A lot of Nigerians do not know the difference between civil wrong and criminal offence. 

I can say that 90 percent of Nigerians cannot tell the difference between civil wrongs and criminal offences. 

This may be the reason that once you feel someone has wronged you, then boom, you taste blood. Call the Police, call the Department of State Services, call the Army, have him arrested and thrown into jail or detention. In fact, despite changing the name prison to correctional center, most Nigerians think a holding facility is for vengeance by suffering the person instead of correction.

It is no longer news that some Internet users have posted online, X platform that Nathaniel Bassey is the father of Mercy Chinwo’s child. This was considered offensive or wrong leading to a Petition to the Inspector General of Police by Nathaniel Bassey that these online users be fished out, arrested and prosecuted for criminal defamation. It is like using a wrong to correct a wrong.

Civil wrongs like defamation of character are in a category of wrongs like owing money or not paying your debt. It is not a police case. It should lead to civil action for defamation of character by the person aggrieved. The end result for civil action is to seek relief for damages in monetary terms. It does not lead to criminal prosecution, conviction and prison terms. However, Nigerians in power or the rich and influential seem not to care about these differences between civil wrong and criminal offence. Once, you wrong them, then they will let loose the police or state security forces on you as a way of “teaching you a lesson.” That’s pure oppression or abuse of state forces. There are over 100 Court Judgments condemning this practice. See the Supreme Court cases of Kure vs COP, Nwoboshi vs FRN for instance.

I am not saying that people should be allowed to make careless comments online and go scot free. Rather, the appropriate legal action should be taken. In this case, it should be a civil suit. The duty of the police does not extend to the protection of your reputation. Your reputation is personal to you. Any injury to your reputation is a personal civil wrong committed against you and should lead to personal action and not Police investigation and prosecution. If we assume for a moment that there is any crime in it, why not report to the police division in charge? The office of Inspector General of Police is not in the ordinary course of business, made for receiving complaints about minor criminal offences involving two fighting. It is for serious business supervising police operations all over the country.

Unfortunately, once it is a big man that writes the petition to the police, they will jump on it and start harassing weaker people. They will hardly tell the rich no, this is a civil case and it is outside our jurisdiction. This is how the Police yields itself to abuse of state power. 

Interestingly, even in terms of the substance of the alleged criminal defamation, it is not a criminal offence in Lagos where the complaint is originating from. The best you can make of the post is to say that:

1. Nathaniel Bassey is fertile and has fathered a child or

2. Nathaniel Bassey has committed adultery.

Both are not criminal offences in Lagos. Fathering a child is no offence in Lagos. Adultery is equally not a criminal offence. The Supreme Court of Nigeria has laid this to rest in the case of Aoko v. Fagbeyemi (1961) 1 ALL NLR 400 that adultery is not a criminal offence.

You can take civil action on allegations of adultery but not a criminal case. 

I hope you find this useful.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is so inordinately inebriated by his IMF-motivated decision to remove subsidies on petrol that at every opportunity he has he brags about it in giddily superlative terms.

For example, during a meeting with the Nigerian community in France on June 24, 2023, he couched his decision to impose the Tinubu fuel tax (to borrow from his 2012 characterization of Goodluck Jonathan’s subsidy removal) on Nigerians in epiphanic, providential, and inspirational terms. 

 He told Nigerians in France that during his inaugural speech on May 29, 2023, he was suddenly overcome by a mysterious force of unusual courage, which propelled him to veer off his prepared speech to announce the removal of fuel subsidies. “When I got to the podium, I was possessed with courage, and I said, ‘subsidy is gone!’” he said with a smug glow of perverse, meanspirited self-satisfaction.

Again on November 22, 2023, Tinubu boasted to investors at the 10th German-Nigerian Business Forum that his courage to remove petrol subsidies and visit unheard-of economic violence on poor, luckless Nigerians was a gargantuan feat of derring-do worthy of acknowledgement in the Guinness World Records.

“Nigeria voted for me for reforms, and from day one of my inauguration, I started the reforms,” he said. “To me, if you didn’t mention me in the Guinness Book of Records, I’d strive to find a way to insert myself because I did it without expectation.” 

Well, the IMF, whose approval he desperately seeks and on whose behalf he is harming Nigerians, has approbated his policies, which should be more important to him than an entry in the Guiness World Records for sadistic governance. 

“The new [Tinubu] administration has made a strong start, tackling deep-rooted structural issues in challenging circumstances,” the IMF said on February 14. “Immediately, it adopted two policy reforms that its predecessors had shied away from: fuel subsidy removal and the unification of the official exchange rates.”

