I want to believe most of us on this page are aware of the position of the United States government under President Donald Trump, regarding the US subsidiary of TikTok. The trouble with the Chinese-owned company didn’t start with the Trump administration but no American federal government would act in a more fundamental way different from the other. It is about national core values, and it this particular case it about capitalism (or private initiative) and American national interest.
Today, the American government is insisting that manufacturing concerns must have their production base in the United States. Or in the alternative be ready for very high tariffs and taxes. They are talking about immigration, fishing out illegal immigrants and deporting them quickly from the country. There are lessons in these, which clearly show how we chose wrong roads but blindly stay on them to our ruin.
Let’s begin from the economic angle. The lesson the Western world has been teaching our leaders, and which they imbibe without questions is that “globalization means borderless society, free trade and movement driven by open market forces.” Now, America and indeed the western countries are placing emphasis on home production and taxes or in the alternative very high tariffs on foreign goods. Forget the old tactics, it is now understood that what is in contention is protectionism. Pure and simple.
Why is this of interest to us? Simple: in the forward and backward movements, we see the trickery and hypocrisy of the developed world. Globalization philosophy provided them an avenue to distract our leaders and redirect their attention from what should have been very crucial, which would have been closed borders and emphasis on local production to meet the national needs first before export. They pushed us to stall efforts in that direction. And that is why we have remained entrenched in the consumption pattern.
With virtually nothing to sell, our economic standing kept going down. The few feeble uncoordinated efforts couldn’t record impact because there is the less spoken about national standards to grapple with. Our audacious business people failed on this account. As they failed, our foreign reserves took a beating too.
The government and its finance experts are breaking their heads looking for solutions that have little bearing on the issue of strong local currency and proper economic development. Raising interest rates, limiting currency flow, selling local currency through third parties, etc, would remain mere tokenism, except there is the political will to critically priortise local production. So long we don’t produce, we will remain on the floating stage.
Africans ought to be very happy with the emergence of Donald Trump for the simple reason he is exposing what have been like secret tools by developed countries for stalling progress in the Third World nations. Trump has stopped loans, financial aid and grants, on the grounds that they deplete national resources. His reasons aren’t the truth, but what is the fact is the strategy appears to be serving its purpose. At least, the outburst from Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, all of which recently witnessed coups, confirm that many underdeveloped countries are beginning to ask questions about loans, aid and grants. This is because they see no good in them.
Western economic institutions and experts have told us “loans and grants aren’t bad, depending on proper channelling to hasten development.” On paper it looks great but in reality they know the fault lines are so huge and complex, and that developing countries can’t responsibly deploy such funds. They know the structures and professionalism required to properly manage the funds aren’t in place. They know it will lead to further economic entanglement, a situation they can handle using the skewed economic order put in place by them.
The summary is that they know the free, easy funds provide them the veil and chains to tie us to their apron string for as long as they desire. Trump by his decisions will hurt o small businesses for a short while before they will come through with other yet unique veil options. The fallout, if we were thinking people, would be in the opportunity it offers us to see the misdirections in our development trajectory. There is no sense in having huge crude oil deposits and at the same totally lacking in refining capacity and worse turning out a major importer of petrol and other refined products. It doesn’t make sense.
Today, we ought to be traumatized and scandalized by the level of events and development that have happened to cheapen human lives. More citizens lose their lives than would have been the case if our country was involved in a war with another nation. We have had bandits, terrorists and insurgents. They unleash violence, taking captives and recording fatalities of all kinds, yet nearly 15 years of wasting huge public funds to roll back the scourge, Nigerians are yet to be told in very unmistakable terms what the trouble is all about.
Is it just about hunger? Out of school children? International conspiracies or purely about negative local politics? Yes, politicians deploy massive violence just to achieve narrow objectives. The violence by herders increased when foreign herders were allowed to come into the country in large numbers with their cattle and sophisticated arms. They got easy entry and were hidden. They clutched their guns and openly walked along the highways to any location of their choice.
Strange elements made their ways into the remotest communities, audaciously taking over forests and try to establish colonies, people got killed. We had leaders talk of freedom of movement and gave new dangerous definitions which suggested herders and animals had rights to walk into people’s bedrooms without consequences.
Now the roads have become very hazardous. Farmers can’t go to the farms. The consequence is food insecurity on a large scale. High inflation is there in a corner wreaking havoc.
In a country of over 200 million citizens with a huge land mass, wouldn’t it have made great sense to have state, community and corporate policing without the controversy we have had? What even developed countries say no to is what we have welcomed with open arms. Anyone who gathers ant-infested firewood shouldn’t blame anyone else when lizards come visiting. It is impossible for anyone to get to his destination running very fast on the wrong road. This is the lesson of history.