Guest Writer
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| By Alexander Ekemenah |
“History says, Don’t hope on this side of the grave.
But then once in a lifetime, the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.” — Seamus Heaney: The Cure at Troy
EARLY morning (2.24 am) of Friday, November 20, 2015, I got up from my deep sleep and went straight to my laptop. After clearing the sleep from my eyes, I put on the laptop to search for a particular piece of work that I have done about a month back. It was a 52-page research-based document prepared at the request of a university don from one of our notable universities. I worked on this document for about two months, sent it to the Professor who returned it to me for corrections along the lines he had indicated. After effecting the necessary corrections, I decided to keep and sleep over it for several weeks for it to mature and attract further research materials in order to enrich the content. It was two weeks later that I decided to reopen it again to incorporate new insights from the research materials gathered afresh.
That was precisely when I could no longer find the work already done on the desktop of my laptop. Where was it? I could not find it anywhere. I panicked. I started sweating in the early morning hours where I was sitting at my desk searching frantically for the document. Where was it? Where did I keep it? When did I remove it from the desktop? I was scratching my head to no end.
I cannot afford to lose the document. Apart from its sensitivity which can only be disclosed to the public at the right time, how do I start to reconstruct a 52-page document that took me about two months to put together? I saw disaster menacingly steering at my face with utmost ruthlessness. What do I do? Where do I start from? Ah! This is impossible. I tried to recall the last time I open the document to read it over again. I did remember. It was exactly two weeks back – i.e. two Thursdays ago. But I cannot remember what happened after that because I was already distracted and doing other things, especially since I wanted to give the document time to attract further research insights.
I have over two hundred file folders on my laptop and I have the habit of pigeon-holing every document in appropriate file folder for easy reference and retrieval. What was the topic of the document that I am searching for? It was “Insight: Understanding……..” (I do not want to disclose the full topic of the document now). Was that what I initially saved the document with on the desktop? I could not immediately remember. Hahhhhhahhhaha! “Wahala don come”, I muttered to myself. Was there still sleep in my eyes that I cannot think properly?
I have had an eventful day the previous day, Thursday, November 19, 2015. I had attended the Third Annual Lecture series given by Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo organized by Realnews online magazine at Lagos Oriental Hotel from around 10.00 am until around 2:00 pm. Maureen Chigbo, Management and Staff of Realnews have done a wonderful job putting the event together and driving it to resounding success.
I got back to office to face a pending task assigned to me earlier by my Madam as her husband. She was already at my neck through incessant phone calls to remind me of the deadline involved in the assignment. These women and their wahalas! Na wetin sef? Why can’t she do this work by herself instead of putting the burden on my head amidst other pressures and demands competing for my attention? I grumbled to no end. I wish I can go back to bachelorhood so that I can work at my own pace and leisure!
But it was the speech by Professor Soludo and something he said about history that kicked my subconscious mind awake and drew my attention back to the work that I have already done referred to above. I had unconsciously carried the speech into my sleep which now awoke me at those small hours of the night. I needed to check the accuracy of a statement I had made in my work in comparison with what I thought I heard Soludo said. That was how I started searching for this work that had suddenly grew wing and flew out of my desktop and/or disappeared from my laptop. Had I mistakenly deleted the work from the desktop? I went to the trash can to search for it there. I could not find it there.
Sweats were dropping from my brow. This was definitely a suicidal situation. But I assured myself that I will not commit suicide over this. “I will not kill myself over this. Life must go on!” But my Professor must not hear about this otherwise my intellectual reputation (for reliability in our intellectual partnership) which I have sustained with him for over a decade would suffer irreparable damage. How can I explain my “carelessness” for losing a document on my laptop when the laptop was not stolen from me or hacked?
I went through all the file folders where I thought I might have sent the document to no avail. This was not searching for a needle in a haystack. This was searching for a big object in a compartmentalized/departmentalized structure that I had created for my professional work. I have two laptops and other electronic storage devices exclusively for my use which I don’t allow others to use, not even members of my family because I never want to hear “Ngbati-Ngbati” story about something being damaged on the laptops or infection by viruses. I knew that I have not transferred the document to any of the other laptop or storage devices. So where could I have kept this work, for Christ sake? When did I become so careless with myself? When did I start forgetting things like this? Well, one can momentarily forget things and even be careless at times. That is understandable and even pardonable most times. It is human. But this is clearly a dangerous situation because I cannot afford to lose that document neither can I rationally explain the loss.
