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.
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