BY ABDULRAHMAN YUNUSA
In Nigeria, we do not hate capitalism but the cruel actors that operate it. Actually, capitalism in itself has never been a devilish system and has its merits like any other existing economic modules but the devilish activities and unwelcoming behaviours of the actors surrounding capitalism has made it look like capitalism is bad and has shaped the impression of people to inevitably see it as bad.
Unlike any other system, capitalism is the only existing economic system that advocates for individuals to run an economy with less or no governmental supervision and despite knowing the selfish nature of a man, it allows them to determine the price of commodities at the expense of the lower class who unfortunately make up about 70 per cent of the Nigerian population.
Therefore the moment you feel the urge to believe that anything should be deregulated including education, health and power for the sake of getting its improvement at the expense of the lower class citizens, then you are indirectly encouraging and working towards ensuring that the lower class keeps wallowing in misery.
And worse is the situation of the petroleum industry; on this, I can’t argue enough because even if I could, it won’t make sense for the government to have apocryphally and subtly made it in the way that only few citizens can fathom the workings.
“the moment you feel the urge to believe that anything should be deregulated including education, health and power for the sake of getting its improvement at the expense of the lower class citizens, then you are indirectly encouraging and working towards ensuring that the lower class keeps wallowing in misery”
The case of the power sector is the one which throws up a myriad of questions. Does the deregulation make it affordable to the citizens? Does it make power stable in the country? If you can justly answer these questions, you can hardly support the privatisation of such a sensitive sector. Gas is now fully deregulated but rather than make life easier, people now struggle to cope in the aftermath of that decision and few people can afford the cost especially since many people have lost their jobs while many do not have jobs and those that have are owed backlog of salaries that is already too small to meet their needs.
Then come down to education and health. Even with free education at the basic level, some people find it difficult to enroll their kids to be taught, especially those that abhor western education in particular. Some are still dying because of lack of funds to buy drugs after being diagnosed freely at public hospitals.
Think of how much many will suffer when these sensitive sectors are being transferred into the hands of wicked Nigerian capitalists who often look for opportunities to subjugate the weaker class through price hike and many other unpleasant factors.
How do you think such a total capitalistic system can successfully operate in a poor setting like Nigeria without subjecting poor people to additional misery? We should also consider the fact that our people are always busy searching for the slightest opportunity to enrich themselves ahead of others who are financially handicapped in our society. Do you think that with such greedy minds, we can have a better society under this system? Never, I reckon.
Obviously Nigeria has never grown enough to practice pure capitalism at this time. We should rather advocate for a system that will render some percentage of control to the government for the fear of being bruised by the iron hands of greedy capitalists.
Let’s give more concern about the status of the poor first before thinking about any other thing because the poor are the government by themselves, without them, there won’t be an entity called government, let alone talk about leaders or elites.
However, it’s a fact that we love to see that companies are thriving but in the hands of saner people with compassion and sympathy at its climax. Not in the hands of capitalistic beasts who often wish to eat on our flesh and add burden to the yoke of the poor as well.
May poor Nigerians scale all the hurdles.
Yunusa, a social and political affairs analyst sent this piece from Bauchi via abdulrahmanyunusa10@gmail.com
CAVEAT: Views and opinions expressed here are those of the writers and are not in any way those of The Point Newspaper – Editor
