STILL ON THE FIVE FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES THAT ARE LIKELY TO AFFECT BUHARI ADMINISTRATION

By: Abdulrahman Abu Hamisu

The Buhari government must have the courage to resolve the conflict arising from Mr. President's liking for state intervention in the economy and his Aides preference for neoliberalism. This clash has led to the emergence of parallel economic policy pronouncements, behaviours, attitudes and dispositions. While some of the President's Aides are with him, others are not. While those that are with him mouthed state intervention policies in a bid to revamped the comatose economy that has been in recession since 1983, others are mouthing liberalization. However, history has shown that state regulation is highly needed in a deregulating economy because it is only the state that has the capacity to tame the avaricious appetite of businesses and their collaborators. 
This is needed because the current practices Nigeria subscribed to since the return to democracy in 1999 guaranteed businesses the right to repatriate their invest and profit 100%. This is one defect of neoliberalism . 
Countries that desired to develop don't allow this. The second problem with neoliberalism is widespread corruption. The wide spread corruption is inherent in liberalism whether neo or not. It is an overlooked fact in the discourses focusing corruption that it comes about as individuals come to pursue their individual interests in line with the economic philosophy that underlies state economic policy. 
The Nigeria state for instance has been telling Nigerians that it can longer provide everything for the citizens and that the citizens must learn to be responsible for itself. Hence the concept of Public-Private Partnership at a time when the state which ought to express public interest because, by it very existence it is public, is shedding its responsibilities to the public in a political economy that prices determined what one enjoys; in which there is high rate of unemployment, import dependence, debt ridden and over dependence on self than government. What can one expect from such an economy? Only pursuit of individual interests at the expense of the public. This is what we have been referring to as corruption; the subversion of public interest in the pursuit of private interest in a public sphere or at any other level that expresses collective. 
I must say at this juncture that it is not the individual who abuse public trust that is corrupt but the economy that corrupt the individual. Nigerian corruption is not in the gene of those that have been committing corruption but the economy that furnish the incentives for Nigerians at all levels to be corrupt. This explains why corruption seems Nigerian.