President of the African Sociocultural Harmony and Enlightenment Foundation (ASHE), Prince Justice Faloye, has expressed dissatisfaction with the current APC administration, describing its neoliberal leadership style as un-African.

Faloye, who is the national publicity secretary of Afenifere, stated this in a press release, saying Nigeria is at the bottom of the global Quality of Life Index due to its neoliberal push, which he said runs contrary to global standards of life.

He said Nordic countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and others that practice social democratic governance led the global Quality of Life Index, which measures the best countries, as released on July 11, 2006, while countries like Nigeria, which pursue neoliberalism, remain at the bottom of the list.

According to Faloye, social democracy is “Omoluabi” democracy with a human face. He stressed that modern social democracies have a firm commitment to robust state intervention in wealth distribution, as well as the provision of universal public services such as free healthcare, free education, social housing, and other social safety nets.

He disclosed that this is enshrined in Chapter Two of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution but is not implemented because the country’s leaders have surrendered political and economic sovereignty to a foreign-imposed ideology of neoliberalism, which he described as modern-day slavery.

He stated:
“This administration’s push of two-thirds of Nigerians into poverty is not due to corruption, but because of the neoliberal economic policies of subsidy removal and devaluation that it implemented immediately it came to office. This is not a personal attack on President Tinubu, since the main opposition figures Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar, and others also advocated the same killer economic policies portrayed as natural law, in order to get the backing of our foreign neocolonial masters.

“Instead of addressing clear policy choices between neoliberalism and welfarism, they and the media turn attention to ethnicity, religion, and personality traits. ‘I didn’t have shoes, I am not corrupt, and I am a God-fearing man, but can destroy the economy’ clouds their narratives. It should not be about a candidate’s personal history or qualities, but the policy direction. The sad part is that since the early 1980s, the entire political class has backed neoliberalism, with the notable exception of the Social Democratic Party, a party created by Afenifere, whose presidential candidate is Prince Adewole Adebayo.”

Faloye stressed that, contrary to media spin describing the President as a strong and courageous leader who took tough reform policies for long-term prosperity, the leadership actually capitulated cowardly to the demands of Western powers through the IMF and World Bank.

“He knew what was right, as he had talked about drafting millions into the army for massive public works to uplift the people, but he was scared of how the last administration refused to implement full subsidies.

“Chief Obafemi Awolowo had advocated social democracy and economic welfarism through four cardinal principles of free education, free health, integrated rural development, and full employment, which became known as Afenifere. In addition to Keynesian subsidy deficit-budgeting economics that prevailed in the world to empower whites with the largest generational transfer of wealth, it also inspired leaders of newly independent nations like Awolowo. It actually resonates with Yorubas and other indigenous African civilizational economic ideologies, placing Afenifere as those who want abundance for all, just like East African Ubuntu meaning, ‘I am because we are,’” Faloye added.

He further stated that Awolowo’s social democratic principles organized agriculture and built industrial estates for the food, beverages, and tobacco manufacturing subsector, which still accounts for 70 percent of Nigeria’s manufacturing income.
He added that the country has remained stuck at the same stage since Western nations completed their postwar social democratic programs in the 1970s to rebuild productive capacities and empower whites after World War II.

According to him, they instructed the world financial system to stop and switch from consumer deficit budgeting for all to military deficit subsidies for a few equity investors in the military-industrial complex.

“Black nations that needed a longer phase to rebuild and reenergize their people, after being enslaved and colonized for over 350 years, were made to stop government intervention in wealth creation and distribution. IMF/World Bank loans were not for development, but for recurrent finance. Nigeria started with the removal of student subsidies in 1978 and progressed over the next four decades to sever all social contracts meant to empower the people. Devaluation was the worst, as real wages and real estate were devalued. This racially discriminatory economic ideology, known as neoliberalism, prevented economic optimization in the US and UK, enabling China to overtake them,” Faloye stated.

He further noted:
“The Tinubu administration recently celebrated the rise of the capital market, used by less than 4 percent, while Nigeria remains the world poverty capital, with 65 percent under the poverty line, the world’s highest homelessness rate with 30 million homeless, the world’s lowest life expectancy rate, 20 years below the global average at 56 years, and the highest infant mortality, among others. Neoliberalism causes huge income inequality and leads to xenophobia and ethnic conflict from Nigeria to South Africa.

“One spineless leader followed another as tribal representatives of the Western-mandated neoliberal economic ideology, justifying it as natural law, with fallacious economic logic and morality. Social democracy translates into Afenifere, but neoliberalism has no direct translation in Yoruba or any other African language and is described as anti-Omoluabi, myopic individualism. Instead of abundance for all, it is abundance for a select few. This un-Omoluabi trait shows in the outright denial of increased poverty by Tinubu’s spokesmen and the recent First Lady’s show of lack of concern that agriculture and food processing pay unliveable poor wages, unwisely advocating more labour into the overstressed sectors to further depress income.

“Apart from wages that keep Nigerians in the poverty trap, the most pertinent socioeconomic problem is homelessness, with 30 million homeless people and growing by about 500,000 annually. With a population growth of about 5.6 million people annually, requiring at least 1,000,000 new homes a year, less than 400,000 houses are built by both the private and public sectors.

“To advance Awolowo’s social democratic economic welfarist template, especially the last two of integrated rural development and full employment, there should be a need for railway stations and a policy of a roof over every head.

“This has to be achieved not through foreign loans but through monetary policy to sponsor the increase of 1,000 houses a day to at least 7,000 houses daily, and lay 10 kilometers of railway a day, cumulatively across the nation in a massive direct labour program. Only then can Nigeria stimulate its production and consumer sectors to finance other social welfarist demands.”