“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” —Elie Wiesel
By Cosmas Omegoh
Those who know Femi Falana (SAN) will tell you that the human rights activist has been quiet for a while now.
For long, Falana has been resting in his shell. His shrill voice which the people knew had appeared muffled, and looking like it would not be heard again. That was not characteristic of the Falana many knew.
Considering Falana’s long absence, some persons concluded – perhaps wrongly – that he might have been on sabbatical. They point out that lots of earth-shaking events had happened in Nigeria without Falana volunteering even a whimper. What could have happened, people kept asking, with some reasoning that the fiery lawyer might have compromised somewhere along the line.
But lately, Falana crept out of his shell to reinvent himself, warning the Nigerian government under the watch of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to shun the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank prescriptions. His declaration was that what the two institutions had to offer the country was simply toxic both in content and character.
Give it to Falana – over the years, he had held a studied belief that both IMF and the Word Bank do not mean well for African countries.
At the West Africa Media Excellence Conference Awards ceremony in Accra, Ghana, late last year, Falana’s voice on the matter was loud. He stressed his avowed belief that Africa needed to rethink her penchant for global funds prescriptions. Listen to him: “As I do say in Nigeria and I want to say on this occasion, I have not come across any country in the world that has developed on the basis of the prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank.” He, therefore, urged Africans to take steps to “begin to interrogate the economic programmes of our governments, the implementation of neo-liberal policies that have continued to situate poverty in the region.”
Falana expressed sadness that “the situation is worse today whereby our governments only listen to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.”
Again, some days ago, Falana came out firing a salvo. He was livid that his earlier warning had not been harkened to. He went on to urge particularly the Nigerian leaders to shun handouts from both the IMF and the World Bank, claiming that doing so would harm and hurt the Nigerian economy whose curve is already heading South.
Falana was clear in his message that the financial institutions which were established by imperialist governments only aim to destroy the economies of developing nations with their hurtful policies. He said that World Bank and IMF’s suggestion to the Federal Government to increase electricity tariffs and remove petrol subsidies, had clear potentials of destroying the already fragile economies of Nigeria.
Going forward, Falana reminded the Federal Government to always seek counsel from the National Economic Council being the only economic outfit recognised by the Nigerian constitution to advise the President on economic matters rather than always rushing for advice from international agencies that don’t mean well for the country and its people.
Falana’s recent outburst stemmed from IMF’s recent insistence that the Nigerian government was yet to remove subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) otherwise known as petrol, reasoning that the commodity’s price was still regulated. Such subsidy, it maintained, still existed at the “backdoor.” It said if it were not so, fuel prices in Nigeria ought to be dictated by market forces. The IMF in addition, called on the Federal Government to remove subsidy on electricity.
In all of these, Falana’s vintage submission is that “the right thing to do is to reject the prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank, recalling that “remove fuel subsidy, float your currency and so on and so forth …, have never assisted any country to develop.”
Indeed, if a census is taken today, it might not surprise anyone that many Nigerians stand with Falana on his IMF and World Bank snub. Many Nigerians stand together with Falana on his charge to President Tinubu to abandon the panacea often advanced by the international organisations as way out of the present Nigeria’s quagmire.
Both agencies have been there for a long time and understand the Nigerian economy as it is wired. For sure, their knowledge of the country overtime compels them to be overbearing in the way and manner they impose their recommendations and get countries that flow with them to accept them hook, line and sinker.
Some analysts interpret a good deal of what the international monetary organisations project to their partnering countries as self-seeking. Countries that have taken their pills have often found themselves in very difficult positions.
For instance, Nigeria stands at crossroads at the moment. Only last year, subsidy on fuel was removed. Then the local currency, the naira, was floated, forcing it to fall precipitously, its value plunging into the plains. Already, subsidy on electricity has been lifted even when the IMF insists the country still needs to do more.
Meanwhile, the citizenry are in pains, grappling with hyper-inflation never seen before in living memory. A vast majority cannot feed; corporate concerns are closing down, and sending away their personnel – all a derivative of the recommendations believed to have been handed down by the IMF and the World Bank.
At every turn, the questions on every lip now are “how did we get here? “What is the role of the government if not to minister to the need of the people?” The citizens are left wondering why the government of the day will prefer to sacrifice the governed – all because it wants to please some foreign bodies.
For real, Nigerians would have loved to go on to endure with the government if the said anticipated gains from the current suffering will be used for the good of the people. But experience reminds everyone that, that is never the case.
It is against this backdrop that the Falana charge to President Tinubu not to sacrifice Nigerians in order to please the IMF and the World Bank continues to make greater sense. Indeed, Falana also reminded President Tinubu that many countries in the world have one form of subsidy or another geared toward improving the lot of their people and Nigeria should not be any different. Those who see reason in his charge want him to increase his voice to a higher decibel.
Indeed, Falana’s words are coming at a time members of his rights tribe seem to be diminishing, with many of them abandoning their calling to become either “politically correct,” or to pursue “stomach infrastructure.”
Nevertheless, as Falana re-launches his activism, urging caution against the country’s sheepish march with the IMF and World Bank, he must not relent. He must bear in mind that he is the voice of a vast majority that is voiceless. His efforts will surely not go unrewarded, after all, the good book assures him that: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”