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Why Prof. Soludo Can’t Be Governor

November 22, 2009

In a Press Statement contained in the Sunday Vanguard of November,22 2009, page 3, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan (GCON) is billed to lead the campaign for the Governorship Elections in Anambra State. This is not unusual. It has become a tradition of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).


If the second citizen of Nigeria is leading a campaign, then everybody knows that it is not an ordinary campaign. For the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) the campaign is like the Nazi forces marching on Poland, because the other contenders such as Dr. Chris Ngige, and the incumbent Governor Mr. Peter Obi, who like Mickey mice have no such high profile political connections and campaign paraphenalia. However, in a democracy, what is central is the will of the people, and this has been demonstrated in Ondo, Edo and Lagos States. I am cock sure PDP knows that the era of “carry go” ended with the odd acronym fondly called OBJ.

The inscription ‘ Soludo is living large’ which adorns a snippet in the saharareporters, is an indication that the University of Nsukka Professor of Economics, who appeared  innocuous when he was appointed Special Adviser to the former President Obasanjo on Economic Affairs, warmed  himself into the hearts of the inglorious democratic junta and ended up being appointed Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Even a mortal enemy of Soludo will concede that he is reform minded but it discovered that the implementation of the 13-point  banking reform agenda was peripheral hence he administered expired drugs on Nigeria’s comatose economy.

Chukwuma Soludo is no doubt a brilliant scholar of Economics even though Professor Aluko thinks otherwise. Viewed against the background of his enthusiasm in convincing the international Community that Nigeria will join the big league of the first 20th most industrialized economies ala Vision 2020, many people gave him commendation. Soludo also expressed profound enthusiasm for Nigeria to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It was he and other Aso-Rock-bound technocrats that initiated a home-grown New Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS). But sadly, most of the miracle workers in Soludo’s team to execute the banking sector reforms were either Eurocentric capitalist apologists or bourgeois pretenders  who  failed to tell Nigerians that economics is a science of motion, an organic discipline, not a phenomenon that is susceptible to some metaphysical manipulations.

The so called Economic Miracle Workers and others assembled by the Obasanjo administration are bourgeois apologists and International Monetary Fund IMF fifth columnists who were unrepentant converts of neo-liberal capitalist individualism-an ideology that flourishes in the West but can only be stillborn in Nigeria. Even when Nigerians knew that Soludo covered up his non-performance with his intellectual sophistry and power point presentations, Soludo continued to stay the course like a badly trained pharmacist who insists that his counterfeit drugs must be swallowed or no further prescriptions could be made. George Bush’s fatal diplomatic summersault in Iraq also made him to stay the course until he ruined America.

May I recall that before the popularization of dialectic materialism as a sophisticated paradigm for class analysis, Keynesian, Malthusian and other neo-classical economists have postulated that economic reforms were necessitated by efforts geared towards solving human economic problems, thus every reform effort has its own peculiar historical circumstances. Reforms are not carried out for their own sake but are designed to solve problems for the greatest number of people in a utilitarian sense. Again since reforms are carried out in the interest of the people affected by the reforms the people are supposed to be given sufficient latitude to evaluate their direct and spill-over effects. That is why an overdose of medication is sometimes more debilitating that the ailment itself.  Soludo’s reforms were not people-centric but bourgeois engineered.

Soludo’s re-denomination proposals and his invocation of prosperity for Nigeria’s economy to industrialize and be ranked among the 20 most powerful economies in the world is like defying the law of gravity or falsifying the iron law of wages. I asked in one of my past articles: What is Soludo manufacturing in CBN that will enable him change the adverse balance of payment position in Nigeria? How many moribund industries has Soludo resurrected that will create employment for the youths? How much percentage of the GDP is Nigeria investing in education that will enable the nation add value to the educational system and to produce high caliber manpower? How much commission did Soludo get while printing the new notes that are already in circulation? The macro-economic stability preachers is not a pragmatist but his successor is a realist and a pragmatist.

The privatization exercise in Nigeria and the market fundamentalism which Soludo passionately supported were clever tricks to transfer the ownership of public corporations to private investors, but the Dangote’s and Otedola’s will argue strenuously that their aim is to make such corporations work. The underlining basis is that capitalism presupposes a condition of perfect competition, but in reality businessmen use the term competition to shield the severe rivalry or war for sharing profits. Thus the plain rule that guides privatization is the transfer of whatever belongs to the State to private profiteering vampires who suck away the economic vitality of the masses and impose misery on them. That is why privatization will never work in Nigeria where capitalism with its inherent contradictions has been twisted in favour of class interest. An unrepentant believer of this orthodoxy would most likely mortgage a State when he becomes a Governor. Soludo is a die-hard capitalist who will sell Anambra State to the IMF and the World Bank.

On the periphery, Soludo’s bank re-capitalization reforms were designed to weed out the small players in banking and other financial institutions with meager liquidity and tiny asset base-and in capitalist parlance to protect investors’ money. But no capitalist can protect the money of the ordinary man. The most fundamental objective of the reform was to shut out the middle class trying to cross the line between cronyism and raw capitalism. That is why Soludo could not point at one moribund sector of the Nigerian economy he helped to resurrect. Sanusi Lamido has identified that problem and pumped in liquidity into those banks that were terminally ill, hence he demonstrated that Soludo as a manager not a leader. Anambra is a volatile State and Soludo’s Governorship would spell doom for the  Anambra because the chances are that the State would be sold very cheaply to international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank.


