On a mission to develop a manual devoted to the art and science of nation-building, my thoughts stumbled upon the centrepiece of every nation’s superstructure – the economy. The relentless waves of crushing economic woes Nigerians continue to suffer must have swayed my mind in this direction.
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and operation for profit. The central characteristics of capitalism include capital creation and accumulation, a free and competitive market, recognition of private property rights, voluntary exchange, and wage labour, among others.
Historically, capitalism as a means of production succeeded feudalism, wherein the mode of production was previously based on land ownership and serfdom. The feudal basis of production was essentially agrarian. Capitalism reared its head in 16th-century England as a result of the dialectical friction between the actors of production vis-a-vis the feudal lords and their serfs. This schism freed the serfs from their ties to the land. Serfs under feudalism became the proletariat or workers under capitalism, thus earning the mobility and freedom to take their labour wherever it was needed and earn wages for their labour. Capitalism rapidly spread like wildfire, flourished, and climaxed into the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, which consolidated capitalism as the preeminent means of production, thereby dealing a finite and fatal blow to feudalism. Capitalism reached the nooks and crannies of the world between the 19th and 20th centuries as the preeminent means of production. Its own internal dialectical contradictions led to socialism and advanced into communism in some pockets of the world, but these ideological responses to capitalism are outside the radar of this discourse.
In daily pondering over the economic challenges faced by our nation and a patriotic attempt at deconstruction, I was accidentally struck by the rhetorical question of whether Nigeria is a capitalist economy. In an attempt to find an answer, I realised that for a lifetime of Western education, we have been lulled into a slumbering belief that we are a capitalist (mixed) economy. Fortunately, however, we humans are intellectual ruminants. We have the advantageous ability to chew the cud of knowledge and, if necessary, to vomit poisonous knowledge no matter how long we have carried it in our heads or hearts.
To be able to do justice to the question, I availed myself of the tools of Problem Tree Analysis. Historical rumination took me on a time travel. Then, I remembered that the economic relations, that is, the means of production that existed within African societies prior to contact with Europe, were largely communalism, with very few instances of some societies taking baby steps towards feudalism. Thus, Africa, pre-transatlantic slavery, was glued together by a strong sense of brotherhood, and community and had barely made a natural transition to feudalism, let alone the individualistic and egocentric orientation of capitalism, when we were concussed with 450 years of slavery, which was immediately followed by almost 80 years of direct colonial subjugation. Five hundred and thirty years of traumatic experience interrupted, stunted, and stalled the natural evolution that every society needs to go through to guarantee healthy development.
Yes, so far so bad, we have had centuries of economic contact with European capitalism. However, if we choose to wake up, if we choose to chew our intellectual cud, we cannot fail to realise that what was imported into Africa is a million miles remote from European capitalism. It was (and to this day) decapitalism! After hours of philosophic diagnosis of our visible and invisible symptoms and history, my hypothesis is that Nigeria (and her sisters) are a bunch of “decapitalist” economies. “Decapitalism” being a system of capital bloodshed whereby different African societies were patched together into administrative and geographical concoctions and then viciously decapitated and decapitalised for centuries. By forcefully exporting millions of irreplaceable manpower resources (labour – a key factor in economic development) and also illegitimately expatriating humongous tons of natural resources that defy mathematical computation, European vampires, popularly referred to as empires, decapitated and decapitalised Africa with vampiric efficiency. This system of “decapitalisation” is still effectively perpetuated as we speak by the various instruments of liberal economics, Bretton Woods’ financial institutions, and a subtle global division of labour, among others, all of which is the design of a global politico-economic hegemony headed by Western powers.
Before we are lost in this intellectual maze, we must at once launch an assault on the rhetorical question of whether Nigeria is a Capitalist (or Mixed) economy. For the sacred sake of scientific objectivity, it is strategically important that we abandon every yoke and token of ideological bias while this discourse lasts. We cannot ignore the fact that despite its stinky armpits, capitalism has its own unique beauty. While there is a bipartisan acknowledgement that it inspires and inflames individual genius for the creation of wealth, the depressive consensus is that its insatiable bourgeois accumulation of wealth widens the cleavage between the rich and the wretched, the haves and the have-nots. Agreeing that this is no paradise, we cannot expect a perfect ideology. At least, we must begin a hunt for the beautiful indices of an ideal capitalism. At the end of our game, we should have wealth creation, bourgeois wealth accumulation, a growing middle class, thriving or hopeful SMEs, industrialisation or a forward march towards industrialisation, among others.
