SINCE the eighties, neoliberal globalisation has been manufacturing neoliberal slaves in corrupt, debt-ridden third world nations including Nigeria. And even in advanced capitalist societies such as the United States, neoliberal slaves aren’t uncommon. Edward Bronstein and George Floyd were Black Americans, choked to death in 2020 by White police officers, which sparked off a riot throughout the United States by the Black Lives Matter tagged #AllowUsToBreathe.
Neoliberal globalisation proletarianiased the middle classes, and pushed the lower classes to the abyss, and grounded all non-bourgeois classes into a mass of suffering humanity. Unlike chattel slaves who had to be minimally maintained to preserve them as human wealth, no one cares how neoliberal slaves fend for themselves, including the state which is more concerned with their death than lives. Neoliberal slaves are the by-products of neo imperialism, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the misgovernance of prebendal politicians.
Bronstein and Floyd were victims of asymmetrical power relations, which confined races and classes within antagonistic trajectories. Whilst Indian Americans were prevented to breathe by the westward expansion of the American frontier, which choked most of them to death, and violently dislocated others to the fringe territories of the West Coast; Blacks and poor Whites were prevented to breathe by the lords of the lash and loom, whilst White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) who exercise vast economic and political powers, prevent the lower classes to breathe thereby choking them to death.
ALSO READ: The Abel Damina Revolution; By Owei Lakemfa
Different state formations are known to have prevented the powerless to breathe. The labour which built the Egyptian pyramids, couldn’t have been free labour, which must have prevented many of those who built the pyramids from breathing. For centuries, some precolonial African states partook in the Atlantic slave trade, which depopulated them, and laid the bases of industrial capitalism in Europe and the United States, which prevented many of the slaves to breathe. The labour which built the railways in Nigeria, couldn’t have been free labour, and as forced labourers, many of them were prevented to breathe, and were choked to death.
The slave masters, feudal lords, and the bourgeoisie, the dominant classes of their epochs prevented slaves, serfs and the working classes from breathing. Therefore, breath prevention is the hallmark of class societies. In the history of capitalism, there has never been a more breath preventing epoch, than the reigning neoliberal globalisation era, which chokes not only powerless classes, but prevents peripheral debt ridden third world nations to breathe.
Neoliberal globalisation proletarianiased the middle classes, and pushed the lower classes to the abyss, and grounded all non-bourgeois classes into a mass of suffering humanity. Unlike chattel slaves who had to be minimally maintained to preserve them as human wealth, no one cares how neoliberal slaves fend for themselves, including the state which is more concerned with their death than lives. Neoliberal slaves are the by-products of neo imperialism, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the misgovernance of prebendal politicians.
ALSO READ: Why Are A Varied Group Of 10 People Being Punished For The Mass Hunger Protests? By Gerald O. Katchy
Neoliberal slavery is graded into pure slavery and diluted slavery. The pure slaves are jobless citizens ejected by their landlords, with wards expelled from school, who live on charity of the faithful, and are unsure of the next meal, perennial seekers of illusive jobs, unaware of legislative representation, denied the right of peaceful protests, etc. Whilst those in diluted slavery are the lucky ones employed, whose wages and salaries can’t pay their rents, pay transport fares to the work places, can’t buy them food for more than a week, can’t cater for their medical needs, etc.
The opacity in the oil sector has fitted into the agenda of prebendal politics, which conveniently finds the neoliberal dogma convenient for its designs. Besides the ruling elites, neoliberal globalisation and prebendal politics have transformed almost all Nigerians into the Bronsteins and Floyds, who are being choked to death. And unfortunately, the legislative assembly which should disallow plunging Nigerians into neoliberal slavery seems complicit due to its subservience to the executive branch.
According to the precepts of neoliberal globalisation, and the IMF dogma, the Nigerian state isn’t a Father Christmas to dispense resources on the poor, which signed the death warrant of the welfare state, and ended the age of subsidies; downsized the public sector and privatised public enterprises; massively devalued the Nigerian currency, to stimulate the export sector to induce inflows of foreign exchange earnings; deregulated the market, and removed all controls on capital flight, etc.
ALSO READ: End Bad Governance Movement: Govt’s Convoluted Responses; By Jibrin Ibrahim
An admixture of the neoliberal virus and prebendal politics engendered high inequality such that the rich have become richer, due to economic and political policies spiced with outrageous prebendalism, which promote and protect their interests in Nigeria, whilst the poor have been made poorer by hit-them hard policies, which cumulatively prevent them to breathe, daily choking them to the great beyond.
One would expect the PDP as a right of centre party, to unreservedly plunge Nigerians into neoliberal slavery, but regretfully it is the party of progressive politics, the APC, which deepened neoliberal slavery in Nigeria.
ALSO READ: Mr President, We Are At War, By Hassan Gimba,(1)
During the eighties, Nigeria was the West African guinea-pig of the IMF which fully expressed the neoliberal agenda. But the military regimes were, to an extent accommodative of the concerns of the poor, which made them adopt an incremental approach to the removal of subsidies. It wouldn’t be farther from the truth, to say that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose political struggles were spiced with a progressive left of centre flavour, whose political CV includes a head on collision with the neoliberal agenda, became a dyed in the wool exponent of the neoliberal agenda, closed his ears to the concerns and hardships of Nigerians, abruptly ended the subsidy regime, without effective measures to cushion the hardships , and plunged majority of Nigerians into neoliberal slavery.
The opacity in the oil sector has fitted into the agenda of prebendal politics, which conveniently finds the neoliberal dogma convenient for its designs. Besides the ruling elites, neoliberal globalisation and prebendal politics have transformed almost all Nigerians into the Bronsteins and Floyds, who are being choked to death. And unfortunately, the legislative assembly which should disallow plunging Nigerians into neoliberal slavery seems complicit due to its subservience to the executive branch.
Jahun a commentator on public affairs writes from Dutse, Jigawa State Capital. This column, ‘The Other Perspective’ , comes up every Wednesday. He can be reached via email@: aminuhabibu58@gmail.com or WhatsApp on +234 73903 8088.