The IMF then instructed that “electricity subsidies are costly, do not reach those that most need government support and should be phased out completely.” 

On February 16, that is, exactly two days after this IMF directive, Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu announced that the government would withdraw electricity subsidies. That’s precisely why the government has approved a more than 200 percent hike in electricity tariffs this week. As I’ve repeatedly said, the IMF is the de factor ruler of Nigeria. Tinubu and his henchmen are mere cushy neo-imperialist surrogates.

Well, I don’t know of any halfway rational human being in the world who will see courage in choosing to hurt the dispossessed who can’t fight back. There is no courage in trampling on the poor, the weak, and the defenseless.

 There is no courage in kicking people who are already down, people who are down on their luck, and people who are down in the dumps as a consequence of being serial victims of a steady succession of cruel and self-serving governments who are servile errand boys of the racist sadists at the IMF. 

There is no courage in oppressing the oppressed. That's cowardice. That’s callousness. It’s unrelieved maliciousness. And it’s not something to be proud of, not something to make a song and dance about. On the contrary, it’s something to be mortally ashamed of.

Real courage comes from standing up to bullies, which the World Bank and the IMF are, and from defending the defenseless against oppressors. Courage comes from shielding the weak from the untoward designs of the strong and the unjust. It comes from protecting the underdog from the unprovoked aggression of the top dog. 

Since Tinubu came to power nearly a year ago, he has never implemented any policy that gives even an ounce of solace to the poor. Instead, like Muhammadu Buhari before him, he is a proud reverse Robin Hood who takes from the poor to enrich the already rich, with the recent IMF-directed astronomical increase in electricity tariffs—which makes electricity in Nigeria more expensive for “Band A” users than I pay in the United States—the latest example.

The only people who will benefit from the latest tariff hikes are Tinubu’s friends who own power generation and distribution companies. As a Tinubu-supporting friend pointed out to me on Friday, “This is a government of the elite, for the elite, and by the elite.”

In the United States where the IMF is headquartered, there are electricity subsidies for low-income households, yet it wants none for anybody in Nigeria. The primary federally funded electricity subsidy program here is called the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

 LIHEAP provides eligible households with financial assistance for energy bills, emergency energy services to prevent disconnection, and low-cost home improvements, known as weatherization, to help make homes more energy efficient.

LIHEAP is funded by the federal government, but the program is administered at the state level, which means eligibility requirements and the form of assistance offered can vary from one state to another. 

Generally, to qualify for LIHEAP, a household's income must fall below a certain threshold, which is typically set at a percentage of the federal poverty level or a percentage of the state's median income level.

In addition to LIHEAP, some states, utilities, and non-profit organizations offer additional assistance programs or subsidies to help low-income households with their energy needs. These programs may provide direct bill assistance, energy-efficient home improvements, or emergency aid for utility shutoff prevention.

Yet, the IMF has bludgeoned the Nigerian government into removing subsidies for electricity that isn’t even constant and reliable. And being the slavish lackeys that they are, they obeyed like dutiful, well-trained poodle dogs. Of course, it’s because it doesn’t hurt them, their immediate families, or their associates. 

The IMF never tells Third Word leaders to increase the minimum wages of workers. Maybe that’s why Tinubu’s Guinness-World-Records-size courage is absent when it comes to approving a minimum wage for Nigerian workers.

 The 30,000-naira minimum wage that the Muhammadu Buhari regime approved for workers expired in March. The Tinubu government had promised that a new minimum wage would start on April 1. That has turned out to be a cruel April Fools’ joke on Nigerians.

The last we heard of this issue is that the minimum wage committee would “reconvene mid-April to continue further negotiations and consultations on the new minimum wage expected to be announced by President Bola Tinubu on May 1, 2024.”

This is the same committee that requested 1.8 billion naira (which it later scaled back to 1 billion naira) just to sit in comfort and decide how much the least remunerated government worker will receive. “Start with N500million first,” Tinubu wrote in a leaked memo.

As senator Shehu Sani quipped on Twitter, “The minimum wage committee… allocated the maximum wage for themselves.” What exactly does the 37-member committee—made up of governors who don’t pay the current 30,000-naira minimum wage even when money realized from petrol subsidy removal has tripled their monthly allocations— want to use a billion naira (later reduced to 500 million naira) to do?