Already, the system Soludo helped to nurture as CBN Governor has produced a class of economic adventurers and comprador bourgeois who serve as cronies and fronts to protect foreign interest even at the expense of the domestic economy. They buy the oil blocs in Nigeria and feed fat on monies pilfered from the common coffers through the privatization exercise. Government’s genuine efforts at economic rejuvenation have been deliberately sabotaged by the same thieving economic class-who are celebrated as patriots by their bootlickers. Those Nigerians who plunder the economy without conscience but with impunity are the same people dominating Nigeria’s Economic Team under Soludo.

Under Soludo’s Governorship of the apex Bank, Nigeria’s economy was like an asphyxiated man gasping for breathe. Such an economy needs first aid before a major surgical operation. I am not an economist but Soludo and his reform-minded capitalists should understand Leontief’s interindustry analysis, that the duality of industrialization and technological innovation are principal factors in economic growth. Soludo dreamt about a country that would run before it can crawl. That is the temerity behind Vision 2020  and no intellectual sophistry or pontifications can upturn the laws of  nature.

From all indications, the IMF inspired economic prescriptions have failed woefully. While the same bureaucratic bourgeoisie feeding fat on monies stolen from the common coffers hijacked the privatization exercise, the implementation of liberalization policies imposed severe economic hardship on the citizenry. From all the indicia of economic developments, Nigeria’s economy since the adoption of IMF economic prescriptions has taken a turn for the worse. Nothing seems to have worked out, as genuine efforts at economic rejuvenation have been deliberately sabotaged by the same thieving economic class that have rendered the economy prostate.

More than ever, the problem of unemployment has been aggravated by what seems to be over-expansion of the tertiary educational sub-sector. It is no longer news that not up to 9% of the products of higher institutions are absorbed into the economy by way of employment. This is largely because the real sectors of the economy are anchored on pseudo-foundation. Since the level of industrialization is very low, the problem of unemployment would continue unabated in the foreseeable future.

About 80% of the companies in Nigeria are multinational companies or companies that have major shareholders off-shores. Worse still, the oil sector, which forms a major plank of the Nigerian economy, is under the firm grip of multinational oil companies (foreign) or Nigerians who subsume under the category of comprador bourgeoisie. The result is that what appears to be economic growth does not automatically translate into economic development These multinational companies declare huge profits, which unfortunately are repatriated to America and Europe. Soludo never exploited  his oval office as CBN Governor to influence the influx of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

If Soludo could use the machinery of the CBN to muster up the political will to recover the billions of naira stashed away abroad he would be regarded as the grandmaster of technocrats who is divinely commissioned to restore the weather beaten Nigerian economy. Nigerians are also eager to know what has become of the stolen but recovered billions from the Abachas. Soludo-the CBN Governor should devise viable ways of evolving a Marshall plan to rejuvenate the battered economy.

It is timeous to advise Professor Soludo that laying down stringent conditions to close down banks is like scratching the multifarious problems of the Nigerian economy on the surface. Nigeria’s economic problems are deep-rooted and fundamental. Our economy is a victim of high-level conspiracy between the political power holders and foreign business interest. Today, there is no sector of the Nigerian economy that is developed. While the educational system is leprous, social service delivery has virtually collapsed. The story is the same in all the major sectors of the economy. This is where the Soludian theory is suspect and Soludo’s imposition would pose a grave and lethal danger to our efforts at nurturing Nigeria’s nascent democracy.

Today, Nigeria is in dire need of growing her economy and this must begin at the State level. The much-needed economic diversification and employment generation can only happen when there is good governance anchored on the will of the people. For as long as Professor Soludo was governor of the apex Bank he danced to the drum beats of his paymasters and never used any macro-economic policy to salvage the economy.

There is an African Proverb that  says when a man falls, he does not look at where he has fallen but looks at where he slipped. This is the same viewpoint advocated by the scion of Nigerian literature Professor Chinua Achebe in “The Trouble With Nigeria”. Similarly, when a man passes a road and meets with obstacles, the proper thing to do is to retrace the steps rather than staying the course. From all indications, Soludo is not a reformer and Anambra State does not need to be handed over to  bourgeois apologist and democratic pretender. The State is in dire need of a man who is loved by the ordinary people and has a track-record of performance.

The PDP campaign armada should discard the wretched theory of “anointed or divine  leader”  rulership reminiscent of the era of absolutism in Europe when the emperors and Tzars held sway. Imposing a leader on a people as enlightened as Anambrarians would be grandiose injustice and this underscores the need for the PDP to allow free and fair contest to enable the electorate to decide who governs them. Anambra State is very important to the Igbo race. At this historic moment when the Nigerian economy has been mired by a class of mindless economic buccaneers and mangled by political marauders the most critical element needed to make a turn around is good governance, and this should evolve naturally from the people.

The people need a governor that will create jobs to reduce the criminality index, construct roads to give every segment of the people a sense of belonging, a governor that will give the people a listening ear without recourse to Aso Rock. Soludo can only function as Aso Rock’s surrogate and the true meaning of democracy as government by the people would have been vilified. It is against this background that Soludo’s candidature is suspect, but ultimately, it is the Anambrarians that will decide. Let the will of the electorate prevail!




Idumange John
Is a University Lecturer and Activist
 

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