By Iliyasu Gadu
As a nation that seeks to protect and preserve its economic fortunes for the present and the future, what response can Nigeria muster in this under the radar of American economic onslaught which from all indications is yet in its early stages of implementation?
This question becomes very poignant bearing in mind that the current president of America, the boorish Donald Trump, in his campaign pitches was quoted as saying that the African continent needed to be recolonized. From the composition and policy direction taken so far, the gung-ho buccaneer types who make up the Trump administration would stop at nothing in pursuit of this agenda.
Whatever response Nigeria musters should be in step with current International developments. In the BREXIT of Britain and the domestic and International postures of Donald Trump’s America, we have prime examples of how countries act to protect perceived erosion of their economic and socio-cultural standing in the world. While Britain through BREXIT seeks to renegotiate what it considers the present unacceptable terms of its economic and social engagements with the European Union, America under President Trump seeks to reset and where necessary, repudiate those international and multilateral institutions including the United Nations and the European Union that it cannot totally control.
What all these developments imply is that the America First economic policies of the Trump administration signal the beginning of a seismic shift in the world economic order which was created and dominated by America at the end of the Second World War with such institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as its ubiquitous symbols.
And Nigeria needs to take serious note.
If America which has been playing the role of chief Dirigent of the global economy for much of the post Second World War period no longer feels confident about its dominant economic standing in the world, and has decided to disavow the very structures of global political and economic interactions it majorly created, why then should Nigeria feel squeamish about acting also within its power to protect and preserve its own interests especially where those interests have a bearing on its vital economic survival? Isn’t it time we had our own NEXIT from the stultifying economic strictures handed down by the economic institutions dominated mainly by the western countries, which serve their own interests in the main rather than ours? Can’t we strike a better economic and trade deal that guarantees a balance between our own needs as a nation and those of the major economic countries of the world? Are we just condemned to be perpetual recipients of economic diktats from the major economic powers even in the matter of our own economic needs without even an input into what goes into that relationship?
Why, for instance, should we allow American companies dominate the upstream, mid- stream and downstream sectors of our oil industry without a corresponding reciprocal access to American oil market? If indeed the argument is that we desperately need American investment in our oil industry, why can’t we compel American oil companies operating in Nigeria to directly invest their capital into the sector rather than the current clearly one sided Joint Venture arrangements which allow companies skim off huge profits under the dubious cash call provisions?
Indeed, the current recession in the country should serve as a cue for Nigeria to emulate developments in America and Britain to come up with its own strategic economic plan to renegotiate its economic engagement with the world at large. Such a plan should signify to the world in clear, unambiguous terms that in the emerging global economic order, our economic engagement will be on basis of a quid pro quo. Our overarching objective should be to secure a brighter future for our growing population using our God-given resources to exact a just and equitable system of economic exchange with the world. Such a plan should have as its strategic underpinning, the need to leverage on our vast, limitless economic potential in both human and material resources, as well as our strategic position in Africa, which is now coveted as the next world economic frontier.
With the new scramble for Africa now going on attracting both old and new economic powers and interests, Nigeria as the foremost African country should not be left out of the action.
Specifically, this means that we should begin to rely less on the economic prescriptions of American-dominated multilateral agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. If going by experience, the economic prescriptions of these bodies have always been suspect even when their principal sponsors have been arguably benign, we should expect that now that the sponsor countries are facing economic challenges of their own, the IMF and World Bank can only be more uncompromisingly stringent in laying out and enforcing their conditionality to the economic detriment of countries like Nigeria which have come to rely on their economic prescriptions.
As a country that necessarily needs to chart its own future economic development path, we should allow ourselves the latitude to choose the economic preferences and options that fit into our unique socio-economic situation. Such key prescriptions of the IMF like currency devaluation, open foreign exchange regime and import liberalization should be met with our demands for guaranteed trade and commercial quotas for Nigerian goods and services, direct institutional investment into the regenerative sectors of the economy and a direct linkage of our national currency to the currencies of our economic partners, among others.
A very long time ago, as is also happening now, momentous economic shifts which occurred mainly in Europe subsequently transformed much of the world leaving us as its victims, the consequences of which we are yet to recover as a people. Since then we have been pretty much stuck at the bottom of the pecking order of world development.
Now with current developments in the global economic order which is witnessing the fortuitous unhinging of the established structure of the world economic system, we should by any means necessary resolve not to be victims yet again for the consequences to our future existence as a people in the global system will be unimaginable.
Concluded
Gadu writes from Lagos