There was no committee when petrol subsidies were removed. There was no committee for the removal of electricity subsidies, which will now ensure that Nigeria descends into total darkness. But when it comes time to increase the minimum wage of workers, an expensive committee is needed.

In other words, where the welfare of everyday folks is concerned, Tinubu loses his magisterial, self-affirming courage. He transforms from a lion to a chicken. His courage only emerges when he oppresses the poor and recedes when he is required to help the poor. May God save Nigerians from Tinubu’s courage. 

Now, wasn’t that a really commendable move by Airpeace? “Something unique from Nigeria” is the message. The sewing and finishing of the outfit and the seamless, mature simplicity presents a uniqueness that is at once pleasant and compelling.  Good taste, elegance and a firm bearing signposts the now-in-the- news outfit of Airpeace airhostesses on one of its international routes. Then, you have the graceful carriage of the wearers! Behold, the bold move of a Nigerian airline, as it inflicts a breath of Naijarama on the rest of the world.

And this is only a beginning. Other Nigerian varieties from Kano, the Kanuri, the Tiv, Akwete, Eko, Bini and much more should, and will yet, hit the international aviation superhighway.

Airpeace staff carried it off with a boldness and artistic self-certainty that stands out in bold relief. Think of the outfits of staff of other airlines, both local and international. What, for instance, confronts you in Ghana besides the “Akwaaba” greeting? Kente material is synonymous with that country, but let us get on with the business of the day.

Isi Agu means “Head of a leopard”.  Is that what the Airpeace staff were seen wearing? Isi Odum means “head of a lion”. Is that what Airpeace staff were seen wearing? Come, let us go back to a piece which appeared on this page on April 15, 2023; wherein the Isi Agu matter was the subject of great concern and interest. The said piece will be reproduced here in large measure, to put the issue in perspective once again.

“Remember President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Imo State? The presumed Igbo garment he wore on top, which the state governor the then Ohaneze President-General and the “Igbo leaders and dignitaries” present also wore, is the issue here. To all Nigerians, and the world at large, the Igbo leadership elite turned up in Imo State, decked out in the traditional Igbo outfit of Efe Isi Agu, to receive Buhari on behalf of Ndigbo.

But were they really dressed in the right attire? I think not. And the reason is simple: The clothes they wore had the head of a lion (Odum) and not the head of a leopard (Agu) emblazoned on them. Thus, they saw themselves as wearing the traditional Igbo outfit for the highest possible occasion in the land on that occasion, when they were not.  They would not have dressed the way they did if they knew better.

The point to note, and which is being made here, is that anyone parading the material that is routinely paraded everywhere today as the Igbo traditional attire, especially for men, should be told that Agu is not Odum, and Odum is not Agu. It is as simple as that. With the nascent, and even possibly pubescent, Igbo elite totally unaware of what they have walked themselves into, we now have about two generations of the young and old who do not know that Agu is not lion. Poor cultural education and the emergence of upstarts as cultural and leadership icons in Igboland are to blame for this.

That is why, everywhere today, the predominantly red background of this unduly thick material, within and around which is embedded the head of a lion, is the major defining motif for Isi Agu dress. But then, you also now find the head of a horse, or a dog with a hairy head area, donning the red material. And these still get passed off as traditional Isi Agu dress. Who knows, we may yet find one with the head of a snake, a drowning fish, or a wounded porcupine, as Efe Isi Agu”.

The article under reference went further thus: Umahi wiped the subsisting shame of Igbo cultural bigwigs, intelligentsia, and political elite when he and his people wore the correct Isi Agu (leopard head) outfit to a rally of the APC held in his state. Igbo leadership, including Ohaneze chieftains, received Buhari in Owerri dressed in the wrong outfit of “Isi Odum” (Lion Head), which over 90% of the Igbo population actually assume is Isi Agu.

Look wherever you may, the story is the same. This goes for Ndigbo in the Diaspora, where the situation is much worse. Our dear brother and friend, Alex Oti, the man whom I believe will bring Abia State to its long overdue glory, has an official picture where he is seen donning the same material, with the head of a lion (Isi Odum). Oti is a double-rated lion in the business and intellectual circles in his own right. So, he may wish to substitute the Isi Odum with Isi Agu, to send out a signal that will guide his ailing and failing political and elite peers – as well as the youths.

But, wait a minute! Where, how and why did all this confusion spring up? If the word “isi” means head in Igbo language, does “Agu” mean the head of any and whatever animal you can print on a piece of cloth with red background? Certainly not!

