By Sunusi Abubakar
With a growing prime working-age population, considerable natural resources endowment, good economic potentials, large labour forces, highly motivated entrepreneurs, vast domestic market, strategic coastal locations, large and fragile agricultural land, and developing ICT sector, Nigeria has favourable economic potential which could lead her to be among the top 20 economies in the world.
But problems like corruption, nepotism, political instability, inadequate infrastructures and poor economic management are failing its journey to greatness. Unfortunately, all the aforementioned regressive factors are not natural but a breed of artificial additive called colonialism.
Colonialism was first practised by empires such as Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, and Phoenicia. From about 1550 B.C. onward, these civilisations all extended their borders into surrounding and non-contiguous areas and established colonies that used the physical and population resources of the people they conquered to increase their own power. This resulted in capitalism and imperialism and metamorphosed into neo-colonialism.
Ancient colonialism is seen worldwide as the origin of capitalism, which is said to be the source of the power and accumulation of Western countries.
Capitalism is said to emanate from the Cambridge School, a group of economic philosophers. The group was led by the neoclassical economist Alfred Marshall, with Walras, Merger, and British economist John Maynard Keynes on the board. The system always accepts the market system as the best way to organise economic activities in society. They believed in allocating resources through the market forces of demand and supply.
For them, the commodity is said to be a thing when it is produced to make money. They maintained that the source of their capital accumulation is through profit gained and plough back for future profit, but many people are against this idea. They were cautioned by German economist and human rights lawyer Karl Marx, who described the process as primitive.
Marx argued that their capital is wherever in the world, made initially through the enclosure movement, dislocation of feudal agrarian productions, huge price inflation, monopolies of trade, acquisition of colonies, extortion enslavement, entombment in the mines of the aboriginal population, looting of indie and Africa as well as hunting of black skins.
However, capitalism is seen worldwide as the maceration of the proletariat, a low class in society. Capitalism always favoured the bourgeoisie, the owners of the means of production. Moreover, the history of capitalism can only be completed by mentioning the name of the Italian philosopher Machiavelli.
Machiavelli was the founder of the theory of Mercantilism and a major contributor to the development of capitalism. Mercantilism is an economic system which supports the development of capitalism and the exploitation of the proletariat through the accumulation of monetary reserves by positive balance using the import and export of finished goods.
Shortly after some economic revolutions that emancipated some countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia, the colonial masters, who were the champions of capitalism, veered to continue their colonial agenda through imperialism. They came up with an idea that saw the integration of world financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank to recolonise former colonies through debt conditionalities. Many African countries fall into their trap. Some managed to escape while others were still bedevilled by it.
As imperialism seemed ineffective, those colonial masters changed their sinister agenda to neocolonialism. Neocolonialism is also a system that is aimed at giving developed economies indirect control over their former colonies and access to their system of economy, politics, militarism, idealism and other policies to achieve two objectives:
1. Keeping those colonies within the world capitalism system.
2. Preserving the condition of exploitation and unequal exchange between developed and developing economies.
Like other developing economies, Nigeria is also suffering from the problems of neo-colonialisation.
Neocolonialism paved the way for the developed economies to wage a silent war on Nigeria’s industrial sector indirectly through the development of manufacturing industries and technological advancement. They electrified, mechanised, and chemicalised our agricultural sector. Their dominance mandated our farmers to use pesticides, insecticides, and other agrochemicals mainly produced in their countries.
Moreover, education is also a victim of neo-colonialisation in Nigeria. The educational sector in Nigeria is neocolonialized through privatization. The government has intentionally neglected our educational sector, leading citizens to enrol their children in private schools at home and abroad.
Neocolonialisation has also victimised Nigeria’s political landscape. It also affects our system of administration, military,and foreign policy. Western countries have an indirect involvement in Nigeria’s electoral processes through this. They use observation to interfere cunningly in the choice of our leadership.
However, the ongoing insecurity problems affecting Nigeria are another form of neocolonialism. It is through which Western countries exploit our economy and enjoy the remaining in the name of peacekeeping, intelligence assistance and arms procurement.
With these problems on trend, this is a healing time. It is a time for reflection on what can be done to help Nigeria cunningly harness its economic potential. It is a time to preach against government policies that align with a neocolonialist agenda through dialogue and moral suasion.
If we fail to reflect as a nation, Nigeria is bound to go back into the decades of direct subjugation, economic exploitation and brutality.
Sunusi Abubakar wrote via muhammadsunusi29@gmail.com.