I spent over an hour searching for the possible folder that I might have stored it. Wait a minute. What was it about history that I heard Soludo said? I have vague recall of the statement at the wee hours of that day. But my mind was working furiously. I then remembered that the document I was searching for have various subthemes. One of the subthemes was “Nightmare of History” where I used the analogy by James Joyce, the famous Irish writer, in his Ulysses to illustrate my arguments in the said document or write-up. I had created a separate folder for this which embraced scores of research papers by other writers on the thematic issue of “nightmare of history”, and even “rhyme of history” by Mark Twain, the American writer. It was the reference to economic history (of Nigeria) by Soludo that reminded me of the “Nightmare of History” that I had analogically worked upon in my write-up under reference.
This then became my nightmare. Indeed, it was a nightmare. I was having nightmares in those early hours of Friday, November 20, 2015. I had such nightmare last in 2008 when I took my other laptop for disinfection from virus and the computer engineer wiped off all my documents from the laptop including a flash drive prior to that period. I had barely restrained myself from going mad on the tarred roads of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, then. I lost valuable documents and research papers in that nasty, unforgettable incident. I am still subtly haunted by that day-mare I suffered at OAU then. Since then I have been extra careful with my electronic documents. I have never had any major “electronic” problem since then. I flush my laptop regularly with anti-virus.
It was when I was giving up the hope of ever finding the document that I decided to try again to look where I had not searched before – precisely that folder titled “Nightmare of History”. Eureka! That was precisely where I found the document nestling quietly and comfortably among other PDF documents. I heaved a sigh of relief. I leaned back on my chair with both arms folded behind my head, just looking at the document without bothering to scroll down. At last! I thank God Almighty for passing this cup of nightmare over me. I leaned forward again, closed the document, copied it and took it to the appropriate folder/compartment/department/unit. I left a copy behind in the folder of “Nightmare of History” so that I can be double sure that the document is safe at both ends.
However, the impact was not lost on me, neither the deep psychological lessons. I suffered an agony that lasted for over an hour, an hour that seems like eternity, historically and figuratively speaking. But it is in this “history” that the deep psychological lessons lie. I found the document precisely in the “Nightmare of History” folder. That was the lesson: that whenever one is haunted by nightmare(s) of history, the discovery of the root-causes and solution of the nightmare(s) lies precisely in those nightmare(s). In this my nightmares, history and hope suddenly rhymed and merged at an intersection in “empty” space from where I wrestled or rescued the supposedly lost object from the bosom of that “empty” space. The lesson pushed me back into further examination of one of the methodologies that I deployed in the write-up: behavioural science (with particular reference to Jungian psychology) in which I crossed the lessons from nightmares of history, alongside complexity and postmodern theory. It was a difficult analytical approach to the issue I was considering in the write-up.
However, it dawned on me that I was not only a victim of my own nightmare. My country, Nigeria, is also suffering from its own self-inflicted economic “nightmare(s) of history” or history of economic nightmares, specifically historical span deficit disorder (short memory or not willing to remember anything at all).
As at the time I started writing this piece, I had downloaded the speech by Professor Chukwuma Soludo referred to above from the ubiquitous Internet and I took about thirty minutes off to quickly browse through it the first time to reference the allusions made to history in his speech in relation to my nightmares few hours earlier. I had also exhumed the article he wrote in January this year titled “Buhari vs Jonathan: Beyond the Election” which he mentioned in his November 19, 2015 speech. I equally exhumed the response of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and other angry ripostes to that January article.
I have unexpectedly landed myself in a controversy without the intendment of doing so. I have leaped right into the vortex of firestorm of economic history.