And that raises a simple and straightforward question: “Which animal’s head should be on the red background material for it to be rightly called Isi Agu dress; which would thus make it the authentic Igbo attire it is claimed to be? The confusion in this regard is further compounded by the fact that some men whose traditional title is “Ogbu Agu” (Leopard Killer) introduce themselves in public as “Lion Killer”, when translating the meaning of their title into the English language. Back then, what you found hanging on the wall of any man who bore the revered, and partly dreaded, title of Ogbu Agu was the skin of the leopard he killed.

I say nothing about the fact that Igboland now has many Ogbu Agus (leopard killers) who cannot kill a limping rat in their backyards. You also have many with the title of “Ochi Agha” (War leader, or General) who can neither defeat a sick man in a wrestling march, nor fire a catapult at a stationary object with anything but appalling inaccuracy.

In three particular instances, I saw the title “Agu Nze” (literally “Man of Heroic Integrity”) translated as “Royal Lion”. And this by people to whom the younger generation of Ndigbo are looking up for guidance. Therein lies a deep and serious problem that says more than is apparent at face value. So, let us place it on record that Agu is Leopard and not Lion. But, let us also still take this conversation further.

Every part of the world has its giant cat. The biggest of all cats is the Tiger (Panthera Tigris) of which the Siberian Tiger is said to be the largest, at 660 pounds and measuring ten feet from head to tail. We call the Lion “King of the Forest”. That cannot be true for every forest. Even for the forest in which the lion resides, it is not king of every part, like the rivers within the forest. In the latter, the crocodile is often the king – and a king dreaded by lions, hyenas, antelopes, buffalos and even elephants in the area.

The lion thrives best in semi-open plains, unlike the leopard; which is a climber and stealth hunter. Even in its favorite habitat, the lion cannot hold the title of king if the tiger turns up. Thus, the lion is not the king of any forest where you have even one full-grown Asian Tiger.

Lions are only known for their exploits, extravagant show of dominance and frolicsome independence in the plains of Africa, parts of the Savannah, the Serengeti and other places. They do not thrive in marshlands and wet zones, which is what we have in the more southerly parts of the country, or our Rain Forest belt.  Thus, the giant cat of the Rain Forest belt, also extending a little into the Savannah, is mostly the Leopard.

Lions were not common sights in the South East, but they were known and were seen when they strayed from the middle belt Savannah into the outskirts of the Rain Forest area from time to time. The Igbo saying “Odum na-egbu agu” (The lion is more powerful, and can demolish the leopard) is intended to induce caution in people who overrate themselves in one way or another. To further see the denotative and connotative nuances of the concept of Agu, among others, in Igbo thinking, let us examine a few things.

The crocodile is called Agu Iyi; which literally means “leopard of the river”; or the largest and most dangerous predator you can find in any body of water. Then there is another Agu, apart from the crocodile. That is the cunning Agu Owulu, or fox, the dreaded sneaky hunter with a lot of hair around the head area, which will snatch up your chicken in the dead of night with incredible stealth.

Let us look at another Igbo word and how it is sometimes used as a qualifier, the way agu is used as qualifier in an environment. The word “Ugbo Ala”, is translated as “car” in English. Air plane is translated as Ugbo Elu. Ugbo Nmiri is boat, ship or water going vessel. Then you have Ugbo Aja (the trough, or receptacle, with which you carry the offering, or sacrifice). So, what is the meaning of the word “Ugbo” itself? A receptacle, perhaps? A means of conveyance? That in which something is carried from one place to another?

Just as there is the ugbo for carrying people on land, on water and in the air, you also have the Agu, as the representation of daring, heroic courage and dominance in any environment. That is the basis of the Igbo saying “Ebube agu n-eche agu”, (the very aura, strength and agility of the leopard serves as its shield and protection)”.

So, going back to the Airpeace matter, let us simply acknowledge the wisdom of that move. It is one of many Nigerian trademarks that can be put out there. Now that another Nigerian airline has also gotten clearance to go global, we should expect another Nigerian-based outfits to hit the international aviation space.

Let’s have more. Kano, Kanuri, Efik, Tiv, Akwete, Eko, Bini and many others have much to project about us, as Nigerians. Lest we forget, the use of Asoebi (which I believe is of Yoruba traditional origin) for celebrations, knows no ethnic or religious boundaries in Nigeria today.

For those seeking the underlying logic to the politics of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister, Nyesom Wike, and his disposition to policy, the yesterday edition of his signature media chats might provide some clues.

