reserves and its adverse balance of payments situation Nigeria must devalue its currency. Buharism held otherwise and insisted that the conditions for improving Balance of Payments through devaluation did not exist and that there were alternate and superior approaches to the problem. Let me explain.

 

The first condition that must exist is that the price of every country’s export is denominated in its currency. If Nigeria’s exports are priced in naira and its imports from the US in dollars then, ceteris paribus, a devaluation of the naira makes imports dearer to Nigerians and makes Nigerian goods cheaper to Americans. This would then lead to an increase in the quantum of exports to the US and a reduction in the  quantum of imports from there per unit of time. But while this is a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient one. For a positive change in the balance of payments the increase in the quantum of exports must be substantial enough to outweigh the revenue lost through a reduction in price. In other words the quantity exported must increase at a rate faster than the rate of decrease in its price. Similarly imports must fall faster than their price is increasing. Otherwise the nation may be devoting more of its wealth to importing less and receiving less of the wealth of foreigners for exporting more! In consequence, devaluation by a country whose exports and imports are not price elastic leads to the continued impoverishment of the nation vis a vis its trading partners. The second, and sufficient, condition is therefore that the combined price elasticity of demand for exports and imports must exceed unity.

 

The argument of Buharism, for which it was castigated by global capital and its domestic agents, was that these conditions did not exist clearly enough for Nigeria to take the gamble. First our major export, oil, was priced in dollars and the volume exported was determined ab initio by the quota set by OPEC, a cartel to which we belonged. Neither the price nor the volume of our exports would be affected by a devaluation of the naira. As for imports, indeed they would become dearer. However the manufacturing base depended on imported raw materials. Also many essential food items were imported. The demand for imports was therefore inelastic. We would end up spending more of our national income to import less, in the process fuelling inflation, creating excess capacity and unemployment, wiping out the production base of the real sector and causing hardship to the consumer through the erosion of real disposable incomes. Given the structural dislocations in income distribution in Nigeria the only groups who would benefit from devaluation were the rich parasites who had enough liquidity to continue with their conspicuous consumption, the large multi-national corporations with an unlimited access to loanable funds and the foreign “investor” who can now purchase our grossly cheapened and undervalued domestic assets. In one stroke we would wipe out the middle class, destroy indigenous manufacturing, undervalue the national wealth and create inflation and unemployment. This is standard economic theory and it is exactly what happened to Nigeria after it went through the hands of our IMF economists under IBB. The decision not to devalue set Buharism on a collision course with those who wanted devaluation and would profit from it-namely global capitalism, the so-called “captains of industry” (an acronym for the errand boys of multinational corporations), the nouveaux-riches parasites who had naira and dollars waiting to be spent, the rump elements of feudalism and so on. Buharism therefore was a crisis in the dominant class, a fracturing of its members into a patriotic, nationalist group and a dependent, parasitic and corrupt one. It was not a struggle between classes but within the same class. A victory for Buharism would be a victory for the more progressive elements of the national bourgeoisie. Unfortunately the fifth columnists within the military establishment were allied to the backward and retrogressive elements and succeeded in defeating Buharism before it took firm root. But I digress.

 

Having decided not to devalue or to rush into privatization and liberalization Buharism still faced an economic crisis it must address. There was pressure on foreign reserves, mounting foreign debt and a Balance of Payments crisis. Clearly the demand for foreign exchange outstripped its supply. The government therefore adopted demand management measures. The basic principle was that we did not really need all that we imported and if we could ensure that our scarce foreign exchange was only allocated to what we really needed we would be able to pay our debts and lay the foundations for economic stability. But this line of action also has its drawbacks.

 

First, there are political costs to be borne in terms of opposition from those who feel unfairly excluded from the allocation process and who do not share the government’s sense of priorities. Muslims for example cursed Buhari’s government for restricting the number of pilgrims in order to conserve foreign exchange.

 

Second, in all attempts to manage demand through quotas and quantitative restrictions there is room for abuse because there is always the incentive of a premium to be earned through circumvention of due process. Import licenses become “hot cake” and the black market for foreign exchange highly lucrative. This policy can only succeed if backed by strong deterrent laws and strict and enforcible exchange rules. Again it is trite micro-economic theory that where price is fixed below equilibrium the market is only cleared through quotas and the potential exists for round tripping as there will be a minority willing and able to offer a very high price for the “artificially scarce” product. So again we see that the harsh exchange control and economic sabotage laws of Buharism were a necessary and logical fallout of its economic theory.

 

Conclusion
 

I have tried to show in this intervention what I consider to be the principal building blocks of the military government of Muhammadu Buhari and the logical connection between its ideology, its economic theory and the legal and political superstructure that characterized it. My objective is to raise the intellectual profile of discourse beyond its present focus on personalities by letting readers see the intricate links between disparate and seemingly unrelated aspects of that government, thus contextualizing the actions of Buharism in its specific historical and ideological milieu. I have tried to review its treatment of politicians as part of a general struggle against primitive accumulation and its harsh laws on exchange and economic crimes as a necessary fallout of economic policy options. Similarly its treatment of drug pushers reflected the patriotic zeal of a bourgeois nationalist establishment.

 

As happens in all such cases a number of innocent people become victims of draconian laws, such as a few honest leaders like Shehu Shagari and Balarabe Musa who were improperly detained. The reality however is that many of those claiming to be victims today were looters who deserved to go to jail but who would like to hide under the cover of a few glaring errors. The failure of key members of the Buhari administration to tender public and unreserved apology to those who may have been improperly detained has not helped matters in this regard.

