Victor Ariole
24 October 2004
opinion
Lagos — Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws - John Adams (in Noam Chomsky: 1987)
In education or, precisely, in classroom operations we say that an examination is discriminating negatively, especially in multiple choice type of questions, when those who ought to perform well perform poorly and those who ought to perform poorly excel in such exams.
At that point the teacher ought to question himself and detect where he acted wrongly - either wrong teaching, wrong presentation of plausible keys/items or even wrong management of exam process resulting in expo.
Fela's song include government as teacher and exclaims that a teacher should not teach him nonsense. The goal of a teacher is to cause a modification in behaviour so as to produce a better person at the end of the learning and teaching exercise. On that, he takes note of the abilities of the person he received before the exercise started by setting a pre-test that determines the entry behaviour of the person; that is, the knowledge already available to the person before the teacher embarks on what and how to impart more knowledge to the person. In so doing he is able to evaluate his own performance as a teacher at the end of the exercise.
No government comes to power to destroy the people it is expected to better their situation. Though it cannot better the situation of everybody but it is expected to better the situation of a of regression. At the end of every term government should know its wrong so as, to reorder itself to cause progress to happen in the country.
When conservatives take power in Britain of Republicans take power in USA, it is expected that the majority of business people would benefit from their government through either tax cut incentives for business and entrepreneuship, development of new business, etc. When Labour Party (in Britain or the Democratic Party (in USA) take power, it is expected that more welfare packages will be reeled out for the majority of the working class and the weaker segments of the society.
However, whichever party that is in power, something positive is expected to happen to a given majority. Their economic policies or measures discriminate positively. Those they are expected to favour see such measures really working right in their favour.
In Nigeria, government as a teacher seems all out to destroy the people with suffocating economic policies measures. According to them, liberalization is meant to strengthen the Nigerian economy. Maybe as a ghost economy operating outside the realms of the human beings. No particular segment of the populace is pinpointed as the end beneficiary. Hence the beneficiaries are always ghost people. Those who gain from the policies or the measures seem to be people who do not operate in the Nigerian economy as the benefit is never noticed.
Since Babangida's era of price deregulation or downstream oil deregulation, hiking fuel price in tune with developed nations pace has been the in-thing and promises that measures will be put in place to cushion the effects has never happened and the majority of the masses suffer.
Whereas in developed nations the gains of either the business or entrepreneurial classes as occasioned by the right wing governments are ploughed back to the economy, that of Nigeria are taken away for fear of loss by haphazard policies and measure; not well thought out that are quickly implemented to frustrate entrepreneurial efforts or to perpetuate poverty among the weak.
A good government in a developed nation has right to talk of liberalization or deregulation as it has been able to educate enough of its populace to be able to take care of themselves outside government intervention. It took them decades if not centuries to do that. A government in the third world will be running the risk of loosing its populace to migration and even its riches to capital fight when it adopts measures that discriminate against hard work. For, people with no value adding industry to the nation seen to survive better in Nigeria.
Nigerian government should learn a bit from Houphouet's economic policies that made Cote d' Ivoire of Houphouet's period a haven for investors and manpower mobility.
Germans, Italians, American had always wanted to compete with France in investing in Cote d'Ivoire. An example is the building of hydroelectric dams in Cote d'Ivoire. They did not start building the dams without first rehabilitating the poor people to be affected by their activities. Good houses and better community facilities were built for them first before the proper constructions of the dams. They should ask General Odumegwu Ojukwu whose company - Phoenix Africaine and later SERIAC-CI won the contract of building kitchens and toilets for individual houses of people affected in the construction of dam in Beoumi or Niambra in Cote d'Ivoire.
When oil was discovered in Gand Bassam by American investors, it was not an Eureka for the people of Grand Bassam because life remained normal and the best they would have expected in the best of all possible world.
When fuel price was hiked all over the world, transporters were asked to form cooperatives and work towards converting their vehicles to diesel engine type in order to keep transport fare low and allow poor Ivories to transport themselves without feeling the pangs and it worked. From 1982 to 200l, I had been visiting Cote d'Ivore on weekends or during festival periods before the outbreak of war and the transport fare from Abidjan to Yamoussoukro remained the same. Even their operations from Cotonou to Cote d'Ivoire, as they avoided reaching Nigeria, have remained stable in fares. Here in Nigeria both kerosine and diesel that are supposed to be for the poor happened to be the costliest.
Who says there could not be good planners in Africa. In Cote d'Ivoire of Houphouet their economic measures discriminated positively.
This current government claims to have taken steps to correct certain ills but it is yet to be seen the majority of the segment of the populace benefiting from it.
It is high time government took stock of its activities, define the need of the ordinary Nigerians, supply such needs by taxing those they have sold our collective money making institutions to.
Nigerians need housing, good transport system, energy, food, education and better health facilities. With those things in the mind of government, economic measures will be constrained to discriminate positively as their sustenance will ever remain a challenge to any new government in power.
Ariole is a Lecturer at the University of Lagos
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