As an aside, it should be remarked that the Wike Media Chat has evolved as a peculiar form of projects’ advertisement which has its provenance in the politician’s days as the governor of Rivers state. It’s done in the Wike style!

A member of the yesterday panel of interviewers, Chamberlain Usoh, of CHANNELS Television asked Wike a question on the availability and  affordability of healthcare delivery in  the FCT. The interviewer pointed to the problem of few bed spaces and the  lack of health insurance for the poor among other issues.

Here is Chief Wike’s reply to the question of making healthcare available to the poor: “…When you  say affordable (it shows) that we live a life where things (are) free for (everybody). We are not in a socialist regime. We are not…”  Wike also dismissed the idea of the urgency of increasing bed spaces saying that what mattered  was bringing in standard equipment to the hospital.  Remarkably, the minister used words such as “plan,” “conception”  “standards” “costs” etc. in the course of the conversation. These are, of course, familiar words often used in the process of policy making and implementation.

Meanwhile, Wike, who likes to be addressed as “Mr. Project,” is expected to implement the N1.1 trillion budget for the development of FCT. And to  imagine that universal healthcare coverage would not be  a priority in the implementation of a N1.1 trillion budget!

Now, that is not the path of development.

As a matter of fact, Wike  earned the sobriquet of “Mr. Project” in  his days as Rivers state governor  when  for  almost a year he staged spectacles to  “commission projects.” 

The minister also spoke about some infrastructural projects in the course of the yesterday media chat. Wike’s response to the question of his policy in the health sector of the FCT is reminiscent of what a former governor told this reporter some years ago : he said what happened in the states including his own  was “governance by projects.” 

Now, there is something fundamentally problematic about the concept of development on the part of a minister who doesn’t prioritise the affordability of healthcare delivery to the poor in a country in which it is estimated that 63% live in multi-dimensional poverty. Healthcare is a major pillar of human development. Without the micro impact of  human development especially on the majority poor, all the multi-trillion  contracts for infrastructure will achieve little or  nothing in advancing human progress in the society.

At least on record, Wike is a member of the Peoples  Democratic Party (PDP), an organisation which cannot be accused of being socio-democratic in ideological  preferences. However, Wike is today a minister in a government of the All Progressives Congress (APC). By definition, a government of APC at any level should prefer progressive options in policy-making.  Progressive politics in Nigeria today is nothing if it is not an anti-poverty politics. For poverty and inequality constitute the bedrock of the problem of the Nigerian society at present. Experts of various hues have drawn an organic link between poverty and insecurity. In other words, insecurity cannot be ultimately tackled without eradicating  poverty and  reducing gross inequality. So it is never  progressive for any politician to say that making a  case for affordable healthcare is akin to expecting “to have everything free.”  To dismiss universal healthcare coverage, a central question of human development,  is far from being progressive in the present Nigerian condition. Contrary to Wike’s policy proposition, universal healthcare is not necessarily an agenda of a “socialist regime.”  Universal healthcare is available  in many capitalist countries in different forms.  For instance, despite its imperfections the British National Health Service (NHS), a heritage of the welfare state, is  cherished as a national institution and defended by Britons  across the political and ideological  spectra. Yet, Britain is not a socialist state. Here in  Nigeria, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) Act (2022) and the  FCT Health Insurance Scheme established with the instrument of the FHIS Act of 2020 were enacted  for the ultimate  purpose making healthcare affordable to all. In fact, the goal of  FHIS  is to reengineer the health care funding mechanism to achieve universal health coverage in the FCT. And these are no laws made by a “socialist regime”!

For Wike, the practical politician, ideological debates about policies may be a luxury. All the “action man” would be concerned with is to award contracts for infrastructural projects and supervise their execution for delivery according to schedule.

In the process, little attention is paid to the organising principle of the execution of  these projects within a broad concept of development. Perhaps, unknown to the minister,  the implication of his laissez faire attitude to universal healthcare coverage is that market forces should determine the access to quality healthcare.

Today’s column is making the foregoing   reference to  only an aspect of the Wike media chat just to illustrate the point that there are  indeed thoughts behind policy-making.  These thoughts emanate from the  worldviews of the policymakers. Wike is not alone in not prioritising  the social sector – heath, education, social housing, mass transit etc. in policy-making.

One of the  consequences of this orientation  of officialdom is the socio-economic injustice that has ravaged  the land for decades.