Thursday November 19, 2015 was the second time I was meeting face-to-face with Soludo. The first time was in 2007 at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife when he came to deliver a lecture at the request of Law Students Society then. I was at the Law Faculty then. Soludo may no longer recall how we (law students) (including myself at the forefront) led him (in a cordon) from Oduduwa Hall to Department of Economics where he served as a youth corper in 1984 or thereabout because he wanted to meet his former bosses in the Department. I still have the copy of his speech he delivered (something with the title on Law, Institutions and Development) on that occasion in my library as well as many of his other professional articles. There is no doubt that I personally enjoy reading and analyzing his speeches/write-ups whenever I come across them to enrich my knowledge base even though I am not one of his fans at all. But I doff my hat to his prodigious intellect and ready to accept his arguments wherever merited on objective basis without any prejudice.
Fifty five years in the life of a man or woman, or a nation is not a joke at all. Under normal circumstances, those are years of achievements and fulfillment of destiny. Nigeria is over 100 years old now as a nation-state and fifty five years old as an independent nation after gaining political freedom from her colonial master. Yet, it is agreed that Nigeria is still on four: crawling like a baby because of physical and deep psychological challenges.
Nigeria is currently at a crossroad, sandwiched between the past and the future, burdened by historical legacy of poor economic performance (depending on the angle from where one is making the assessment and judgment) and the hopeful prospect of a brighter future (depending on the political sentiment held by the assessor), and nightmare(s) of the past and the sunshine of the day, between the authoritarianism of retired military Junkers and liberalism (without discipline) of civilian democrats.
Soludo gave a bird’s eye-view sweeping the past in historical fashion of how we got to the current economic situational crisis (of dilemma, trilemma, or quadilemma as some grammarians would wordsmith them). In doing so he annotated key turning points for his analytical reference. But a keen reader will undoubtedly notice gaps in the historical sweep caused probably by specks in the bird’s eye-view that blur its vision or health condition of the bird (for instance as a result of the ophthalmological disease of cataract that obscure vision). For instance, he congratulated President Muhammadu Buhari for the Treasury Single Account initiative when it is established that it was Jonathan administration that initiated it as far back as 2014 of which the fundamental aim is not only to “synchronize” spending patterns in federal and state bureaucracies but to stem the tidal wave of corruption that has come to characterized the spending patterns of the bureaucracy (MDAs). It is unfortunate that Jonathan administration could not jump-start the initiative and rev it up. But Buhari saw the merit in it and that was why he adopted it. But Buhari cannot appropriate the ownership of the initiative unto himself. That would be distortion of facts of the history of TSA.
There is something also wrong here. In providing the context for the discourse, Soludo argued that “PMB is the first president of Nigeria under a democracy to have seriously desired the job and struggled for it for over 12 years. To me therefore, he must have a few points to prove, and I was willing to bet on a man who purposefully wanted the job than otherwise”. Is this a form of hero-worship of a retired military Junker-turned-born-again democrat (because Soludo also came to political limelight under a retired military Junker-elected civilian President)? If this is so, then we are looking directly at the picturesque of an intellectual-technocrat’s narcissism of postmodern variety in which worship of democratic hero is substituted for one’s failure at the political scene. Who really is the hero here: the man who struggled for power for twelve years and eventually got it in Lincolnian manner or the man who graciously accepted defeat without making a fuss about his defeat because of his conviction that no blood is worth shedding on account of his inordinate ambition going by the registered pattern of history of electoral-political violence that has come to smear the face of our democracy over the decades? Josi Celio da Silva is very instructive here in his Master’s thesis titled: “Awakening from the Nightmare: A Study of the Democratic Hero in James Joyce’s Ulysses”, (Mestre em Letras Tese submetida â Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina para a obtenção do grau de, Departamento de Língua e Literatura Estrangeiras, Junho – 1978).
Should we condemn and demonize Jonathan administration for its alleged poor economic performance or commend it for holding freer and fairer election (in comparison with past elections since 1999) that ended the reign of the hitherto dominant party, PDP, after sixteen years in power uninterrupted? Would it have been accepted if Jonathan administration had performed “economically well” but decide to rig the general elections in favour of the dominant party, PDP? Which is more preferable or dangerous: sterling economic performance or violence-riddled rigged elections’ results? How would PDP have actualize its pipe dream of ruling the country for sixty years without resorting to continual cycles of violence-riddled and rigged elections even if it has performed economically well?
