Lawal Hussein
The book, The Nigerian Economic Crises: Causes and Solutions, was first published in 1985 and reprinted in 1986. It was jointly authored by a crop of progressive scholars from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria- Alkasum Abba, Yahaya Abdullahi, Muhammad Sanusi Abubakar, Mike Kwanashie, Abubakar Siddieque Muhammad, Okello Okulli, Kyari Tijjani and Yusuf Bala Usman.
The book which aims at getting to the roots of Nigeria’s economic crises with the view to proffering real and practical solutions emerged out of a paper jointly presented by the authors to a conference organized by the National Secretariat of the Academic Staff Union of Universities of Nigeria on the state of the Nation’s Economy in April 1984.
The title of the paper presented is “The Roots of the Nigerian Economic crises and the Alternative Strategy for National Independence”.
Prior to this, the authors had contributed to a workshop on the state of the Nigerian economy organized by the faculty of Arts and Social sciences and Centre for Social and Economic Research, Ahmadu Bello University in October, 1983, at the end of which the “Green Paper on the State of the Nigerian Economy” was produced to counter the Shagari administration’s white paper on the State of the Economy of July 1983, which was produced in the wake of the increasing grim realities of the Nigerian Economy.
This great work was first published 32 years ago, but one can’t help giving in to the fact that all the structures that have generated and ensure the under development of Nigeria’s economy are still intact, if not even more entrenched compared to thirty-two years ago when the book was written.
A cursory analysis of all the sectors of the economy would, in fact, reveal further decay and retrogressions as a result of continued dependence of the economy not only on export of a primary commodity, but on the so-called “corrective measures” dictated from outside.
If one takes energy sector, for example, the situation is still that of oil for export, and Anglo-American petroleum giants still control the oil industry, as critical as it is to our economy.
Incessant power outages have not only been plunging the nation into darkness, but have led to massive closure of most of our import substitution industries. Nigeria remains the leading importer of electricity generating sets in the world.
The neoliberal capitalist reforms embarked upon by succeeding administrations since 1999 have further pushed alienated the poor and deepened our dependence. Despite massive income from our oil resources in the past eighteen years, poverty, unemployment, poor nutrition, poor health care, poor education, poor electricity, poor roads, to mention just a few have come to characterize Nigeria of today.
In fact, whosoever goes through the book would be overwhelmed with the level of insight and vision of the authors. For-instance, thirty-two years ago they recommended that instead of Liquefied Natural Gas Project, we should use our gas resources to boast electricity supply, and sell the surplus electricity to our neighbors.
Their recommendation was based on the fact that as at that time, trans-Siberian pipeline had already been laid by the now defunct U.S.S.R, in addition to cheap Mexican gas at the disposal of U.S. However, because in Nigeria projects of that nature are means of draining public resources, the project continued to the point of completion.
Today, Russian gas is the major source of gas to Europe, and the L.N.G has become a white elephant project. Again, electricity generation and distribution, which would have been boasted if the government had taken their advice, remains an acutely scarce commodity.
The Nigerian Economic Crises: Causes and Solutions is still relevant to the struggle for finding solutions to our myriad of development challenges. It is a must read for all.
Comments
Post a Comment