Iliyasu Gadu
Ilgad2009@gmail.com
08035355706 (Texts only)
In effect, the history of western Europe and its relationship with the World from 1494 to 1945 had been one of continuous plunder of resources on an unprecedented scale. It was this mass plunder that laid the foundation of the agricultural and industrial revolution which in turn gave greater impetus and power to enable greater plunder to sustain the new industrial societies in Europe.
As the main countries in Europe could not readily agree on how to conduct their plunder of global resources in an orderly manner despite several attempts to do so, they frequently fought brutal wars amongst themselves leading to a self-destructive climax in 1945 when without exception they all lost control of their economic empires.
The United States of America which emerged politically and economically triumphant in 1945 did not dismantle the empires it inherited, it instead subsumed the various economic structures into a global economic superstructure which it created and controlled.
That is what brought about the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) known more popularly as the ‘’World Bank’’ its twin counterpart.
In the post war economic rearrangement championed by the US, the IMF featured as the institution the countries needing funds to reconstruct their economies would first have to go to. There they will have to agree and commit to conditionalities of economic restructuring which has become the template of IMF inspired economic reforms implemented by many countries around the world.
But in the post war world many emerging countries knowing the hidden lacunae involved in implementing IMF conditions have had to either reject them outright as in the prominent and successful case of China, or as in many other cases like Turkiye, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, India and Indonesia to name a few tweaked and reverse-engineered the conditionalities.
In the thirty-eight odd years that Nigeria started implementing IMF inspired reforms through President Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) successive governments have taken care not to implement the IMF package fully knowing the social and political implications as experienced in countries that have done so.
But in the economic history of Nigeria, the administration of President Tinubu earned the distinction of being the first to go the whole hog in implementing the IMF package. This the administration did without subjecting the policies to a baseline test on the economic, social and political implications to the country in the short, medium and long terms. Thus the administration’s economic reforms have become a leap in the dark without the necessary hatches on the people to whom it is directed and on the economic fortunes of the country.
Intrinsically what the Tinubu administration has done is to throw the economy under the bus of IMF where what remains of our economy and aspirations will be trampled underneath.
How do we get out of this?
It is instructive that the Chairman of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) has expressed an admiration for China. This is no doubt a recognition of the tremendous progress China had made over the decades in pursuing an independent economic growth without IMF. But if the process that China took may prove daunting, we can consider the case of countries like Turkiye, Malaysia etc who re-engineered the IMF process and adapted it to suit their needs.
The first consideration in this regard is to jettison the thought that the IMF is an institution whose existence and processes are abstract and dedicated to the path of economic orthodoxy devoid of pursuing the strategic and political interest of any country or group of countries.
Nothing can be further from the truth on this score. The overarching aims and objectives of the IMF are the same as those of the vanquished European powers in their quest to plunder the resources of the world. The only point of departure is that whereas the vanquished European powers employed crude forms of extracting those resources, the IMF using the subtle expertise of suave economists, bankers and technocrats does the same thing in more efficient and impactful ways such that a country undergoing such attentions never sees the face of IMF in the economic plunder going on.
Secondly, we must commit to building a genuine economic development process from the scratch. As it is with a floating currency, a hollowed out agricultural and industrial sector, an ever-galloping inflation, low productivity skills along with other deficits, the economy is well and truly comatose and on the way to the undertaker.
But must rescue the economy by ourselves because the IMF which does not feel our pains but which indeed passes it off to its patrons gleefully as a mark of its success will not raise a finger. We must in this regard either dispense totally as China did or reverse-engineer IMF policies to rebuild our economy as others did theirs.
How can we arrive at this?
The new economic paradigm must begin with a National Conclave on the Economy and what directions to take us out of the present economic cul-de-sac. My suggestion is to task our armies of Economists, Social scientists and the like to fashion out a Nigeria-specific economic blueprint taking into account our peculiarities, our needs, our abilities and capacities and our aspirations going forward. I further suggest that the template of Economic planning should be based on; ‘’Ideas, Labour and Innovation, and Value added’’. Our ideas for economic development must be generated by our scholars; our vast human resources must be the incubator of economic activities in all fields and the value added from the two preceding planks should form the compass for further economic development.
Having consolidated our economic development paradigm, we can begin to move to the next process of venturing into regional development in the West African sub-region. The successful transformation and consolidation of our national economic development template, will put us in a prime position to partake fully and advantageously in reshaping the economic and political future of the west African sub-region and beyond of which we are primus inter pares.
Let us not be deceived. Thirty-eight years of our engagement with IMF since 1985 under Babangida has ensured a steady transfer of wealth in trillions of naira in various ways from Nigeria without corresponding evidence of economic development. In the intervening period we have lost the competitive edge we used to have in some areas in agriculture, industry and production; our currency has lost its value by a more than a thousand-fold, and as a people we have lost the value and regard we once had in our immediate African sphere and in the global stage at large.
Our engagement with the IMF-inspired reforms have brought in their stead deficits, debts and death; perpetual deficits in our budgets and finances, debts to international finance institutions and ultimately a looming harvest of deaths through massive hunger, poverty and possibly even death of the country.
To avert this looming catastrophe, we must think and act like the European countries and their US off shoot and subsequently China and the others, in carving out our own secure economic sphere in the world.
Beholden to its principals the United States and its western allies for their own exclusive economic interests, the IMF cannot be our salvation. It is rather the path to economic ruination as we are now experiencing. We must rely on our own efforts right or wrong and desist from seeking validation from them for our economic development. As the world is undergoing momentous economical and political changes the role and relevance of the institutions are being vigorously challenged. Even the United States of America the owner and bastion of the IMF and its policies is seen implementing policies that repudiate the economic orthodoxy of the IMF in order to survive the challenging global situation.
Why should Nigeria with all its potentials and capacities stick pig-headedly to economic policies that are going out of sync and have brought nothing but ruination to it?
A leader or leaders who can face up to these challenges successfully in our present dire circumstances is the one that can qualify to be termed ‘’bold and courageous’’, not the one that takes us to the economic slaughterhouse called IMF.