Without doubt we need a focus on historical mentality approach that will ask questions about the connecting lines in our economic history: How did we get here for the structures and developments of military authoritarianism to consolidate its hold on our political consciousness and its demilitarized inversion in our current democratic political system? What effects and references resulted additionally on these events both upon the broad spectrum of the various political parties in the country? And finally, how can the historical/political interpretations and viewpoints of the “Change Year 2015” that speak of a “seminal catastrophe”, civil break lines, and turning points, continuities or discontinuities during the last sixteen years of PDP rule be classified?
In the last few months, questions regarding these connecting long lines – about unsavoury revelations, continuity, discontinuity, developments, breakthroughs and shifts – have become media debating points among columnists when it comes to the defeat of PDP and victory of APC in the last general elections. But why do these and similar interpretations regarding the “change” become so intense today? What do these historical and political developments really have to say about the way hegemonic forces are interpreted in the Nigeria of 2014-2015 both in the academic field, as well as in political education? An increasing focus on these can be observed, which is not only seen as the seminal buoyancy but also as an unprecedented impulse for the further development and enrichment of our history. Both economic and political history in its complexity or complex adaptive mode “suddenly” gave us a break, a change for the first time, a sort of expected paradigm shift in our social and political consciousness. The paradigmatic consequences resulting from the defeat of PDP and victory of APC, as well as collective emotional turmoil ensured that revanchist; chauvinistic attitudes in parts of the Nigerian political system were significantly radicalized.
Economic development and political freedom/liberty must go hand-in-hand – otherwise there will be inevitably clash and conflict between the two.
But this poses the question of the medium-and long-term historical and political interpretations of the process of economic crisis that contributed to this change witnessed at the political scene: overthrow of hitherto hegemonic faction of the ruling class by another faction (or united fractions). What part does the economic crisis played in the media and intellectual narratives of the change that took place on March 28, 2015? What does it look like after more than twenty years after the Second Republic (1979-83)? The question of the causes and responsibilities have become subject to highly problematic re-evaluation. In this light, the responsibilities for the change appear as the interplay of unfortunate circumstances and somnambulistic actors in the whirlpool of unpredictable events on the edge of the power centers in Nigeria.
One notices all the febrile broadsides against Jonathan administration by Soludo in his speech for reasons that are not too far-fetched. It is generally agreed that Soludo went, in a foolhardy manner precisely during Jonathan administration, to burn his fingers and toes in his escapades into politics of Anambra State where he was rubbished several times, got his clothe torn from his body, his shoes removed from his legs, but only with his tie intact with which he was dragged through the several un-tarred roads and gullies of Akwa and other towns badly bruised – without “political bailout” from Jonathan administration that was too engrossed with its own internal crisis. From PDP he defected to APGA or vice versa. He ostensibly did not calibrate his political ambitions very well. Intellectual technocratism is fundamentally different from topsy-turvy Nigerian politics and if the two are not properly bridged, only disaster will ensue as it happened in the apologetic study case of Soludo in the muddy and slippery Anambra politics. His spleen against former President Goodluck Jonathan, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the PDP as a whole was the direct product of his tragic and calamitous loss in the tundra and fjord of Anambra politics.
Another defect noticed in his historical excursion was his inability to separate the chaff from the wheat of military rule, in fact from the mid-sixties to 1999 that installed and sustained a State-capitalist formation or State-driven capitalist formation that brought us to the current level of development and the crises that this economic system has also suffered so far. Military rule was a double-edged sword, a blessing and a curse – precisely the way the mono-based oil-driven economy was both a blessing and a curse. I did not see a theoretical perspective for this historical excursion, whereas what has been settled and agreed upon in the ivory towers for long now is that the age-long crisis of the Nigerian political economy is the crisis of a “Developmental State” that has reached the end of its evolutionary cycle within the framework of a global metropolitan-peripheral (North-South divide) economic nexus. Military rule brought the oil-driven economy to its zenith of development and also the antagonistic contradictions within that developmental process. It constituted benefits and nightmares of economic history. Military rule is essentially a nightmare of our political history because it also brought political authoritarianism (executive lawlessness or impunity) to its vulgarized height. The inability to break out of this historical fix constitutes part of our history of economic and political nightmares.
