ACCOMPLISH MAGAZINE NOV 2023

dictates our commodity prices
and financial terms, so how
can African leadership, after
60 years of independence, if
it is true and real, continue to
accept economically suicidal
policies from IMF when opposite
polices are obviously applied
across the developed world?
Why, if not the coloniality of
power sources that resulted
in ‘khakistocracy’, (rulership of
the worst across Africa), has
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous
nation and largest market, not
pushed for an African economic
bloc that can compete with
other blocs like the European
Union, North American FTA,
China etc, and now waiting
on Brazil, Russia, India,
and China (BRICS)?
The IMF that stands
for International
Monetary Fund
is actually the
‘International
Monetary Foreman’ in
a world where Black
Africans were moved
from private slave
plantations into national
slave plantations, led
by neo-colonist foremen
parading as presidents,
professors, armed forces and
other sectoral foremen. Such
African leadership can’t unify
plantation nations that belong
to Western colonists into a
bloc. Different leaders react to
the coloniality differently. For
instance, Olusegun Obasanjo
tried to double-play them but
remained within the spectrum.
Goodluck Jonathan’s team
over-played them and got
thrown out with corruption
propaganda. Now, Tinubu plays
along sheepishly for selfish
ambition. Moreover, it is not that
our scholars and rulers don’t
know the implications of IMF’s
debilitating economic policies,
but like in the slave plantations,
the foremen are exempted from
life-threatening production
techniques! In modern terms,
the foremen find a way out
through cost of governance
and over-inflated contracts.
The cost of governance in
Nigeria is actually greater than
the cost of fuel subsidies used
to stimulate our productive
sectors. In 2022, out of the
Federal Government’s ₦16.3
trillion budget, ₦6.8 trillion
was spent on the payment of
salaries and other personnel
overheads. That rose, this year,
to ₦8.5 trillion of the ₦21.82 trillion
budgeted. Therefore, instead
of cutting fuel subsidy
to push millions of people into
poverty, it is estimated that
Nigeria can save ₦12 trillion
annually from the merger
of government’s ministries,
departments, and agencies
(MDAs) that have overlapping
functions, as recommended by
the Stephen Oronsaye report
(2011/2013 on reduction of cost of
governance.
In the eight years of the All
Progressives Congress (APC)
administration at the centre,
a whopping N59.2 trillion
was wasted on overheads,
personnel costs, and other
items of recurrent expenditure.
In addition to the bloated
bureaucracy and outrageous
salaries, we have abuse of
office where relatives of people
in the corridors of power use
presidential jets and large
security details for private
purposes.
For instance, during Buhari’s
regime, only 19.7 per cent of the
total budgetary spending, or
₦14.5 trillion went into capital
expenditure (CAPEX), out of
which only about 30 per cent
was actualised. Out of the
actualised budget, construction
projects cost about four times
the World Bank benchmark
prices. All these considered,
if we can’t have a single
operational petrol refinery
in over sixty years of crude
oil mining, it is not difficult
to understand why we
haven’t developed
and will never develop
in this neocolonist
governance.
Ultimately, the cost
of governance and
poor economic policies
are passed onto the
masses, blaming them
for fuel subsidy fraud
that necessitates its
cancelation. Oil subsidy
is the only subsidy that
the Nigerian masses and
producers enjoy from the
tax-hungry government. In
saner nations with patriotic
leadership, there are subsidies
for transportation - to produce
or build the infrastructure or
for the masses to use in public
transportation through cheaper
fares. Developed nations don’t
only help to build car assembly
plants and railway lines, they
also ensure their sustainability
by securing the local markets.
Their governments ensure
that all tiers of government
patronise their locally
manufactured cars. In fact,
those governments will even
go to war in order to ensure
that car makers sell armoured
vehicles when the economy
stagnates!
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Accomplish Magazine