World Bank/IMF and the underdevelopment of Nigeria

Like an ill-wind, the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) consortium of imperialist “economists” blew its notorious subsidy smog into Nigeria’s atmosphere and immediately sent hysterical motorists into panic-buying queues of fuel, whilst diverting attention from politics to the insurmountable petroleum subsidies forever haunting the national economy. The World Bank/IMF’s two-faced mask on the Bretton-Woods hidden […]

Like an ill-wind, the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) consortium of imperialist “economists” blew its notorious subsidy smog into Nigeria’s atmosphere and immediately sent hysterical motorists into panic-buying queues of fuel, whilst diverting attention from politics to the insurmountable petroleum subsidies forever haunting the national economy. The World Bank/IMF’s two-faced mask on the Bretton-Woods hidden agenda for imposition of development-impeding “conditionalities” on aid-dependent undeveloped nations of the world in Africa and Asia got yanked off in Nigeria during the “Mother of all Aluta” student-powered riots of May 1989, sparked by drastic economic downturn as the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) junta embraced its Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

Although the revolts signalled popular exposure and rejection of the crippling loans, the dictatorial government of the day adopted the World Bank/IMF’s hard-hearted insensitivity to human misery, as well as the conditionalities, squelching the protests with bullets and tear-gas that claimed lives and maimed hundreds across the country. The horrifying memories of that tragedy of governance were painfully kept alive by the unyielding and worsening socio-economic repercussions of the SAP, particularly the inflation-fuelled high costs of basic commodities, which did not spare public health and education institutions. Throughout the country, the most pauperised people bore the biggest brunt of the scourge of World Bank/IMF recommendations. They still do!

A joint statement by the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) in reaction to the managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde’s  advice to the Nigerian government to remove fuel subsidy minced no words: “One wonders why the IMF is still callously and wickedly advising the government to inflict more pains and harm on the people. This IMF statement is embellished and loaded with poison, considering the antecedents of the IMF in our economic challenges and struggles over decades of our nationhood. The various devaluations of our currency on the strength of advice of the same IMF have been a very big burden on our nation for several years now. It is quite bewildering and baffling that the IMF is not considering the pains and agonies Nigerians went through even to achieve the acknowledged gains of 2018, with almost two-thirds of the world’s hungriest people among Nigerians.”

Given this indelible perception of the inhuman priorities of World Bank/IMF interest and intervention, it is preposterous of this international predatory economic cabal to even contemplate extending its destabilising recipe to the people-oriented and nationalistic administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. It should even be regarded more realistically as a poisoned chalice intended to sabotage the second term of the president, destined to move Nigeria to the next level in meeting the aspirations of its citizens for better life.

In his first term, President Buhari demonstrated the most responsible approach to the issue of subsidies by identifying corruption as the main problem since the stated objective of any subsidy is to temper figures of economics with welfare gestures, also known as giving a human face to economic policies. Subsidies are also useful as incentives for promoting productivity and empowerment as in the agricultural sector, where farmers are protected from prohibitive market forces by favourable margins guaranteed by government. The president correctly tackled the corrupt abusers of the petroleum subsidy, several of whom ended up in jail after refunding obscene “profits” but allowed the recalibrated subsidy to remain in the interest of the common peoples’ dependence on affordable transportation costs. Remarkably, President Buhari was also able to eliminate the entrenched menace of hoarding and recurring artificial scarcity of PMS that subjected Nigerians to great suffering, queuing for hours under the blazing sun and relying on expensive and hazardous black markets.

None of these realistic and humane considerations is relevant to the hard-nosed, usury-based, pound-of-flesh inspired enslavement-economics, conceived and imposed by the World Bank/IMF, deviously disguised as development finance institutions, to arrest and detain poor, underdeveloped nations of the world in perpetual economic bondage and domestic turmoil.

What World Bank/ IMF sees as low revenue mobilisation in terms of tax to Gross Domestic Product is reason enough for prodding Nigeria to remove fuel subsidy. The Christian Lagardes of this world don’t give a damn about the high hunger and disease levels ravaging the masses or the virtually non-existent status of social-security policies and programmes. All they care about is more revenue through higher taxation and never about the Shylock-packaged loans with “slow poison” interest regime that commit unborn generations to repay loans whose interest components have overtaken the main loan in typical double jeopardy debt traps. They don’t even care about the return of destabilising aftershocks of the riotous labour unrests their heartless Structural Adjustment Programme unleashed in 1989.

It is not in President Buhari’s character to listen to the enemies of the people, foreign or domestic. He would rather identify with the anxious agitations of Nigerians to ignore the World Bank/IMF devils advocates and instead “to constantly put in mind the current hardship Nigerians are going through in our collective journey to economic recovery,” adding that “any economic policy that is devoid of human feelings could lead to more social dislocations and upheavals,” the NUPENG-PENGASSAN urged him.

Come to think of it, isn’t it time the agenda of the World Bank/IMF in sowing seeds of anti-people discord and chaos in the guise of “financing development” and reaping harvests of debt-ridden-debt-dependent, perpetually underdeveloped nations in Africa is subjected to high-powered inquiry? That should be the next level in demystifying the unmistakable ulterior objective of the World Bank/IMF in sustaining neo-colonial economic enslavement of so-called developing nations of the world, especially Nigeria.

Okemeke, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Port Harcourt, Rivers State.