The task before us now is to break out of this global framework of North-South divide as have been successfully done by the so-called Asian Tigers or BRICS countries in the last two decades or so. The task include breaking out of our own historical nightmares of feeling trapped between authoritarianism and liberalism that have come fix themselves awkwardly in our current democratic order. In this context, there is no doubt that Buhari administration has a herculean task of it to take the Nigerian economy to the next appreciable height against the background of the performance of the economy under the last administration. The latest Credit Suisse Wealth Report 2015 shows clearly we belong among comity of nations in global wealth distribution. Our governors are now saying that they can no longer afford to pay the minimum wage of N18, 000 per month (equivalent of N600 per day for a typical family of six: father mother and four children)! While our middle class has relatively grown stronger in the last few years, the rich-poor gap has exponentially widened. The governors want to widen it the more now with their criminal argument that they can no longer afford to pay the minimum wage because of the declining allocations from the federal government which exposed their fiduciary internal generated revenue to the public glare for its inadequacy or even non-existence in most states of the federation.
Soludo said that much of what he had read so far “have little basis in theory or empirical evidence or even counterfactual analysis but a rehash of the sterile but polemical diatribe between ‘neo-liberals’ and ‘neo-socialists’, or simply selective partial analysis. This is not helpful and diverts attention from an otherwise serious policy issue” But his historical excursion lack precisely that “counterfactual analysis” that would have validated his submissions empirically. The polemics between neo-liberalism and neo-Marxism have their individual merits and demerits and cannot be dismissed with a flippant wave of hand. I could not see elements of counterfactuals in his analysis. He may succeed in beguiling quite a lot with his middle-of-the-road sophistries but he should count some of us out of the mesmeric or hypnotic influence of his beguiling economic sorcery. We are not that foolish.
Soludo posited that “since 1973, Nigeria has had episodes of positive and negative oil price shocks, and the impacts on the economy have depended on the policy regime”. This is true with the exception that the economy from 1973 to 1983, for instance, was still largely oil revenue-based as other sectors have started retreating to the background especially agriculture. The economy was running on full throttle State-driven industrialization in form of State-owned enterprises (financed by oil revenue) that provided or generated high level of employment and created a wider circle of wealth distribution in which the middle class reached the zenith of its affluence and prosperity. It provided the existing infrastructures that are now deteriorating for lack of appropriate maintenance or criminal neglect. It provided the rationale for moving the federal capital from Lagos to Abuja when it was felt that Lagos was becoming too choky for the Nigerian ruling elite then and the geopolitical calculations of the contending ethnic groups in the country. It also provided the basis for the emergence of upper middle-class bourgeoisie allied with the State machine or apparatus most of them known as super permsecs! General Yakubu Gowon, the then Head of States boasted that the problem of Nigerian economy was not lack of money but how to spend it. Gowon did not mind giving out Udoji bonus in response to the oil price shockwave but something not well thought out in advance because of its populist advantages of which its overall impacts nearly send the economy careening over the cliff.
Today, we face another economic recession or downturn. The precipitate causes of this current economic downturn certainly have their distinctive characteristics, i.e., the dysfunctional process by which the international oil market price per barrel dipped and plummeted to the near bottom of the barrel. How have other countries i.e. oil exporting countries within OPEC framework manage their finances during these trying times? The phenomenon of a severe oil market decline, though, is anything but unique. Some occur in a dramatic fashion, such as the 1973-74 global recessions. Either way, they are unpleasant to experience.
But that doesn’t mean we should just sit idly by, swept up by events beyond our control. We must roll up our sleeves and hit the ground running. We like those kind of languages a lot in Nigeria. It is rather a call to refocus on those things over which we have some say, rather than the roller-coaster of short-term market movements, as compelling as they may sometimes be. Timeless principles, such as intelligent diversification of assets that don’t all simultaneously move in the same direction, living within one’s means, and planning for the future are not only the areas over which we have control but also the key to feeling financially secure, especially during tumultuous times such as the present.
