Suffering from ever-increasing petrol prices and the consequent soaring prices of everything, Nigerians are experiencing a precipitous decline in their quality of life. This dire situation is made worse by the insensitive and almost derisive comments of the perpetrators of this suffering.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, aptly nicknamed “T-Pain,” recently said from London that Nigerians would appreciate his “reform” wisdom in the future. Such statements are both insensitive and deceptive.
It is callous because these “reforms” have literally destroyed the lives of millions of people and caused the deaths of many. What benefits could the deceased have gained from the economic reforms that caused their untimely deaths?
As evidenced by the history of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) in Nigeria, and the experience of other countries that have implemented similar neoliberal economic reforms, such policies always undermine the middle class and leave the lower classes weaker. This is deceptive because it satisfies the population while exacerbating poverty. It serves the market and benefits the upper class.
Almost without exception, neoliberal policies such as subsidy elimination, deregulation, social spending cuts, and austerity exacerbate economic inequality and impede sustainable development in developing countries. These policies often benefit large corporations and the wealthy, unfairly concentrating wealth in the hands of a few and widening the gap between the rich and the poor.
Therefore, the deferred benefit that Mr. Tinubu wants Nigerians to endure mass death and despair is to open up the Nigerian market to international competition, which may please the world market, but not to compete. It would overwhelm local companies that don’t have the resources or technology to do so, and it would free up resources. Invest in infrastructure.
But the reality is that modern Nigeria lacks security, social and physical infrastructure, and Tinubu’s policies have left the majority poor enough to not afford to buy anything produced by foreign companies. Therefore, it is difficult to accept foreign investment. This explains the mass outflow of foreign-affiliated companies from 2023 onwards.
Moreover, given the deep culture of corruption in the upper echelons of power, much of the money saved by withdrawing subsidies, raising tariffs, increasing taxation, and cutting social programs is likely to be misappropriated. The government will continue to rely on borrowing from the World Bank and IMF to finance its operations.
We are already witnessing this phenomenon. Despite huge inflows of cash into government coffers, no new projects are being built or even started. Indeed, governments at all levels are delaying the implementation of a £70,000 a month minimum wage. Governors conceal surplus funds received from federal government allocations by converting them into dollars, thereby putting pressure on the naira.
The majority of Nigerians are now accepting the fact that the only certain outcome of Tinubu’s “reforms” is death, starvation and despair, and are looking for a way out of it. Middle-class citizens are saving to leave the country, and for the first time in history, even the majority of middle-class people in northern Nigeria are investing in plans to leave Nigeria.
In response, Senate President Godswill Akpabio declared that Nigerians fleeing the scorching neoliberal hell that Tinubu has created are ungrateful, unpatriotic cowards and must be stopped. “I believe that people should prioritize love for their country over economic gain. That’s why so many of us choose to stay here,” he said.
Akpabio and his comrades chose to remain in Nigeria not out of love for the country, but because they thrive in Nigeria and are insulated from the harm it would do to it. The reason why professionals are leaving Nigeria in droves is not because they lack love for their country. they love their country. They just hate the current raging neoliberal hell. It is insulting to suggest, as Akpabio did, that Nigerian immigrants are motivated by sordid and unpatriotic motives. Even more insulting are the solutions proposed by Akpabio to deter immigration. The idea is that dissatisfied Nigerians should own fewer cars.
Sometimes one wonders if Akpabio has any functioning brain cells left.
Meanwhile, Bola Tinubu’s wife, Remi Tinubu, continued this pattern of insulting Nigerians in the midst of their suffering. On Thursday, she told the Ooni of Ife that her husband is not responsible for Nigeria’s current hardships, which contradicts her husband’s own admission of responsibility for the hardships endured by Nigerians. It is an illusory promise of a better tomorrow in return for her husband’s pain. giving.
“We are only 18 months into this government,” she said. “We are not the cause of our current situation. We are working to fix it and secure our future.”
She then reversed the logic and said that Nigerians are suffering not because her husband has raised gas prices more often and at a higher rate than previous presidents, but because previous presidents have done the same. He hinted that it was because there wasn’t one.
“I know that the subsidy has been abolished, but with God on our side, Nigeria will be bigger than this in the next two years,” she said. “Those who tried to eliminate subsidies before couldn’t see it through. But with your prayers over the next two years, we will build our nation for the future.”
The anger that came over me when I read this is indescribable. Are these insensitive people making any use of their cognitive abilities?
I have long suspected that the upper echelons of Nigeria’s power structure are dissatisfied with the emergence of a middle class since 1999. Markers of middle-class status — car and home ownership, fine restaurants, foreign education, clothing, etc. — stripped away sophistication — the privileges of the upper classes that they believed should be exclusive to them.
In the early 2000s, they derisively referred to “Obasanjo drivers,” those who could afford to own a car during the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency due to minimum wage hikes and minimum wage arrears. Of course, it wasn’t Obasanjo who gave people cars or created the middle class. In essence, democratic practices circulate opportunities to create specific jobs and develop the middle class.
Tinubu’s neoliberal policies are currently eradicating the middle class and plunging the poor into deeper and intolerable poverty reminiscent of the military dictatorship era. How long can this continue? But there’s nothing shocking about what’s happening now, so we’re going to observe from afar. I foretold that this would happen even before Tinubu came to power.
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