By Sulaiman Salawudeen

When Gunnar Myrdal, in Rich Lands and Poor, warned that laissez-faire economics in poor nations would only magnify inequality rather than ameliorate it, he was merely articulating a timeless truth, such as the Nigerian reality continues to amplify in tragic multicolour! Myrdal’s distinction between “spread effects” (prosperity radiating outward) and “backwash effects” (prosperity sucked away from weaker regions/sections) was not mere academic surmising; it was seminal dissection of what happens when national governments, through policy pronouncements, abandon basic welfarism credo.

While the state in richer nations deliberately strengthens spread effects through policies that enhance well-being; in poorer nations backwash dominates, as the state consistently abandons whatever policies of good, decent living, leaving misery in its trails. Nigeria, under President Bola Tinubu, has become the quintessential case study of the ‘backwash’ pathology, where removal of petroleum subsidy has unleashed a regime of surpassing agony upon the populace, widening further the gulf between ‘comfortable’ and ‘comfortless’.

Balance this reality against far enlightened policies of advanced nations. In France, when energy prices surged in 2022, government capped electricity price at four per cent and offered fuel discounts. In Spain, subsidies were introduced for public transport to ease commuters’ burdens. In the UK, households received direct payments to offset rising energy bills.

Even in the United States, stimulus checks and energy credits were deployed to shield citizens during crises. These nations, though capitalist, understood that market forces must be tempered with compassion, lest mercantilist profiteers would suffocate commoners, as they currently do in Nigeria, actively supported by a government that has perfected the art of abandoning its own citizens to the unconscionable jaws of ‘free’ market, promising palliatives it has no plans to ever deliver!

Familiar appraisals of President Tinubu’s governance performance repeatedly fork out into two broad categorisations. While macroeconomic favourites often extol his administration for structural reforms such as subsidy removal, exchange rate harmonisation, and fiscal recalibration, microeconomic realists routinely condemn same for failing to privilege quotidian consequences of the administration’s policy moves upon the masses over abstract aggregates.

To the former, Tinubu’s interventions signify rare technocratic courage aimed at stabilising Nigeria’s economic architecture at the global levels, even as same would augment GDP figures, attract foreign capital, and eventually help rejig the nation’s fiscal trajectory. But critics underscore existential tribulations of ordinary Nigerians, including spiraling inflation, prohibitive food and fuel prices, generally receding purchasing power, and relentless erosion of household welfare.

It is true, macroeconomic stabilisation is indispensable for long-term prosperity, microeconomic distress is undeniable in the immediate term. In the dialectic of governance, microeconomic prescriptions remain the decisive arbiter, rendering condemnation more compelling than commendation! Is governance not basically about instituting succour?

Factually, successive Nigeria’s presidents, preferring macroeconomy, have turned petrol price hikes into a habit, slamming higher prices upon Nigerians at slightest need, often justifying the move as “reform”, while ignoring the crushing effects. Olusegun Obasanjo in 1978 raised pump prices from 8.4 kobo to 15.37 kobo. Umar Musa Yar’Adua in 2009 pegged petrol at about N65 per litre, which, by 2012, was raised to N141 by Goodluck Jonathan, but reversed to N97 upon nationwide protests spearheaded by today’s “progressive” controllers. Buhari, between 2016 and 2022, upstretched the prices for about three times, meeting it at N87 and leaving same at 170, and by 2022, Nigerians paid around N185-N200.

Truly, while consecutive managements since 1970s had welcomed subsidy reforms, historical records make Tinubu’s meanness especially compelling, as his 2023 inaugural pronouncement immediately shut the price past N600. Despite the general and routine rise in prices always triggered by petrol, no Nigerian government has succeeded in fixing electricity, emplacing tolerable public transport, or implementing credible or tangible social supports.

Between 1973 and 2024, petrol price adjustments have taken place 28 times, but national minimum wage has been adjusted only 8/9 times within same period, each adjustment, except the Udoji windfall of 1974, bringing such change as always made waged workers wonder the purpose! Consequences of unsubsidised livelihood are today everywhere: transport fares have crippled workers; farmers must pay through their nose not just to produce, but move produce to markets; SMEs, worsted by rising overheads, are either shutting down or relocating elsewhere; and families are cutting back on essentials.

Consequently, malnutrition is rising, school dropouts are increasing, and desolation is common stapple in most homes. What meaning for monetary savings, weighed against prodigious, if unprecedented, social and economic devastation?

Nigeria must urgently unlearn its blind faith in free-wheeling ‘backwash’ forces of the market and relearn the principles of ‘distributive’ welfarism. Subsidies must be reinstated to bring petrol prices to tolerable levels, or, alternatively, unleash down-to-earth palliatives significant enough to reverse/ameliorate subsisting evaporation of survival on multiple fronts.

Is it entirely impossible for governments to temper capitalism with compassion? A Nigerian worker earning N100,000 monthly before Tinubu’s presidency could manage rent, food, transport, and modest savings. Nearly four years into his rule, even with his salary increments, hyperinflation has annihilated purchasing power: petrol now hovers around N1,700 per litre, food inflation above 40 per cent, that of construction materials well above 50 per cent, and transport costs have quadrupled! The grotesque spectacle of property owners auctioning cars, houses, and domestic items bears horrific, even disgusting, testimony to the recession strangling households to the heavens.

Whatever anyone may say, Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s former vice president, has scored rather hard political point by promising to restore petroleum subsidy if elected president in next year’s election. The statistics already reeled out are not abstract figures; they represent shattered households, collapsed businesses, and a populace of human skeletons operating under whole litany of unsubsidised livelihood. Atiku’s promise, possibly pandering to populism, resonates still, acknowledging the necessity of cushionary policies in a depressed economy.

As 2027 looms, Tinubu will have to enter the witness box of public opinion to explain his economics of bloating the treasury at the cost of human survival: exalt asphalt, cement and steel to detriment stomachs of common people. In Europe and America, governments never confuse infrastructure with humanity. Roads are built, yes, but alongside subsidies, rebates, and welfare programs that shield citizens from hunger and squalour. France, Spain and the UK, left with no choice but impose unavoidable stringent economic measures, came up with solid cushions for citizens, aware that development must pace with compassion, that monuments must never be erected at the expense of men. Nigeria under Tinubu would seem to choose monuments over men and projects over welfare, following well the mercilessness trajectory of his predecessors! Who will steer struggling Nigerians away from the path of despair?

Salawudeen wrote from Ibadan, Oyo State.