His historical prognostication of that era was schematic and schemata rarely help in fuller understanding of events. That is why we must base our analysis on empirical evidence rooted in reliable statistics. In fact, people hardly quarrel with statistics because they have no time to quarrel with it. Statistics are not available to all the citizens at the same time. Of what importance is statistics to a street trader or the market woman seller pepper and garri in the market? The only statistics important to this category of retail sellers/individual entrepreneurs is the Naira and Kobo coming and going into their pockets or bank accounts. It is Soludo, you and I that often quarrel about statistics, about its reliability or otherwise – statistics with which plan at various level to either further impoverish or improve the welfare of the majority of the people. While I do not doubt the statistics quoted by Soludo, one is free to quarrel with it if one is in doubt and statistical history borne out this fact unremittingly contrary to what his mentor said.. In doing so, we should be able to follow the footsteps and strides of history of whatever is at stake. Soludo did not follow such footsteps and strides of history of the oil price shockwaves or headwinds of the early 70s and 80s properly. People who ignore pattern of historical movements and processes usually head for the wrong direction.
That is why it is very hard to believe that “the economy did far better under SAP especially in terms of employment, output growth, poverty and in some years even inflation” according to NBS as quoted by Soludo in his presentation. On the contrary, SAP led to structural adjustment destruction of not only the regulatory policy framework itself but also the entire economy as the industrial base and strength then was eviscerated and eroded. Many SOEs simply collapsed partly through sheer mismanagement or corrupt practices for which nobody was ever punished. Importation of all sorts of products such as matches, toothpicks, Indian frankincense has its historical origin during this period. We are still saddled with this unwholesome import-substitution legacy till date. It is simply uncharitable to say that Nigerian economy did far better under SAP. Such statements obviously without empirical validity are a roundabout justification of military rule and military Junkers that imposed SAP on the country at that time.
“Many people don’t like to hear this”, claimed Soludo. That is simply because it is unpremeditated historical distortion of economic reality and facts. It is historical falsification and falsehood. This is another nightmares of history from which we have not been able to awake, to paraphrase James Joyce speaking through the character in the Ulysses narratives, Stephen Dedalus, because most of us are intellectual cowards, afraid to challenge authorities because, in turn, we want to ingratiate ourselves to them for pecuniary advantages or others. Refusal to understand historical gyrations or challenge historical legacy as a whole or unwillingness to challenge authorities, etc, create conditions for mediocrity and philistinism unnecessary hero-worship for the people and nation. It is an unsavoury situation, a desolate mental and spiritual condition that people and nations can fall into.
Economic management is not cybernetics. It is more of a complexity science. Even the most advanced economy in the world, United States, has suffered cyclical busts and booms in its growth and development cycles in which White House political leadership/administration rose and fell in the last decades. To demonize Jonathan administration for its economic policy failure because someone thinks that economic management is a cybernetic procedure is clearly an unpardonable intellectual fraudulent act
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme”, said Mark Twain, the American writer. But why it doesn’t repeat itself or why it does rhyme, nobody has been to enlighten us precisely. Twain further explained that “a favorite theory of mine—to wit, that no occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition of a thing which has happened before, and perhaps often” – thus throwing more light on why history behave the ways it do. We have to go back to the crossroad where we missed our direction as a nation, trace our steps back to the point where we mistakenly headed for the woods.
Soludo was of the view that the “current economic hardship is largely our choice and not just oil price shock: The current slump of the economy was predictable and largely avoidable. Just as it happened in 1981-85, the economy has been on a tailspin. There is now about 4% growth shortfall relative to past trend, and this cannot be explained by fall in oil prices alone”. One cannot but agree with that view. However, there is historical misrepresentation of the comparison between what happened in 2014 and 1981-85. Perhaps, there were similarities but those similarities were essentially caused by the policy fixation with the ever-gushing but volatile oil revenue and prices by the Nigerian State and the corollary obstinate refusal to consider diversification of the economy as a futuristic response to the cycles of oil price booms and busts at the international oil market. Nigeria has never planned in conscious manner for a post-petroleum state. All the talks about diversification of the economy have been mere wishful thinking. This historical fixation with oil revenue is interesting from political economic point of view which points directly to the “lazy” character of the Nigerian State and the ruling elite from the military to the civilian regimes of Yakubu Gowon to the time of Jonathan administration that do not want to consider diversifying the economy out of the oil “enclave”. That was why the gruesome political fight for the national power is correctly regarded as an economic dog-fight for the control of the commanding heights of the economy with specific reference to the oil sector. The oil wells are still gushing so why bother about other sectors? “Diversification of the economy” has always been a rhetorical electoral campaign theme or slogan. No military or civilian regime has ever taken it seriously because, again, of the fixation with the ever-available oil revenue.
