In the early 1990s, Russia, flush from kicking out communism began its tentative march towards a market economy under an ailing, vodka sloshing and unpredictable Boris Yeltsin. From an economy which since 1917 had been totally dominated by the state, Russia’ route to the market was by way of one of the largest privatization programme in history. Hundreds of petrochemical plants, cement industries, steel and aluminum behemoths and enterprises rich in gold, oil and zinc were spectacularly and corruptly sold off at a fraction of their prices.
In the early 1990s, Russia, flush from kicking out communism began its tentative march towards a market economy under an ailing, vodka sloshing and unpredictable Boris Yeltsin. From an economy which since 1917 had been totally dominated by the state, Russia’ route to the market was by way of one of the largest privatization programme in history. Hundreds of petrochemical plants, cement industries, steel and aluminum behemoths and enterprises rich in gold, oil and zinc were spectacularly and corruptly sold off at a fraction of their prices.
Chrystia Freeland in her book Sale of the Century: Russia’s Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism noted that a handful of extremely smart savoir-faire businessmen took advantage of the privatization process to become the owners of enormous amounts of Russia’s mineral wealth (the largest in the world) and the awesome champions in Russia’ “gladiator Capitalism” These businessmen became globally known as the oligarchs. They are Roman Abramovich (owner of Chelsea FC), Pyotr Aven, Boris Berezovsky (who is currently on self imposed exile in the U.K and wanted at home for a range of financial and economic crimes), Mikhail Friedman Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Khorodovsky (who is currently serving a lengthy jail term for tax evasion) and Vladimir Potanin. Of these seven wealthiest oligarchs that emerged out of post-communist Russia, six of them are Jews. Vladimir Potanin is the only full-blooded ethnic Russian. John Lloyd writing on the Autumn of the Oligarchs in the New York Times Magazine wondered that “in a country where Jewishness is best kept quiet, nearly all of Russia’s oligarchs are Jewish.” In a country of one hundred and fifty million people, Jews make less than one percent of the population yet control over fifty percent of Russia’ economy.
In Burma, the ethnic Chinese minorities dominate both the legitimate trade as well as the highly lucrative illegitimate trade in opium and other unsavoury enterprise. Burmese born ethnic Chinese moguls including Lo Hsing Han, Kyaw Win and others own all the banks, airlines, logging companies, gem-stone mining concessions and other conglomerates. No indigenous Burmese own any substantial business in Burma, yet ethnic Chinese make up only five percent of Burma’s population.
In Thailand, market oriented policies and the internationalization of capital resulted in the remarkable emergence of huge export-oriented and extensive manufacturing sector that help the take-off of the economy. According to Amy Chua in her award wining book World on Fire, virtually all of the new manufacturing establishments, including the now behemoth, Siam Motors, were Chinese controlled. Suchiro Akira in his book Capital Accumulation in Thailand 1885-1985 found that of Thailand’s roughly seventy most powerful groups, all but three were owned by Thai Chinese. Of these non-Chinese groups, one was controlled by the Military Bank, another by the Royal family and the third by a Thai-Indian family. Indigenous Thais who form an overwhelming percentage of Thailand’s population own very little of the country’s wealth and indeed participate very little in the upstream, mid-stream and downstream sectors of the economy.
In Malaysia, despite large scale affirmative policies to assist the indigenous Malay population or Bumiputra (Sons of the soil) to engage actively in the economic process, the ethnic Chinese minority account for seventy percent of the country’ market capitalization. A substantial percentage these seventy percent according to Amy Chua, is attributable to Robert Kuok, a Chinese-Malaysian who owns everything from manufacturing to real estate and distribution. In Indonesia, people like Sudono Salim (changed his name from the Chinese Liem Sioe Liong) and Bob Hassan along with other ethnic Chinese Indonesians control the commanding heights of that country’s economy. Under the Late General Suharto who ruled Indonesia for over thirty years, the only non Chinese indigenous Indonesian that competed at the highest level of the Indonesian economy was the Suharto family. This scenario is replicated throughout South-East Asia where the ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities are the dominant economic group.
In Latin America, the whites who are minorities control political and economic power at the expense of the indigenous Indian population. In Brazil, where the black population is the largest of all the ethnic groups, the minority white populations dominate and control the economy. In South Africa, Zimbabwe and most countries in Southern Africa, the minority whites also dominate and control economic power at the expense of the black majority. In Ethiopia, the Eritrean minority was the dominant economic group and this led to tensions between them and the majority Amhara population. In Rwanda, the Tutsis for long had more cattle and money and hence were more economically dominant than the majority Hutu, a situation that resulted in the genocide of 1994 where over eight hundred thousand Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred. In Lebanon, the minority Christian Levantines and Armenians have always dominated the economic space at the expense of the majority Arab population. The Kikuyu in Kenya who form twenty-two percent of the population of the country have a stranglehold over the economy to the detriment of the Luo, Masai and some forty odd ethnic groups. In India, the
Across the globe, minority groups in many varied countries have tended to control economic power and this has resulted in tensions and even conflicts. Hitler justified his attack on the minority Jewish population of Europe on their disproportionate dominance of the economic platform in the continent. Anti-Semitic, anti-Chinese, anti-Eritrean, anti-Tutsi sentiments are prevalent in Countries where these ethnic groups control the levers of economic power. This economically powerful minority is what Amy Chua calls the market dominant minorities.
