The president of African Sociocultural Harmony and Enlightenment (ASHE) foundation, Prince Justice Faloye has reiterated his stance and dismay over the choice of democracy Nigeria has inadvertently chose to practice, noting that neoliberal ideology would continue to plunge the country deeper into mess if right steps are not taken.

In a statement issued to the media, Faloye who is also the National publicity secretary, Afenifere stated that social democracy remains the ultimate solution to Nigeria’s numerous challenges as enshrined in the Chapter Two of the Federal Constitution.

Illustrating his assertion with a metaphor, he stated: “A good fast driver of a top of the range luxury car going in a wrong direction will lead its passengers nowhere, even off the cliff. Totalitarian ‘liberal’ democracies give an illusion of choice, often between candidates belonging to the same power structure and political ideology. They focus the masses on unquantifiable moral values like leadership, instead on definite ideological directions and measurable developmental benchmarks. With the focus on elusive leadership instead of ideology, as the people become poorer they will begin to suffer from racial inferiority complex, poor work ethics and political cynicism and disillusionment.

According to him, “President Tinubu plunged Nigerians into poverty within a month due to his ideology not corruption. Peter Obi and Abubakar Atiku support the neoliberal economic ideology and claim its negative effects are due to Tinubu’s poor leadership implementation. The truth is no matter how good a politician’s leadership qualities there are ONLY two policy directions – Left or Right, neoliberalism or social democracy, which basically translates to whether you subsidize the poor known as demand side economics or the rich known as Supply side economics,” he said.

Faloye noted that no matter how good a leader’s intentions and abilities are, if he supports the removal of subsidies and delegation of governments social contracts on collective prosperity to the free markets, then majority of the people will be worse off.

“Every ideology has its own share of corruption, but a corrupt leader with the right ideology is better than a saintly leader with a wrong ideology. Yet, in every election campaign season, the people are distracted by political discourse on leadership qualities like personal backgrounds, previous criminal records, corruption, moral piety etc. The frontrunners belong to the same military political complex so they espouse the same ideological positions. Social Democracy is the only true opposition to neoliberalism but the engineered noise of personality trivia drowns out the voice of reason and ideology,” he added.

Drawing analogy from Western policies he stated: “The USA spends over a trillion dollars on subsidies, UK nearly half a trillion, like every economically advancing nation, and as Awolowo’s Afenifere advocates, the government must subsidize education to produced more skilled workers with higher paying wages and taxes, subsidize fuel for cheaper production, subsidize healthcare for a healthy workforce, subsidize housing to boost the consumer market, ultimately subsidies are public investment in prosperity. The system could be tightened if corrupted but never cancelled since subsidies have income and employment multiplier effects across the economy, not captured by financial accounting.

“The Black Race suffered 350 years of slavery, when poor and weak people were sold by the rich and powerful, which evolved into 100 years colonization, when poor and weak African ethnicities were collectively exploited by rich and powerful Western nations, and the economic exploitation has now evolved into what is known as neoliberalism that devalues real wages and removes subsidies to extract the productive surpluses for both local and foreign rich and powerful cabals. Western backed armies overthrew the liberation movement leaders across the Black Race in the Sixties and implemented neocolonial democracy limited to neoliberalists, who focus the campaigns on personal qualities like tribal origins, religious affiliations and moral relativism.

“The politicians don’t focus on economic development plans for the masses, but play the chameleon game of appearing to be the same with the masses. Psychological deceitful stories of rising from poverty due to individualism, not collectivist. Claims of wearing shoes with holes or walking barefoot. Some claim victimhood for public sympathy, while others play tribal and religious cards. Their policies are in ambiguous terms like building more roads and houses and not definitive terms like how many housing units exactly, based on the amount required. In Nigeria, with over 30 million homeless people, the President budgeted for a mere 25,000 houses.

“Most projects are undertaken end up to be mere expensive eye candy meant to fool the masses, only benefiting the privileged contractors and users. The classic example is the overwhelming focus on road construction used by a minority with money to buy cars or freight goods over long distances, instead of railways that not only benefits the maximum number of people, but has twenty times the income and employment multiplier effects of roads. If the USA started with roads and vehicle production, it is unlikely it would have stimulate the Industrial Revolution and growth due to costs. Apart from railways having lifespans five times more than roads, the cost per kilometer for people and cargo is far less than those of road transportation.

“For Nigeria to become industrialized and economically prosperous, it needs a Big Push development plan for at least 10,000 housing units a day (3.5million annually), and at least 10 kilometers a day (3,500 kilometers annually). This is a minimum benchmark for true development as housing boosts the consumer market while railways boosts heavy manufacturing that spurs the growth of iron, chemicals, electrical and electronic manufacturing subsectors, reduces agricultural waste through better freight, haulage and logistics etc. However the neocolonial political system is not geared to stimulate growth to uplift the maximum amount of people, but to pay rich bankers and contractors, political cronies and what have you. Ultimately, Neoliberalism in Africa was established by force, the question is, could it be changed peacefully through elections in an ideologically constrained political class.”