abdulraheem
I felt very happy the other day, when Doctor Aja Nwachukwu, the Minister of education, announced the cancellation of the sale of Federal Government Colleges, Nigeria’s Unity Schools. The controversial sale of those schools, by one of the most right-wing and particularly arrogant ministers of the Obasanjo regime, Obiageli Ezekwezili, had been one of the most unpopular decisions of the ancien regime. Broad sections of the Nigerian people from all walks of life had been opposed to the decision to sell the schools; this was especially true of those who know so much about the education sector. But the arrogant Obiageli (who did not have a doctorate degree, but enjoyed lapping up the unearned title of “Doctor”), knew better than everybody, and from within the certainties of her narrow, right wing ideological frames, the popular feeling, which is at the heart of democratic decision making did not matter at all. The overall strategic framework laid down by imperialism is what mattered to that reactionary woman, and other pro[1]imperialist technocrats who drove the privatisation project of the Obasanjo regime. So despite the indignant protestations of the Nigerian people, an elaborate scam was imposed on the country. Of course, that was tucked away behind all manners of subterfuge and obfuscating phraseology from the manuals of the IMF/World Bank. The sale of the Unity Schools represented one of the worst crimes which the Obasanjoregime perpetrated against the Nigerian people. It was indeed the ugly face of privatisation of public enterprises. The project had been opposed by the Nigerian people because the schools had been established for a national purpose which people felt remained relevant and should be protected. Those who took the decision to ignore that vital sentimental attachment to those schools did not share our national values; they sang from a different hymn book, which was written in Washington and at the Breton Woods institutions. Imperialism’s technocratic agents are the worst specimen of people with “competencies” which a nation can ever be saddled with. In the first place, these individuals often have a self-righteous attitude, rooted in right wing religious confessions, just like Obiageli Ezekwesili, and they believe literally, that they are receiving divine guidance in their work. So who are the ordinary mortals that will question the inspired vision that drives their work (this messianic delusion they share with Obasanjo, Tony Blair and George Bush!). The mix becomes even more potent, where there is the background of accepting the ideology driven perspective that the only way the world can find the keel of development, is when everything is privatised (do you remember Margaret Thatcher and the doctrine of “TINA”, “There Is No Alternative”? That is the universe they all share, and it is from there that they have been inflicted upon society since the 1980s). Thankfully, Malam Umar Yar’Adua has firm roots in education and it is testimony to his ability to respond to the popular yearning, that he has called a halt to the dubious sale of the unity schools. The minister of education described the sale of the schools as being against the public interest. That is indeed an affirmation of the basis of democratic governance. If the people, the motive force of democratic society, oppose a decision of an elected government, it is the duty of such a government to pause, reflect on the opposition, fine tune such policies, endeavour to convince the people of the overall merit of the decision and then win the people over to the implementation of the decision. Unfortunately, that was not the case with General Olusegun Obasanjo. He had so much contempt for the people of the country and saw any tendency to bow to the popular feeling as an expression of weakness or a defeat. Haunted by the fraudulent manner that hegot to power, especially in 2003, Obasanjo was aware of his unpopularity with the Nigerian people and so he was in turn contemptuous of the people. Privatisation was truly in tandem with his acquisitive tendency, that notorious propensity which he has always exploited for his own end. He plunged into the project, finding ways to benefit himself and his cronies, as we saw with TRANSCORP. In his effort to sell Nigeria to himself and cronies, he was aided by technocrats who pursued an ideological project that says that the only way there ever can be, is to privatise everything! “Seek ye first, the kingdom of privatisation; sell the damned nation to private entrepreneurs, and everything else shall be added! Propitiate the gods of market forces and society shall live happily ever after”!! It was and is fairy tale, never really meant to have a happy ending, because they seldom ever do. The privatisation of public enterprises is a controversial project, and a contested terrain of societal policy. I have always been opposed to it, and the earliest piece that I wrote against privatisation dates back to 1986 for THE HERALD newspaper in Ilorin as well as THE DEMOCRAT newspaper in Kaduna. It was titled “IMPERIALISM’S PRIVATISATION PANACEA”. So twenty years ago, we were laying bare the rotten entrails of the process that has sown ruination in third world countries; destroyed the public sector; transferred national wealth into the hands of a few individuals and very importantly, has done a lot to weaken the trade union organisations of the working people, by promoting casualization of labour. At the heart of the privatisation process is the illusion that only private capital can generate growth and development; to give unfettered reign to the power of the capitalist class, trade unions must not be powerful and every effort is done to discourage them or legislation put into effect to whittle down their power and influence. These are all part and parcel of the one-size-fits-all package of neo-liberal capitalism, which Milton Friedman and his disciples in the Chicago School of Economic Sciences have spread around the world. For those who don’t know, the original laboratory for testing the efficacy of neo-liberalism was Chile, under the fascist dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. The ambience of massacre and repression which followed the September 11, 1973 coup in Chile facilitated the triumph of the anti-people process of neo-liberal capitalism. In Western Europe, especially in France, they called it the American model; and that is what it is! America is the largest capitalist economy in the world, yet it is such an uncaring society, where over 50million citizens don’t have access to health insurance cover. Unfortunately, it is the uncaring American model that we are being made to copy. If it is capitalism that our ruling elite want to build on this land, why copy the inhuman American model? What is wrong with the Scandinavian model which remains capitalist, but has given the people very high indices of livelihood than the American model has? Despite the sluggishness of its economy, France still has one of the best medical systems in the world, freely accessible to the French people. It is one of the gains of the post-war social safety net given to the entire people. We will have to see what will become of that, now that a believer in the American model, Nicholas Sarkozy is in power. The obsession with the American model has threatened the health of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), with Tony Blair’s gradual farming out of services to the private sector. One of the oft-repeated mantras of the Umar Yar’Adua presidency is to grow Nigeria’s economy by 2020, to become one of the ten largest in the world. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that hope. Where the problem lies, as Kayode Komolafe and Edwin Madunagu interrogated recently, is in the refusal to ask questions of whom that “large economy” will work for. It is rather like the roaring approach of a monster, everybody is aware that the building blocks being laid today are not likely to turn out in the interest of the mass of the Nigerian people. The building blocks of neo-liberalism might well give us that “large economy”, but is it likely to give us a socially- inclusive society? A major pillar of the neo-liberal agenda has been the “reform” of education. The classical educational process which nurtures the individual in democratic society as a questioning, critical and idealistic citizen, has become a threat to capitalism of the neo-liberal phrase. Politics itself has increasingly lost its substance and in its place, there is style, razzmatazz and glitz. Politicians are assessed on the basis of how they performed at debates, whether they maintain eye contact with interviewers, or are they “presidential”?, etc. People are disenchanted with the political process in the advanced capitalist societies (turnout in elections are dropping), because there is really no more choice (Or what real choice would have thrown up George Bush as president of the most powerful country in the world?). The Democratic Party is really not different from the Republican Party, so it has become a choice between six and half a dozen. In Europe, the social democratic parties all hug the platforms which used to belong to the right wing parties. The age of the great parties of ideas: communist parties, socialist parties, national liberation parties, even right wing and fascist parties, is said to have become passé. That belongs in the twentieth century. Politics today resembles the joggling of balls by conmen in the public square: so much dazzle, frills, a lot of tickers and tapes and effect lighting, but no substance in terms of ideas. The people come to the public square to watch, and in the process, they pick our pockets! Thankfully, for the capitalist system, the citizen has long been interred and in his place has been born the consumer, who comes in all manners of description. The “YUPPIE” was current in the eighties, and by the end of the twentieth century, they have invented the “METROSEXUAL”. Neo-liberal capitalism re-invents definitions aimed at keeping people busy as consumers; the consumption of the latest fashion, the latest mobile phones, the trendiest new car, the most current fad even in ideas (so today it is NGOs, who knows what they will invent tomorrow!). All these are underpinned by an elaborate credit system and the ideological bed of advertising (A recent one said “I buy so I am”!). It is the type of thing that Charles Soludo has been desperately trying to kick-start with his banking reforms and the bourgeoning of credits to purchase consumer goods by the consolidated banks. The fact that it has not completely engulfed us all, owes more to the inefficient, corruption-ridden and incompetently managed, neo-colonial economy in Nigeria. The effort to reform education under Obasanjo, including the component of privatisation of unity schools, was part of a process of instituting neo-liberalism in Nigeria. From the 1980s, IMF/World Bank interest in educational reforms has been from the prism of a profit and loss calculus; the heart of the process is to produce graduates attuned to the needs of the market; those who will help make capitalist exploitation efficient. Unfortunately for them, Nigerian universities were for a long time, a redoubt of radical scholarship, where anti-imperialist ideas systematically routed right wing ideas, especially from the middle of the 1970s. After all, that was the age of liberation and its consolidation around the world, including Africa. Education became a major terrain of contestation between patriotic organisations such as ASUU, NANS and NLC as well as parents associations on the one hand, and the state and its agents as well as the imperialist agencies, IMF/World Bank, on the other, for most of the 1980s and 1990s. A long drawn out purge of faculties was instituted to remove lecturers “teaching what they were not paid to teach”, as one of Nigeria’s military dictators so fancifully described it. Hand-in-hand with purges was the under funding which led to the exodus of professors, thus triggering the gradual deterioration of standards in the school system. The purges and exodus removed those who would normally contest state policies, and as even nature is said to abhor a vacuum, where the radical scholars vacated, faculties were taken over by religious and ethnic organisations, as Professor Biodun Jeyifo noted in a lecture he gave sometime last year. Just approach a Nigerian university today and you are more likely than not, to be assaulted by posters announcing meetings of ethnic and religious organisations. Identity politics triumphs, where grand ideas have been removed from active expression. This is the context within which Obiageli Ezekwesili imposed her frankly unpopular project of privatisation of unity schools. What was different in her own case was the full conviction that she was a battering ram for the agenda of imperialism. Stories abound of her rudeness when she addressed Nigerian professors and leading bureaucrats in the education sector. She knew everything, was determined to force through the changes she believed she represented and in the process she dealt substantial body blows to our educational system. Thank God, that the government of Malam Umar Yar’Adua has taken a step to reverse the nonsense. The minister has spoken of an intention to call a stakeholders’ meeting on education; we are all stakeholders in the education of our children as well as the future progress of our country. This is therefore a unique opportunity for patriotic individuals and organisations to endeavour to give us genuinely patriotic platforms in our educational system: a platform which helps to consolidate the education of conscious and critical citizens of a democratic society, in tune with the challenges of the twenty-first century. It is the type of citizen that scares neo-liberal capitalism and its disciples, because he will think critically and not just work for the efficiency of capitalist exploitation.