Some Nigerian politicians and pundits alike glibly proclaim the end of ideology. Yet ideology is alive and shaping policies around the world. To be sure, those making choices for the society in the policy arena may not be fully conscious of their ideological options, much less articulate the ideology. Some of those who are conscious of their ideological choices deny their ideologies  because their choices are simply  indefensible. Policy dispositions that could worsen poverty are no more defended even by right-wing ideologues. Unlike their socially  ruinous economic prescriptions of the 1980s,  even the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the chief enforcers of  global capitalism, have since adopted anti-poverty tone in their policy prescriptions for the poor countries of the world.

Doubtless, policy-making in Nigeria cannot  not be said to be an exercise in a vacuum of ideas. Think tanks and other non-governmental organisations abound with harvest of ideas. For instance, for 31 years now the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has provided a forum for dialogue among private sector players and public sector officials on the shape and future of the Nigerian economy. But the question persists: to what extent have the ideas generated on the platform of NESG influenced policies of successive administrations? The same question could be posed in respect of the Ibadan-based   Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), which is  publicly  funded for the production of ideas and information to illuminate the process of policy-making.  The question of the impact of these institutions and many  others on policy is certainly not a rhetorical one. The question has to be definitely answered to make progress.

Talking about the ideological influences on policymakers, Nigeria is yet to fully develop the culture of  a well-defined ideological direction pushed by men of ideas. In history,  leaders had thinkers widely acknowledged to have influenced their policy directions.  The ideas in favour government-intervention proposed by  the eminent economist, John Maynard Keynes, had a lot of influence on  President Franklin  D. Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression.  If Roosevelt was influenced by Keynes, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was ideologically  inspired in the opposite direction by  the Austrian-born British economist Friedrich von Hayek,  a free-market economist who believed that government control of the economy was akin to “totalitarianism.”  The monetarist economist and Nobelist  Milton Friedman  was the oracle of the Chilean economic experiment under the maximum  ruler,  President Augusto Pinochet. The foregoing are, of course, liberal and conservative examples. Things are more explicit on the Left. For example, despite the cynical  western  comments about China becoming a capitalist country,   the leadership  of the country is still guided by the “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era “

In fact, Keynes, regarded in liberal circles as the greatest economist of the 20th Century put the matter of ideas behind policy like this: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

It is, therefore, noteworthy  that the current economic managers of Nigeria are giving some thoughts to planning as a signpost to policy-making. The other day, those in charge of fiscal and monetary  policies appeared  before the Senate to brief the lawmakers on the economy. One of them, the minster of budget and economic planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, instructively drew the nation’s  attention to the organising principle of economic management in Nigeria. He referred his audience to the national economic objectives enshrined in the Section 16 (2a) in  the Chapter II of the 1999 Constitution, According to  the provision,  the state shall among other things  ensure the “the promotion of a planned and balanced economic development.”

So planning is fundamental to economic development of Nigeria.

From the East to the West on the globe governments plan economies to meet their respective national objectives. China couldn’t have achieved its economic progress  without planning. This is one riddle that is hardly understood by even the experts in the West when they assess  the development of China. The economic managers of China employ the market to serve their defined purpose. They do not  surrender their economy to market forces in some sectors. China couldn’t have implemented  the most successful poverty reduction programme in economic history by blindly surrendering its social sector and other crucial areas of its economy  to market forces. It would be more difficult for a poor country  to lift its  people out of poverty significantly when  universal healthcare coverage and basic education are reduced to  commodities. 

It goes  against the grain of poverty eradication to throw  sectors such as health and education to market forces. Yes, market forces are applied in capitalist societies. But the market has its limit especially in a poverty-ridden  society: there are sectors in which market forces should not even be contemplated. Instead, of the reckless embrace of the market, policymakers should strive to plan for the common good.

Nigeria should plan its way out of poverty. And that is not a job for market forces. 

There are even liberal voices offering a word caution on the matter of jettisoning planning for the market. For example, a South Korean economist, Ha-Joon Chang admonishes in his famous book, “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism,” as follows: “The question … is not whether to plan or not. It is what appropriate levels and forms of planning are for different activities. The prejudice against planning, while understandable given the failures of communist central planning, makes us misunderstand the true nature of the modern economy in which government and market relationships are all vital and interact in a complex way. Without markets we end up with inefficiencies of the Soviet system. However, thinking that that we can live by the market alone is like believing that we can live by eating only salt, because salt is vital for our survival.” Chang is by no means a socialist. He actually believes in the superiority of the capitalist economy. But he is rational enough to deploy his scholarship to  warn against the excesses of the system.

Those who have the responsibility  of making economic policies should be suggestible enough to ponder this point.