NNPC and/or Ministry of Petroleum Resources became a state within a State, a bottomless pit of the Nigerian State, lawless and uncontrollable. Billions of Naira have disappeared into the pockets/private accounts of the oil sharks or barracudas. Presidents made themselves de facto Minister of Petroleum Resources so that they can keep their hands on the oil spigots! Oil wells are dashed to political cronies or family members. Central Bank of Nigeria warehouses the oil revenue from where it is “shared” according to weird revenue sharing formula by RMFC among the three levels of government. But from time to time the warehouse or vault at the CBN suffers armed pen-robbers’ invasion. The pen robbers drill tunnels or holes into the warehouse or vault through which they loot the State treasury and nobody get caught or punished. How many of the thieving bureaucrats have ever been punished? Robbing Peter to pay Paul, one might say – in the context of developing economy. Soludo never mention these specific dynamics that contributed to driving the economy into cul-de-sac at intervals in our economic history. For instance, corruption has its function of enriching and further embourgeoisification of the Nigerian political class but ever remain a crime against development. What he did was to stand logic on its head in our economic history by drawing the wrong inferences in his analysis. It is a bad coinage for historical dummies being sold to the public by Soludo in his analysis!
It is uncharitable to exclusively blame Jonathan administration for the dysfunctioning of the Nigerian oil industry and the squandering of the oil riches. That dysfunctioning and squandering of the oil revenue have been an historical process that must be adequately located in its origin (time and space). People who refuse to learn the lessons of history are bound to repeat its mistakes which actually have been our lot as a Nation-State and people since independence.
The fundamental and fatal flaw in Soludo historical prognostication is the concentration on the nitty-gritty of monetary policy and fiscal regulations without reference to the overarching policy outlay. It is the overall policy doctrine, its gravamen, that more often than not determines the success or failure of the monetary and fiscal policy sub-sets no matter how laudable they might have been. The crisis of the State is more often than not reflected in the policy regime over the arch of time and space. It is inevitable dynamic or correlation. It is often a case of the egg-shell and the yoke. Soludo misplaced the historical analogical signposts!
Soludo’s enumeration of what he did and did not do as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria is therefore self-serving. While he is credited with the sophisticated transformation of the financial sector from the pre-1990s’ level to the fairly postmodern 2000s the negative fallouts of that transformation process are still with us today. The relative success (or overwhelming as some would argue) of that transformation process was due essentially to historical conjunctures: support from the Presidency, favourable global financial landscape (the banking consolidation exercise took place before the onset of the global financial crisis of 2007/2008 otherwise it would not have succeeded so well if it had taken place after the global financial headwinds). The consolidation policy and implementation exercise was planted on a loamy soil during favourable planting season!
But the negative sequels of the exercise through poor harvesting methods were bequeathed to the next CBN Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (now Emir of Kano). Today, Godwin Emefiele is in charge of the Marble House and we are still lamenting what was wrong or praising what was right according to where you stand. Today’s reading of the banking and financial sector is not encouraging especially on corporate governance even though it is far better after Soludo engineered the consolidation exercise which put Nigeria into global reckoning and expanded the frontiers of our economy. But unknowingly we are still confronted with nightmares of our economic history: lamentations about the nightmares from which we seek awakening and delusional incubus of hallucinations or schizophrenia from which we seek liberation or cure. That is why I find it interesting when an anonymous person blogged that “History is never exactly, identically the same twice, but if you want to repeat an experience you may have enjoyed, the route back will not be an exact match but the location or outcome sought will be the same. So you may not have exactly repeated history, but in the end you made the ending rhyme (the outcomes were the same)” in response to why history rhyme and does not repeat itself. But perhaps history moves in cycles or waves!
