What system does Nigeria run?
Yesterday, David Hundeyin published a wonderful piece on BusinessDay NG, about Africa’s resource nationalism.
It was quite significant coming out the same day that Nigeria’s House of Representatives talked about forcing Multichoice, a private company that is responsible for most of Nigeria’s satellite television viewing, to dance to the tune of anti-capitalists. Coming not long after Jason 'Igwe' Njoku raised the alarm about the NBC’s new standards that will force people to give away content that they’ve paid for, it was not surprising when the brilliant William Ukpe did a Twitter thread about faux socialism in Nigeria. Key thing the thread highlighted is that Nigeria’s “socialists” are more concerned about access to luxuries than equity in the distribution of resources for all Nigerians, which is why I stopped agreeing with William, and David.
Nigeria’s elite does not practice socialism.
As per Marx, socialism is a philosophy characterised by social ownership of the means of production, workers’ self-management of enterprises, collective ownership, and the public good.
Socialism involves the state taking care of those who are left behind, either by their lack of ability, or whatever other reason and for this to work, since it is collective ownership, the state must tax everyone, the wealthiest paying the highest.
Of course, like anything run by human beings, there are different strains of socialism, ranging from the benign democratic socialism practised in places such as Denmark and Norway, to the Stalinism that is practised in North Korea. But it’s all on a spectrum, and to my mind, Nigeria is not on any part of this spectrum.
You see, to be on the spectrum, a country has to have certain characteristics, and the first of these is some form of accountability. Accountability starts from the most basic question of counting — how many are we in Nigeria? I have seen consumption datasets from different FMCG operators in Nigeria, and unless we have up to 50 million people who live the way their ancestors did, there is no way the population of Nigeria is 200 million.
So if we are not 200 million people, how can we be a properly socialist country and tax those who need taxing, and help those who need help?
No, Nigeria is not socialist. There are three systems that define what Nigeria is. In feudalism, society revolves around relationships that give all the land to a wealthy class in exchange for the labour or services of the unwealthy class. In Nigeria, there is something called the Land Use Act, which essentially means that we are all serfs, and all the land belongs to something called government. They can kick us off “our” land at any time they so wish, for any frivolous reason they come up with. A plutocracy is a society that is controlled by people of great means. You see it in the fact that nothing ever really happens to any of Nigeria’s super-rich unless they step out of line with respect to those who are even more powerful than they are. Nigeria has elements of these two, but there is another system that even more closely resembles what we have.
The word “kleptocracy” is derived from the Greek words for “thief” and “rule”. Essentially a kleptocracy is a government that has corrupt leaders who use their position to steal from their country and grow their own personal wealth and power. Unlike actual socialism which requires a strong state in order to be able to properly tax wealth and then redistribute said wealth, none of these three, feudalism, plutocracy or kleptocracy is concerned with any form of accountability. All three are more concerned with the illusion of state strength rather than real strength, hence the moment you can display a considerable measure of violence, the state will no longer attempt to put you in your place, but will co-opt you into the state structure. All three are simply concerned with regime security, and nothing else. All three, as a function of their very DNA, create a state where the citizens are entitled, and do everything they can to become a part of the moneyed, and thus secure class.
No, Nigeria is not socialist. Nigeria is a combo of feudalist, plutocrat and kleptocrat, with kleptocracy being the dominant form here.