CHIZOM

Wrong... That Hundeyin opposes imperialism does not mean that he opposes the Capitalist class in Nigeria. This is not about any personality. It stems from the contradictions capitalism creates and the worsening material conditions of the Nigerian people as a result of the system.

I have written and demonstrated several times in the past that developing nations that adopt the core tenets of the Washington Consensus cannot industrialize. Under the Olusegun Obasanjo regime, Nigeria established the NEEDS programme, drafted by prominent figures like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Charles Soludo. This marked the moment Nigeria fully adopted the core tenets of the Washington Consensus, a free-market capitalist model that Western nations and the United States aggressively recommend to developing nations as the supposed key to industrialization. The Washington Consensus advocated for limited government intervention, arguing that government-directed lending, interest rate ceilings, and sectoral quotas distort markets and fuel bureaucratic corruption. Obasanjo and his economic team adopted this model under the illusion that if banks and private corporations were well-capitalized and allowed to flourish, they would naturally allocate credit to the most productive sectors of the economy without state interference. To this end, Obasanjo engaged in drastic public sector downsizing. Many state assets and seaports were auctioned off to private investors. Civil servants who were naturally entitled to benefits like housing, healthcare, and pension security were stripped of these safety nets. These benefits were converted into a consolidated "allowance," a minor stipend that was hardly enough to cover basic rent, let alone medical emergencies. This deliberate destruction of public services by Obasanjo's team was based on the flawed premise that if private corporate interests were allowed to thrive, they would accumulate capital and organically fund domestic industries. In 2004, the then Central Bank Governor, Charles Soludo, announced that all banks were required to raise their capital base from 5 billion naira to 25 billion naira with a strict deadline. This crushed smaller banks, forcing them to merge or be acquired, consolidating 89 banks into 25 mega-banks. Furthermore, sectoral lending quotas were abolished, interest rates were fully deregulated, and capital controls were relaxed. This gave private banks absolute power to dictate exactly where credit flowed. Additionally, Nigerian banks were allowed to aggressively market their shares to the public, using depositors' funds to artificially inflate their stock prices and record fictitious paper profits. The Bank of Industry (BOI), established under Obasanjo, was severely underfunded. Consequently, the only way manufacturers could access capital was through these private mega-banks. However, these banks charged exorbitant interest rates, often exceeding 20% over a 12-month period. Manufacturing is not a sector that vomits profits in a matter of weeks; it requires years of sustained production and capital expenditure just to break even. Servicing bank loans at such predatory interest rates is mathematically impossible for any infant industry. Ultimately, these banks, armed with their newly minted massive capital, did not fund domestic industries. Private investors do not care about long-term national development; they are driven exclusively by short-term profit maximization. Instead of funding factories, they directed credit to importers bringing finished foreign goods into the country. Thus, the capital that should have naturally been used to build local industries and employ the masses was instead used to finance consumer imports and service lucrative oil extraction contracts, all while ordinary Nigerians were stripped of their social benefits and left to starve. This financialization of Nigeria by the Obasanjo regime was not limited to the banking sector. Obasanjo placed strict import bans on cement, textiles, poultry, and other essential commodities. He also granted exclusive tax holidays and import waivers worth trillions of naira to a select group of local oligarchs, ostensibly to encourage the domestic manufacturing of these goods. The problem was not the import bans themselves. Many developing nations that successfully industrialized relied heavily on import substitution to protect local manufacturing. However, in those successful nations, state support and tax holidays were not free gifts; they came with ruthless performance conditionalities. In South Korea, for example, state-backed firms were legally required to meet strict export targets, master foreign technologies within specific timeframes, and reinvest their profits into capital-intensive, technologically sophisticated industries. If a corporate tycoon diverted state-subsidized profits into real estate speculation, luxury consumption, or capital flight, the state threw them in prison, revoked their licenses, and seized their assets. Under Obasanjo, the Nigerian state provided all the carrots (monopoly licenses, import bans, tax holidays) but absolutely zero sticks. The newly minted billionaires who generated trillions of naira in annual revenues did not reinvest that capital into heavy industrialization. Instead, they used their state-sponsored profits to buy luxury real estate in foreign capitals. Millions of dollars extracted from the Nigerian economy were siphoned into offshore bank accounts. In the rare cases where they did invest back home, the capital was diverted into luxury real estate, high-end hotels, and speculative commercial ventures that 99% of the Nigerian public could not possibly afford. Industrialization is fundamentally a state-directed and state-funded endeavor. The neoliberal free-market model prescribed by the Washington Consensus is designed only to keep developing nations perpetually poor and pry open their resources for global capital to devour. Sadly, Nigerian leaders, regardless of their political affiliations, continue to swallow this Western economic dogma. By doing so, a small circle of political elites and foreign banks continues to monopolize the wealth of the nation, while the working masses are continuously pushed below the poverty line, leaving more than 65% of the population currently trapped in multidimensional poverty.