Chukwuma Soludo is clearly an asset to the nation and to Africa as a whole. I would not join others to condemn him for his abrasive “I am-holier-than-thou” or “I-know-it-better-than-you-do” intellectual character (always looking down at the rest of society from the balcony of his intellectual skyscraper!). But he should understand that not every regime or administration would accept his recommendations no matter how noble or well-intentioned they are. Priorities of each administration differ from one another. The physical and psychological profile of each administration determines what policy direction it would probably follow or not want to follow which may differ markedly from what is public expectation. No administration is the same and one with the other.
I can go on to dispute every claim that Soludo made in that speech at the Lagos Oriental Hotel on November 19, 2015. But that is not necessary. My quarrel with his speech was because (1) he was playing politics with PDP/APC-Jonathan/Buhari nexus – forgetting that inevitably there is bound to be a change of guard one day even when PDP, for instance, had boasted that it will rule Nigeria for sixty years uninterruptedly (2) his facts were not properly contextualized in our economic history as he tries to justify military rule and military Junkers that brought the economy into stagnation if not standstill – someone argued sometimes ago that it will take quite a while for the civilian political administrators to clear the mess the military Junkers created in our country since 1966 to 1999 (3) his historical reference and analogy suffer from a weakness which only counterfactual analysis can correct. He said he did not see much of counterfactual analysis in what he has read so far (on the economic debate) but it was precisely the counterfactual methodology that was lacking in his historical reference and analogy.
I would therefore like to end this contribution by quoting Sara Corbett:
“Carl Jung founded the field of analytical psychology and, along with Sigmund Freud, was responsible for popularizing the idea that a person’s interior life merited not just attention but dedicated exploration — a notion that has since propelled tens of millions of people into psychotherapy. Freud, who started as Jung’s mentor and later became his rival, generally viewed the unconscious mind as a warehouse for repressed desires, which could then be codified and pathologized and treated. Jung, over time, came to see the psyche as an inherently more spiritual and fluid place, an ocean that could be fished for enlightenment and healing.
“Whether or not he would have wanted it this way, Jung — who regarded himself as a scientist — is today remembered more as a countercultural icon, a proponent of spirituality outside religion and the ultimate champion of dreamers and seekers everywhere, which has earned him both posthumous respect and posthumous ridicule. Jung’s ideas laid the foundation for the widely used Myers-Briggs personality test and influenced the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. His central tenets — the existence of a collective unconscious and the power of archetypes — have seeped into the larger domain of New Age thinking while remaining more at the fringes of mainstream psychology (Corbett, S.: “The Holy Grail of the Unconscious”, September 16, 2009, available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html?_r=0, downloaded November 10, 2015)
We are all involved in this drama of life, of national politics, of intellectual discourse and debate over the fate of the nation, the dynamic interaction between the speaker and the listening audience, of the disagreements and frictions, agreements and support involved in that interactive process, etc. We are involved in this sweet dreams and nightmares/hallucinations of history, trying individually and/or collectively to live and act them out in reality. It is both a charade and strategic life issues. For instance, Soludo alluded to the possibility of Nigeria becoming one of the seven largest economies in the world, if we get our acts together and right too. That is a sweet dream. Who doesn’t want to become one of the seven largest economies in the world – apart from those already there? From being where we are now to one of the dreamed top-20 world economies and now to mega- or cosmic dreamed top-7 economies! Whom are you going to displace from the existing membership of the G-7? I read recently that BRICS era might be over – even at Jim O’Neill’s Goldman Sachs where the acronym was fabricated as new building blocks of global economy. There was the last sentence in that brief report written by Heather Timmons that was instructive: “If neither BRICs nor CRIBs does it for you, try our handy tool for generating a new catchy acronym of dynamic countries” (Timmons, H.: CRIBS: The BRICs era is over, even at Goldman Sachs, available online at http://qz.com/544410/the-brics-era-is-over-even-at-goldman-sachs/?utm_source=YPL, downloaded November 9, 2015).
I hope that sentence is not meant for Soludo!
Concluded November 21, 2015
Alexander Ekemenah is a member of the Editorial Board of BusinessWorld Intelligence newspaper, Opebi, Ikeja, Lagos State, Nigeria. Can be contacted through email: alexekem@yahoo.com
— Nov 23, 2015 @ 13:40 GMT
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