President, ASHE Foundation think tank group, Prince Justice Faloye has taken a swipe on the recent U-turn on subsidy removal statement made by the former vice president and presidential candidate of African Democratic Congress ADC, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, noting that his new stance makes no difference.

Faloye, who is Afenifere National Publicity Secretary and a strong advocate of social democracy made it clear that both Peter Obi and President Tinubu including Atiku Abubakar are on the same page of neoliberalism ideological stand, which is contrary to people-oriented democratic expectations from what they preach.

Expressing his views to the paradoxical statement,  he stated:  “Abubakar Atiku’s U-turn on subsidy removal that he supported in 2023, has attracted a wide range of responses. While President Tinubu came out to defend his neoliberal policies of subsidy removals and devaluation, claiming it saved N16.8 trillion while incurring higher costs to pay existing foreign debts, increasing wages to less than 10% and losing N100 trillion in production. Yet Peter Obi that is supposed to be his opposition, opposite in ideological position, has come out to support the policies, giving the same excuses of leadership failure given in over 60 Black nations and everywhere the doomed policy has been implemented and failed.

“The true opposition to neoliberalism is social democracy. Neoliberalism believes that government should leave its social responsibility to a non-existent free market, while social democracy believes that government should subsidize in order to provide employment and income multiplier effects. Fuel subsidy was  production subsidy whose withdrawal cost the economy over $100b. When you subsidize education, it brings a lifetime of taxable income. The argument of corruption in fuel subsidies is not enough to remove it. Why is it that subsidies paid through the NNPC that favor the greatest amount of people is stopped, while the other corrupt NNPC processes like allocating oil wells, revenue collection and refineries, are not stopped.

Drawing a point from the global economic perspectives, Faloye noted that USA/UK like other economically advancing nations pay trillions of  dollars in subsidies on public transport, fossil fuels, housing, education, healthcare and even unemployment, as prescribed in Chapter Two of our 1999 constitution, also, adding that unlike Sweden, Norway, Germany that are social democratic nations that don’t mince on economic welfarism for social security for all, UK/USA transfer some of their consumer subsidies to military subsidies for trickle down economics.

Faloye argued that though, some attack Atiku’s new position as economically wrong, he stated that doubts are whether  a Neoliberal Tiger like Atiku can actually change its spots after heading privatization under Obasanjo.

“In practice, many of those that push neoliberalism do so due to the coloniality of knowledge and power sources to get the support of the Western Powers and their local handlers. Our current political frontrunners are bound by their godfathers ideological position. President Bola Tinubu is said to be a protege of General Babangida known to have pushed IMF neoliberal economic policies, like no other until Tinubu came to power. Peter Obi is a protege of General Obasanjo, the father of neoliberalism in Nigeria, starting with education subsidy removals that resulted in the bloody 1978 Ali Must Go Protests, Austerity Measures and Operation Feed the Nation. Atiku is said to be a protege of the Late General Yar Adua, General Obasanjo’s vice military head of State.
U-turn on subsidy removal

“Tinubu and Obi are neoliberalists, not only because of subsidy removal and devaluation, but also don’t subscribe to free education and free healthcare, leaving them to fallacious free market principles. Obi’s blurring of clear ideological positions with the issue of leadership based on personal qualities, is mischievous since whether good or bad leadership, the question is what ideological position is he heading – neoliberalism or social democracy? Ultimately, it is whether you hold balancing of budgets sacrosanct or uplifting the people. Would you go into overdraft to feed our kids and save lives, or your credit rating is more important?

“President Tinubu flaunts the growth of capital market used by less than 4% of the population as success to justify the 30% increase in poverty. Peter Obi’s mantra of from Consumption to Production is like Ronald Reagan mantra of Supply Side Economics called Trickledown Economics, in which economic benefits for a few was expected to trickle down to the masses, an ideology which later became globalized as Neoliberalism. The difference is while US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher switched Keynesian consumer subsidies to military subsidies to recolonize Africa, African leaders like Tinubu and Peter Obi support removing subsidies to boost agriculture paying slave wages.

Faloye stressed that neoliberalism is Black arrested development following Nigeria’s economic and political independence of the Sixties and Seventies, adding that it only favors the rich and is naturally discriminatory and exclusionary, picking on immigrants in the West or other tribes in Nigeria and South Africa. “While the benefits of neoliberalism are felt by a few White men that own the military industrial complex, leading to wars across the world to steal other peoples resources, in Africa without a military industrial complex, neoliberalism favors prebendalist politicians and their thugs based on tribes, and an old boys network that takes all the contracts like with Chagoury,” he stated.

Meanwhile, he stressed further that until Nigerians understand that this is not politics as normal, but like with slavery abolition and anti-colonization movements, the country have to rise against Neoliberalism designed to recolonize and re-enslave us, also adding that the country will continue to be mired into poverty by a political class that are more or less slave traders.

“Any politician that doesn’t understand that our government needs to use subsidies to offset historic costs and deprivations in housing, education, healthcare and transportation, is a neoliberalist no matter how good or disciplined he is. He is nothing but a benevolent foreman that will keep his people in slavery with false hopes of a better future. Obi is a strategic tool to divert peoples anger from a true revolution with hope of a kinder neoliberalist.

“Regardless of whether Abubakar Atiku is just playing politics with the subsidy removal, it is relieving that he has raised the political discourse from the unsavory depths of Tinubu’s morality and background to ideological issues surrounding economics. Peter Obi’s response reveals he is a diehard neoliberalist that only cares about account balance with the IMF, and not willing to provide production subsidies like the fuel subsidy, which stimulates our transportation since out of 11 million vehicles 7 million are commercial vehicles, not counting Okada and Napep, as well as being the energy used for majority of our production.

“Not only do we need fuel subsidy since the government has failed to provide a railway station in every local government, we need housing subsidies for 30 million homeless people, the worlds highest. We need free education for all, not loans for less than half of students. We need free healthcare to stem the tide of having the highest infant mortality and lowest life expectancy. The Big Push can only be financed with massive deficit budgeting and subsidies, which currently only goes to be rich and connected.

“Nigerians won’t continue to be fooled by neoliberal tricks of using moralist arguments against helping the majority, while the political class and civil service are heavily subsidized. Monkey can’t continue to work while Baboons continue to enjoy all the subsidies, there must be social democracy with social security nets or we all fall,” Faloye cobcluded.