Unfortunately, the quadruplet factors of production – land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship – needed to make a capitalist economy are, at present, on life support. While we may boast of the abundance of the first two, can we boast of the capital needed to acquire them? Our army of well-educated and skilled unemployed and underemployed youth are busy investing their energy in every avenue to “japa” in desperate search of greener pastures. This large-scale brain drain, trained for a minimum of 12-16 years with state resources, spells not boom but doom for any economy, be it capitalism or socialism.
Capital, the spinal cord of capitalism and the de facto fulcrum of the factors of production, is the key to acquiring land and labour and also inspiring entrepreneurship. That capital is stuck in the hands of too few people. Capital is the blood of capitalism. For a capitalist economy to thrive, capital flow is not negotiable. Unfortunately, that capital instead of flowing is iced in the private domestic and foreign accounts of unaccountable politicians and thousands of high-ranking civil and public officials. Worse still, that capital is untraceably stashed in their bunkers and septic tanks instead of banks. Decades of serial capital concealment and congealment, outflow and lack of flow are the result of our present economic stroke.
Our continuous scramble for and reliance on the transfusion of foreign loans, foreign direct investment, foreign aid, and foreign importation is exactly what it is. Foreign! Foreign to our national interest; foreign to our political and economic security. It only continues to service the greed of the political grid (elite) whose appetite is ultra-vampiric. Their appetite is worse than that of a vampire. They are like pigs who will not spare their piglets if threatened by a wanton demonic desire to eat.
In the absence of capital liquidity, enterprise is stunted; the economy is greeted with a concomitant dearth of entrepreneurship. Instead of inspiring entrepreneurial genius, millions of able-bodied and skilled men and women have been reduced and recruited into criminal and antisocial enterprises for the sake of survival.
Thus, in tackling the rhetorical question as to whether “we are capitalist” (or mixed), the result of my objective and thorough diagnosis is that “the Nigerian economy in its current anaemic condition and amebic constitution has not won the beautiful badges of a capitalist economy. Our country has been for centuries and is still effectively practising DECAPITALISM.
From the above, it is crystal clear to the visually impaired and the mentally challenged that capital flow, or more technically stated, capital liquidity is an indispensable factor to economic health or “mishealth,” wealth or poverty.
At least we have a consensus that our nation is mired in a quagmire. Our situation is dire. I can assure you that our prescriptions are neither going to be sweet nor simple like ABC but what matters is the patriotic intent.
Our economy suffers from advanced cancer. At the heart of that cancer is corruption. If only we can treat that alone, we have a chance of standing again, walking again, and running on the highway of recovery.
Despite the work of our anti-corruption agencies, we have had neither tangible improvement nor hope of recovery. Therefore, a new approach to fighting this carcinogenic and terminal threat is needed. Our twin anti-graft agencies have a combined 44 years of activity (23 and 21 respectively). They must have an encyclopedia of names of state and non-state actors and actresses present, recent, past, dead, or alive who are the masterminds of this capital clot and national economic stroke.
Bargaining with criminals may sound unsavoury. Under our circumstances, however, it remains a viable legal instrument considering the fact that our billions of dollars stashed away in dozens of foreign banks have legal protection. The clear fact that it was and is stolen wealth does not automatically extend to the State the instruments of violence to break into those foreign banks.
Even domestic banks which have billions of stolen dollars funnelled into their safe cannot be broken into by the State not to talk of the untraceable billions stashed in secret bunkers and septic tanks instead of banks.
I repeat, for the sacred sake of Capital Flow which is the immediate cure of our Economic Stroke, we have an immediate strategic and utilitarian choice to bargain with those who have taken from us.
