Bala Usman and the Liberation of Nigeria

This weekend, the Centre for Democratic Development, Research and Training organised a memorial conference in honour of its founder, Dr. Bala Usman who died ten years ago. It was well attended with virtually each participant, staking his or her claims to the legacy of the radical historian. Of course Governor Masari of Katsina State affirmed […]

This weekend, the Centre for Democratic Development, Research and Training organised a memorial conference in honour of its founder, Dr. Bala Usman who died ten years ago. It was well attended with virtually each participant, staking his or her claims to the legacy of the radical historian. Of course Governor Masari of Katsina State affirmed his Katsina origins, as Bala Usman was an indigene of Musawa in Katsina State. The Kaduna State Governor, El Rufai joined the fray pointing out that Bala Usman lived and worked in Kaduna State and was even the Secretary of the Kaduna State Government. Not one to run away from a fight, the Emir of Nano, Sanusi II pointed out the in terms of origins, we are only sure of the mother and Bala Usman’s mother was the daughter of his great grandfather, Emir Abdullahi Bayero, so he was indeed born a great prince of Kano. My own claim to fame is that Dr. Bala Usman was my history teacher and form master in my second year in Barewa College and the attempt by our principal, Mr S. V, Baker to sack Bala Usman for insubordination created the first occasion for me to participate in a demonstration.
A former Lagos politician, Bola Tinubu who was introduced as the Asiwaju of the Universe, gave the keynote address. Tinubu accurately described Bala Usman a great teacher, researcher, thinker, writer, polemicist, nationalist and pan-Africanist concluding that: “the beam of his keen intellect was only equalled by the glow of his humanity.” Tinubu entitled his presentation “Towards the Economic Liberation of Nigeria: Bala Usman’s Enduring Relevance”. He thereby followed Bala Usman’s 1980 landmark publication “For the Liberation of Nigeria”.
It appeared as if Tinubu used the tribune offered by the memorial to make a passionate appeal to the Buhari Administration to change the direction of its economic policy. I might very well be wrong in my assumption after all Tinubu is the leader of the ruling APC and I believe policy matters is something they would discuss regularly in Aso rock, in an informal manner over tea or more formally during the National Executive Committee meeting of their party.
Tinubu posed the question on our fiscal policy: “Do we continue to peg our naira expenditures to our dollar intake or do we affix our domestic expenditure to a measure more apt to grow the economy? He opted for the latter: “Regarding fiscal policy, I advocate the close dollar linkage be explicitly broken. The last I looked, Nigeria operates a Naira-based economy, not a dollar-based one.” I wondered whether that’s a criticism of current fiscal policy. He challenged the free market economic model and called for protectionism as a path towards rebuilding our economy. He argued that we must identify those industries strategic to the nation we seek to build and provide incentives such as tax relief and help in the form of effective tariffs to insulate them, allowing them to grow in productivity and competitiveness in a conducive atmosphere.
On fuel subsidy, he argued that it was once a good idea that has been perverted into its opposite. It was created to aid the common man, but it is now a device used by the crooked to produce a windfall for which they are not entitled. On the same day Tinubu was castigating fuel subsidy, the Minister of Petroleum was reneging on his earlier statement that the Government would start withdrawing from the fuel subsidy regime in 2016. What is going on in the ruling circle? Can we have some policy coherence please?
Back to the Bala Usman conference, a lot of participants lamented the fading away of the study of history in our educational institutions and pointed out that there are consequences, we are paying a heavy price, We now have a whole generation of young people that know almost nothing about the history and geography of their country, How can we build a nation that we do not even know. Nation states are created and nurtured and understanding our history is a real pillar we can build upon. The Nigerian State itself appears to have lost the ability to learn from our history. There was a useful debate on the recent clash between the army and Shiites in Zaria. If our armed forces and the State have learned lessons from the way State action provoked and accelerated the growth of the Boko Haram insurgency, our soldiers would have been more respectful of the value of human lives and the rights of citizens in handling the issue. It was clear that the Shiites infringed on the rights of Nigerians in their actions but nothing justifies the use of disproportiate force leading to a massacre. 
The mood of the conference was that the major lesson we need to learn from our history is that if Nigeria has not become the great country it could have been, it’s because of the culture of corruption that has crippled us. There has been a complete prebendalisation of state power and virtually all acts by public officials involving public expenditure or public goods of any kind leads to the appropriation of state resources.
As the routine operations of government have been subjected to prebendal rules, successions of leaders have been focused on personal enrichment rather that the pursuit of the public good. It is in this context that most participants affirmed that the present investigations into mega corruption could be a major turning point leading to a better future for Nigeria. If the corrupt are properly investigated, tried and jail, public officials would start thinking twice about following the same path and integrity could return to the process of governance. That’s what Bala Usman fought for throughout his life. The least we could do is to continue the struggle.