In Nigeria, with over four hundred ethnic groups who engage in the most primitive and most bloody contest for political power with the losers raising the war cry of marginalization and the threat of violent retributions, there is a surprising consensus and convergence of ethnic neutral participation in the competition for economic engagement and economic power. The Hausa-Fulani from the north dominate and have a near total stranglehold on the haulage business including the haulage of petroleum products across the country. They also control the parallel (non-bank) market in foreign exchange, indeed it is widely acknowledged that the ‘dollar mallam’ in Kano and at the Lagos Airport have more influence in determining the value of the naira than any monetary or fiscal policy adopted by the Central Bank. The katinkwari market in Kano with its billions of naira annual turnover business in gold, cloths and other goods is very much a market in the hands of merchants from Kano, Zaria, Sokoto and Katsina. Minorities from the North are also not left out in the booming Kano trade
The Igbos of South-Eastern Nigeria are well known ‘businessmen’ The markets at Nnewi, Awka, Aba are strategic to the economy of Nigeria as they are not only centres of distributive trade but also thriving centres of production. The billions of dollars of annual trade in these markets are exclusively in the hands of the Igbos. Alaba market in Lagos and thousands of relatively smaller markets across the length and breadth of West Africa have seen sizeable if not disproportionate Igbo participation and control. The control of coach transport across West Africa is almost exclusively dominated by the Igbos.
The Yoruba in South-Western Nigeria are also keen players in the economic space. It is believed that they more than any other ethnic group took advantage of the indigenization policy of the 1970s to assess economic power by which they dominated the banking, finance, shareholdings in blue chip companies and control of the media. Southern minorities especially the Edo and Delta minorities have in recent years began to challenge Yoruba “rulership” in these sectors
Thus, what is apparent in the Nigerian situation is the absence of a market dominant minority but rather the Nigerian economic environment is a large football field where every ethnic group has either a first eleven player or an active reservist on the bench waiting to be called in anytime to score a goal. Consequently competition for economic power is more of a gentleman’s game, chivalrous, polite, well-mannered and good-mannered, more of cricket and less of rugby.
The reason for this tepid if not brotherly struggle for the market space by the different ethnic groups is simple: CORRUPTION. Corruption in Nigeria has over the years metamorphosed through different stages of growth and reforms that it is probably the most democratized industry in the country. At the public sector level, it is believed that over four hundred billion dollars has been lost to corruption through outright theft, mismanagement and misapplication of the national treasury. Over thirty-four trillion naira was earned as oil and non-oil revenue between 1999 and 2007 yet the infrastructure deficit is glaringly evident. The paradox of corruption in Nigeria and the corruptive process is its non-discriminatory character. It is all inclusive, it welcomes all, it is global in character and all tribes and tongues not only participate but are encouraged by competing tribes and tongues to participate. At the end, there is enough bottom-line for every participant to transfer and invest in the market either through ownership or through consumption.
It is therefore not overly shocking that civil servants working at the Federal Secretariat in Abuja are amongst the wealthiest residents in the city. They own most of the luxurious houses in the tree lined well kept and well greened areas of Asokoro, Maitama and the Lake side district of Jabi. They own quiet a few hotels across the country as well as schools. Nigerians were however shocked when as a result of family quarrels a Director in the Nigerian Civil Service and a church elder who had died in an air crash in 2005 was found to own scores of choice properties in the choicest parts of Abuja and Lagos as well as billions of naira in well hidden bank accounts. His assets were taken over and frozen by the EFCC.
This particular case is not an exception but the norm. Every ethnic group is involved in stealing from the state. That Nigerian state has become that beautiful yet vulnerable lady constantly subjected to rape and rapacious violence by all who come across her beauty. Cases of fraud and corruption in the National Assembly, the civil service and the political class including the Siemens, Halliburton, National I.D Card, Ndidi Elumelu’s rural electrification corruption scandal and all others prove beyond reasonable doubt that corruption in Nigeria negates and rejects ethnicity, tribe and religion. Corruption and how to tackle it is perhaps the most unifying force amongst Nigerians aside from football.
The returns on corruption can be seen everywhere and all over. They dot the Lagos and Abuja landscapes as well as the cities of Kano and Port Harcourt. They are also extended to places as far away as Dubai, New York and London. The returns on corruption when invested properly create jobs both directly and indirectly and hence enable a protective cover for the perpetrator of corruption and fraud to be defended with a howling and vociferous voice by the beneficiaries of the jobs he has created. A permanent secretary with a one billion naira hotel and an integrated farm in his village has obviously helped to create some three hundred jobs and put money in the hands of the formerly unemployed or underemployed. It is therefore no great surprise when statements like “Nigeria’s money is nobody’s money” and Na our money him chop we no mind” are seriously bandied around to defend a politician or civil servant caught raping the state.
In every part of Nigeria, the proceeds of corruption has not only helped to facilitate the emergence of market and market forces but has aided its growth and spill-over. It is therefore a fact that the Nigerian economy is under the control of a group whose initial start-up capital was made possible by the proceeds of corruption or was quickened and incentivised by corruption. When the ability of these CORRUPTOCRATS to dominate the economic space is being threatened, they always band together and fight back fiercely and murderously. That was what Nuhu Ribadu meant when he opined that when you fight corruption, it fights back. Nuhu Ribadu a Yola born Fulani was chased out of town by a combination of Northern Katsinawas, Kanawas, Hausas, Fulanis, Yorubas from the South-West, Ibori and others from the Niger-Delta, Aoondooka and others from the Middle-Belt. All tribe and tongue joined together in unity and oneness to defend the rule of the corrupt and defeat the pretender to the throne the so-called anti-corruption and its high priest. Perhaps if corruption had been limited to any of the three big tribes it might have been much easier to deal with but since some four hundred and something tribes are actively involved, it might just be a mission to Mercury
Nosa James-Igbinadolor wrote from Abuja. He can be reached on [email protected]
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