Yusuf Bala Usman and Nigeria’s economic crisis, By Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf

Dr Yusufu Bala Usman

Professional military coup plotters, or military politicians – militicians for short – battered the Nigerian economy. This became manifest in 1977, with General Olusegun Obasanjo’s “Low Profile” policy. This degenerated into the “Economic Stabilisation Policy” (ESP) of the President Shehu Shagari government.

It further deteriorated into the “Austerity Measures” of General Muhammadu Buhari, and festered into the cancerous “Structural Adjustment Programme” (SAP) of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, which exists to this day.

Shagari’s ESP generated heated debate within the state and society. It led to the Bala Usman and Yusuf Bangura “Debate on the Nigerian Economic Crisis”,publish by the Nigerian Political Science Association, in its journal, Studies in Politics and Society, Issue No. 2, October 1984. Usman’s paper, “Middlemen, Consultants, Contractors and the Solutions to the Current Economic Crisis”, sparked this rich debate. He was of the History Department of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and raised issues that are more germane today than they were in the middle 1980s.

The first take-away from Usman’s submission was the negative effects the mismanagement of the economy was having on the country. He stated that the Second Republic politicians, led by Shagari, spent billions of naira on a Green Revolution Programme and River Basin Development Authorities. Yet “the total production of most food crops did not rise at all.” Food imports, he stated: “rose N18.8 million in 1979, N1.16 billion in 1980 to 1.86 billion in the first nine months of 1981” A rise of “over 100% in less than three years, in a country endowed with rich agricultural resources, most of whose people are farmers, and whose governments have spent over N100 billion ostensibly to boost food production.”

Usman pointed out how: “well over 50% of the factories in the country closed down, and the rest grinding to a halt, working part-time, with the exception of the breweries, cigarette and soft-drink plants.” He said in December 1983: “only about 25% of the installed electric power generating capacity of 2,342 megawatts is being utilized…”

As a result: “an estimated N750 million per annum … (was) spent by 650 companies for the purchase and maintenance of electricity generating equipment; with another N36 million spent on the importation of voltage stabilisers alone.” He held the government primarily responsible for the crisis in the electricity sector, because it failed: “to pay the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) the lion-share of a bill of about N500 million.”

Secondly, Usman disagreed with government that the economic crisis was largely caused by the “world economic recession” and “world oil glut”, which led to the fall in oil prices. He described this argument as “smokescreen”, “myth” and “mystifications”!

The academic said, while the country realized 83 per-cent of its expenditure from oil revenue, it’s purchasing power “actually rose by 11.5% in the period 1979-1982”. So why did its foreign exchange position fall from “5.5 billion dollars at the end of 1979, to 1.6 billion dollars at the end of 1982, a fall of over 70%.”?

Usman pointed out that the then socialist countries, with about “1.4 billion of the 4.0 billion in the world (were) not suffering from any economic recession.” China, he said, recorded a growth industrial out-put of 9.3% in 1982 to 12.2% in mid-1983; and its foreign reserves, except gold, “rose from 2.6 billion in 1980, to $5.5 billion in 1981 and to $11.3 billion by the end of 1982”.

Thirdly, Usman attributed the causes of the economic crisis to the role and activities of “consultants”, “contractors” and “middlemen”. Consultants, by their “parasitical but influential, role” in rationalizing and legitimizing: “the domination of private capitalist exploitation over and above everything else”.

Contractors, through the inflation of contracts, and the promotion of “all forms fraud, embezzlement and outright plunder of public resources in cash and kind.”

The middlemen, through “massive commissions” in which billions of dollars are diverted “into the pockets and bank accounts of a handful of rich and powerful Nigerians.” The crisis, Usman added, was worsened by “profiteering and expatriation.”

But contractors, Usman emphasised, played a central role in causing the crisis. Which was why he quoted Balarabe Musa to drive home his point: “Instead of a democracy in which you have in operation a government for the people, by the people, and of the people, you have a contractocracy in which government is for contractors, by contractors, and of contractors. Politics is being reduced to a fight between one gang of greedy tycoons, each backed by their foreign business masters and others; and each waving some tribal or sectional banner to confuse and divide the people.”

The issues Usman raised remain cogent to this day. If anything, they have become worse. Second Republic politicians had shame, patriotism, nationalism, and industrialisation in their dictionaries. Not the militicians and politicians that succeeded them!

Whereas Shagari refused to devalue the naira, despite immense pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), and the then United States’ President, Mr Ronald Regan. However, the naira has miserably been devalued from 724kobo/$ in 1983 to about N1,600/$ on 11 February.

Also, while during the Second Republic had over 239 state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the militicians and politicians that succeeded Shagari, legally seized and outrightly sold these SOEs to themselves and their colleagues. They also plundered our resources under the guise of “privatisation”!

Further, while Second Republic politicians tried to protect SOEs, their successors succumbed to SAP. This is the programme which de-industrialised Nigeria; ignited massive unemployment; promoted reckless importation; crippled our emerging home-market; and greatly devalued the naira. SAP also severely undermined Nigeria’s industrial might, which during the Second Republic, was manifested in the ‘made-in-Nigeria’ goods displayed and sold on the streets, shops and markets in West and Central African countries.

Those things Usman held as being responsible for the economic crisis in 1984, still exists today but in worse dimensions. For instance, since 1985 Nigeria has been operating lootocracy – government of looters, by looters, and for looters; plundertocracy – government of plunderers, by plunderers, and for plunderers; banditocracy – government of bandits, by bandits, and for bandits; lumpencracy – government of lumpens, by lumpens, and for lumpens, amongst others.

This shows the fundamental limitations of Usman’s analysis. Capitalism is for the accumulation of capital; a system of ‘monkey dey work baboon dey chop’. To these elites, anything done to accumulate capital for individual ends, even at the expense of the state and society, is good and fine, as long as it does not fundamentally endanger the system.

Contractocracy and all the other cracies that emerged since the 1980s, are only forms of capital accumulation, which gives concrete power, wealth, and fame to ruling classes. For, as long as these cracies do not lead to the expropriation of expropriators, or the accumulation of the accumulators, by masses of people, then good and fine. But once these cracies drastically threaten the system, that is when they become serious economic and political crises for ruling classes.

The economic crisis that has confronted Nigeria since 1977 has had devastating effects on the working masses. However, for the various wings of the ruling classes, it has been an economic boom.

Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet). Email: aaramatuyusuf@yahoo.com