The current severe economic crisis suffered by millions of Nigerians was caused by series of increase petrol prices and fall in Naira value, and which led to the fall in real wages and general devaluation of life, can be traced to the actions of a few against Nigeria’s economic interests. This continued sabotage of the energy sectors and economy in general shouldn't be trivialized as corruption but economic treason.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan made a distinction between stealing and corruption when he said good accounting systems can reduce outright stealing but corruption is more difficult to curb. We have been inundated and desensitized with reports of corruption since independence, as corruption allegations have even become political tools for regime change. However, it’s often not realized that corruption could become economic treason, if it is against the economic interests of a nation, a crime that should be punished with life sentences, if not death penalty.
It is becoming obvious that the political class is guilty of economic treason that leads to sustained economic downturns and pushes the people deeper and deeper into the poverty trap government after government. Or how do we explain not knowing exactly the volume of crude oil extracted from the production fields? Or the continuing sabotage and non-functioning of the state-owned refineries costing the country a third of its import bill, which instead of tackling with an iron fist, was used as an excuse to withdraw fuel subsidies and floating of the Naira? Or the inability to transmit half of the electricity generated?
In all cases, the beneficiaries of economic sabotage point to historical economic exploiters. The people’s plight of economic exploitation started with slavery, whereby external civilizations set out to economically exploit them by arming detractors to takeover our polities and capture millions of Africans to farm American slave plantations, in order to exploit the “slaves” genetic makeup that resisted insect bites on the plantations and for their skills in planting sugarcane, cotton and tobacco copied derived from their native ecosystem.
After 300 years and disruptive slave revolutions, especially the Haitian Revolution, the enslavers had no choice but to stop their importation of Africans for slavery and started the process of keeping Africans on African soil for economic exploitation. This was achieved by dividing the African continent into plantation nations known as colonies, where Africans were to plant the crops and mine natural resources for the colonial masters’ use, while acting as markets for the colonial produce. This new economic system of colonization that evolved from slavery was eventually challenged in the agitation for independence which most Black African nations got from 1957 to 1967, thereby creating independent nations legally free from colonial rule and economic exploitation. However, not only in Nigeria but all Black nations, though the physical and political chains were loosened, the original economic chains of exploitation remained tight by evolving to other economic exploitative models.
Over sixty years of independence, it can be argued that the political class that evolved from the cohort of colonial administrators, who were trained and indoctrinated to run an exploitative system by the colonists, continues to conspire with foreign interests in the arrested economic development of the new nations. Most Black nations have remained in the colonial economic straitjacket of mono economies geared towards satisfying the needs of foreign powers. They remain entrenched in primary production, of not being able to industrially process their local output, nor diversify their economies to provide income and employment.
To compound the arrested development is the coloniality of knowledge and power sources that actually justifies the dehumanization and enslavement of the peoples. Especially since the late seventies, instead of pushing the right and obvious economic liberating policies, the political classes have been misguided by international financial institutions and their enslaving economic ideologies, whose agenda appears to retain the neocolonies in the exploitative economic system by further pauperizing their people through removal of subsidies and breaking of social contracts, as well as constantly reducing real wages through devaluation and floating of local currencies.
The amount of productive value wiped away by Tinubu's IMF/World Bank policies in the last one years is greater than the amount of productive value taken off the country’s shores during any year of the slavery era, or the amount exploited in any given year during colonization. In the nearly 10 years of APC rule, the value of the Naira has fallen from $1 to N190 to N1,700, cutting real wages and property values tenfold.
On getting to power, former President Muhammadu Buhari claimed that the nation’s coffers had been emptied and used that claim to justify his devaluation of the Naira. Under him, oil production dropped by one million barrels a day, claimed to be stolen, not to mention the lack of any system to accurately account for the crude oil mined by companies from previous Western enslavers and colonizers. Nigeria’s foreign debts soared by 500% from under $10 billion to over $50 billion. Though there is nothing wrong if the debts were used on capital investments in economically empowering infrastructure, but they were squandered on cost of governance.
Regardless of what Buhari and previous governments did, the economic problems could have been easily resolved by the Tinubu administration and not compounded as being witnessed. The problem was tied to the fall in oil revenues that provides 85% of the country’s foreign exchange, which led to the inability to service the debts and furnish the foreign exchange market for its import needs. Instead of removing energy production subsidies and floating the Naira to destroy livelihoods and businesses, the country’s economic interests should have been to stop the theft of crude oil and to cut import bill by half, since 33% of the import bill is due to fuel and oils imports that could be resolved by rejuvenating the moribund refineries, while the 21% due to vehicle importation could be cut by all government tiers using only locally produced cars.
The sabotaging of the refineries for over 20 years, costing $20 billion in unfulfilled repairs over the last ten years, (Dangote Refinery cost $20b) is not mere corruption, but economic treason that should attract death penalty or life imprisonment for those involved, especially since it resulted in national economic deprivations in real wages, productive output and property values that have led to deaths due to poverty. This administration is also culpable of criminal negligence or economic treason since it should have waited for the rejuvenation of the refineries by all means necessary and immediately cut the importation of official cars, but instead embarked on removal of petrol subsidies and floating of the Naira. It is difficult to deny a conspiracy when both the NNPC and private owned oil companies benefit from the continued importation of fuel against the country’s national economic interests.
Another mind boggling energy deficits bordering on economic treason is the electricity sector decline. Around 2012, President Jonathan announced the increased electricity capabilities to 13GW and promised 18 to 24 hours of electricity supply which was witnessed for a few weeks or months, before dropping due to sabotage of gas pipelines. At the time, the Minister of Energy, stated that the government won't be able to fulfill its promises of constant electricity supply due to what he called The Gas Wars. However he didn't identify those carrying out the subversive war of attrition against the country’s energy infrastructure. Some suggested that it was waged by generator importers but it was unlikely that the diverse marketers could unify for such war.
As the 2015 election drew closer, the whole country was in darkness with electricity and fuel shortages until the day Jonathan returned to his hometown. Buhari enjoyed increased electricity supply for a few months until the sabotage of gas pipelines resumed for the remaining of his tenure.
In the USA and UK tampering with energy or communication installations attract long jail sentences since it's tantamount to treasonable economic sabotage. Until Nigeria starts treating such economic sabotage as treason, the country’s political and business elite will keep selling the people out to selfish, corporate and foreign interests like during the slave trade and colonization. They will continue to stymie the country’s economic development and keep it down as a neocolonial state that serves their narrow interests other than those of the people.