 

This raises a question I have often been asked. Do I support Buhari’s decision to contest for the presidency of Nigeria? My answer is no. And I will explain.

 

First, I believe Buhari played a creditable role in a particular historical epoch but like Tolstoy and Marx I do not believe he can re-enact that role at will. Men do not make history exactly as they please but, as Marx wrote in the 18th Brumaire, “in circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.” Muhammadu Buhari as a military general had more room for manoevre than he can ever hope for in Nigerian Politics.

 

Second, I am convinced that the situation of Nigeria and its elite today is worse than it was in 1983.Compared to the politicians who populate the PDP, ANPP and AD today, second republic politicians were angels. Buhari waged a battle against second republic politicians, but he is joining this generation. Anyone who rides a tiger ends up in its belly and one man cannot change the system from within. A number of those Buhari jailed for theft later became ministers and many of those who hold key offices in all tiers of government and the legislature were made by the very system he sought to destroy. My view is that Nigeria needs people like Buhari in politics but not to contest elections. Buhari should be in politics to develop Civil Society and strengthen the conscience of the nation. He should try to develop many Buharis who will continue to challenge the elements that have hijacked the nation.

 

Third, I do not think Nigerians today are ready for Buhari. Everywhere you turn you see thieves who have amassed wealth in the last four years, be they legislators, Local Government chairmen and councilors, or governors and ministers. But these are the heroes in their societies. They are the religious leaders and ethnic champions and Nigerians, especially northerners, will castigate and discredit anyone who challenges them. Unless we start by educating our people and changing their value system, people like Buhari will remain the victims of their own love for Nigeria.

 

Fourth, and on a lighter note, I am opposed to recycled material. In a nation of 120million people we can do better than restrict our leadership to a small group. I think Buhari, Babangida and yes Obasanjo should simply allow others try their hand instead of believing they have the monopoly of wisdom.

 

Having said all this let me conclude by saying that if Buhari gets a nomination he will have my vote (for what it is worth). I will vote for him not, like some have averred, because he is a northerner and a Muslim or because I think his candidacy is good for the north and Islam; I will vote for him not because  I think he will make a good democrat or that he was not a dictator. I will vote for Buhari as a Nigerian for a leader who restored my pride and dignity and my belief in the motherland. I will vote for the man who made it undesirable for the “Andrews” to “check out” instead of staying to change Nigeria. I will vote for Buhari to say thank you for the world view of Buharism, a truly nationalist ideology for all Nigerians. I do not know if Buhari is still a nationalist or a closet bigot and fanatic, or if he was the spirit and not just the face of Buharism. My vote for him is not based on a divination of what he is or may be, but a celebration of what his government was and what it gave to the nation.

mbulela:
ike okonta

My oga, at last you have someone. 

FOR ME THIS IS THE ORDER TODAY:
1, SEGUN GBADEGESIN, THE NATION, FRIDAYS: I have his today's piece right on my desk now. Very brilliant professor of philosophy. His satire belongs to another level
2, YEMI KOLAPO, PUNCH, FRIDAYS: Same, her piece today, which I have just glanced through now, is what I'll spend my evening reading when I get home tonight.
3, DARE OLATUNJI, THE NATION, TUESDAYS: Could be very blunt and heavily pro-Yoruba, but highly brilliant and knowledgeable. He is a veteran
4, MOHAMMED HARUNA, THE NATION, WEDNESDAYS: Independent-minded, but bluntly pro-North. He is a veteran journalist but I like his say-it-all attitude
5, MAHMUD JEGA, DAILY TRUST, MONDAYS: Very wide-read and brilliant, as you can see in his write-ups.
6, SIMON KOLAWOLE, THISDAY, SUNDAYS: Humanitarian, soft and quite analytical. Simple prose.
7, SAM OMATSEYE, TEH NATION, MONDAY: Trying

tkb417:
@debosky
ure leaving this week? are u still gonna be in the industry?

my own clock is ticking and i know b4 the end of the year, ill be dropping the Investment banker toga and will probably be having the luxury of waking of 7am and closing 5pm . I wanna be like Ajanlekoko and ill really wanna globetrot next year.
Nothn biggie on my end, some of ma deals are at credit committe level so most of dem should be disbursing/signing off end of the year; that shd spell some good tidings for my eventual exit. as it is, work continues. . . . .

MNC O&G here TKB comes

The Supermod and Admin reserve the absolute right to post any topic on front page.

And like Netotse mentioned, you appear to be stretching your pro-GEJ campaign too far. The forum activities cannot be modified or guided to suit GEJ or any other politician.

I think we are treating the issue of kidnapping with kid glove. More stern measures just need to be applied. This is getting too much.

Mbulela, long time, hope you're doing good?

If his absence is voluntary, rather than ban, I will call for his return.

Ronaldo De Lima makes the list of Top 10 players to ever grace the game of football.
When CR7 makes the list of Top 25, we can begin comparison.

[quote author=Metalgong. link=topic=490918.msg6765479#msg6765479 date=1284650664]@ Mr moderator

Jarus please re-activate MetalGong4 which was banned by spam bot. This happened when I was trying to post Prof. Charles Soludo's copious essay on Nigeria's economic situation, which he released to news media yesterday.[/quote]I can't reactivate a banned ID. Admin and Supermod will do.
And next time, when spambot is not allowing you to post a new topic or post(this usually happens to long, copy&paste posts), just report to Mod, we will reinstate it, rather than continuing posting it which will result in automatic ban.