Peter Obi Not Real Opposition, Shares Neoliberalism Ideology Like Others — Prince Faloye

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The president of sociocultural organisation, ASHE Foundation, Prince Justice Faloye, has stated that the current Nigeria democracy does not have a viable opposition party, noting that neither Peter Obi, presidential candidate of Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), nor others have demonstrated the strength of opposition.

Faloye mentioned that both Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, including President Tinubu, all share the same neoliberal ideology, stating that failure of the oppositions to fault the alleged fundamental neoliberal economic fallacies of President Tinubu administration that removed subsidies and devaluation renders them politically inactive.

In his statement to the press, Faloye expressed dissatisfaction with the opposition’s stance over non-people oriented policies by the current administration.

He stated: “On a recent Channels TV interview with Seun Okinbaloye, Peter Obi exhibited the prevalent political elites apathy and ignorance of true economic development and prosperity. My staunch support of Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election was based on my belief in the fairness of the rotational presidency that made it the turn of Igbo Southeast region.

“Close to the election, I read through several manifestos and realised the similar ideological positions that he shared with Tinubu and Atiku, namely subsidy removal, devaluation and slave plantation economics. With Tinubu coming to power and immediately implementing neoliberal economic policies that raised poverty to 65%, it became apparent that the continued rotational presidency between tribal representatives of neoliberalism would kill Nigeria.

“Peter Obi as opposition didn’t fault the fundamental neoliberal economic fallacies of removing subsidies and devaluation. He only criticized the way it was implemented, giving the same personality/leadership excuses in over sixty Black nations neoliberalism had failed since the eighties when Obasanjo, Peter Obi mentor, first introduced neoliberal austerity measures. Instead of truthfully criticizing the Western racist imposition of IMF/World Bank policies, which even Obasanjo has publicly accepted, Obi denied the continued existence of coloniality, confirming he was part of neocolonial guards that bargain our economic exploitation in exchange for Western acknowledgement and backing.

“In the interview, Peter Obi, like Tinubu and Atiku, dating back to Obasanjo’s ‘Operation Feed the Nation’ anchored his economic development plans to agriculture and the manufacturing subsector of food, tobacco and beverages processing, which already provide majority of our employment and, whose low unliveable wages is why Nigeria is the world’s poverty capital. They all fail to analyze the economy and make global comparisons. They were ignorant that fuel subsidies were mainly production subsidies – out of about 11m cars two thirds (7m) were commercial vehicles, while 90% of Small and Medium Enterprises relied on fuel. So $10 billion fuel subsidies cost $100 billion lost productivity. The International Energy Agency puts the global fossil fuel subsidies to GDP at 7% while Nigeria’s fuel subsidies was 3% of GDP. Western nations pay trillions of dollars in military subsidies to fight for cheap crude oil in the Middleast.

“The worst of the neoliberal economic policies used to sell Nigerians down the river has been devaluation principles based on false free market principles, which basically devalues our wages, fixed income and wealth. A nation that mainly relies on primary production, like agriculture, crude oil and other raw materials that are price inelastic, creates nothing but inflation since its devalued exports won’t attract increase in global demand, while its imports especially raw materials become too expensive and closes down local production.

“Peter Obi’s mantra of ‘from consumption to production’, is like slave masters telling slaves to be more productive while making their lives more unbearable. Like other tribal representatives of neoliberalism, Obi is ignorant that the foundation of the consumer market is housing, and that Nigeria, being the homelessness capital of the world with 30 million homeless, is tied to it being the world’s poverty capital. As a world traveler across the White world, he can see that 90% of the housing in London, New York, Paris etc were built and subsidized by government between 1935 to 1975. And their governments still pays the rent of millions in UK, USA and EU. If the UK government withdraws the housing subsidies to about a million Londoners, there would be a revolution and the government will fall. Yet African leaders pay scant attention to housing.
“In Nigeria, with an annual population increase of 5.6m, requiring at least 1 million new houses every year, while both private and public sectors building less than 400,000 houses annually, a serious government must build at least 3 million houses annually, not only to stop the increase in homelessness but to tackle the 30 million already homeless. President Tinubu budgeted a mere 25,000 houses for 2028 which shows the height of elite apathy to poverty. India and China build about ten to fifteen thousand houses everyday (approx 5 million houses annually), which stimulate production in terms of real estate and consumer goods.
“Peter Obi talk of production is equally ignorant and based on slave plantation production economics tied to agriculture. How can any serious politician base his economic development on agriculture that suffers from 40% output wastage due to infrastructural deficits. As a social democrat interested in wealth creation and distribution, Chief Obafemi Awolowo at the beginning carried out agriculture reforms, especially marketing boards to transport the produce, and built industrial estates of Ilupeju to process the food, beverages and tobacco manufacturing subsector that still provides two thirds of our industrial production. This has continued to make Nigeria the worlds fifth largest agriculture value added, which signifies that we process our agricultural output in agroallied subsector. Yet 60 years on, our political class still parrot agriculture and agro-allied, failing to recognize that these sectors are suffering from laws of diminishing returns due to lack of railways to freeze and freight the produce.
While housing is the core of his consumer market, railways is the foundation of industrial production since it is the largest conglomeration of iron, chemicals, plastics, electrical and electronics that collectively currently contribute less than 5% of the economy, and needs to grow to 20%. In addition, railways has the highest income and employment multiplier effects in agriculture and other primary sectors, and services tertiary sectors. While Agriculture contributes about a third of Nigeria GDP and employment, economically advancing nations reduce their agriculture contribution to GDP from 25% to less than 5%, mostly through railways.

“With massive railways from 1978 to 2017, the contribution to China’s GDP changed, as agriculture and other primary production fell from 27.7% to 7.9%, manufacturing and other secondary production fell from 47.7% to 40.5 while services and other tertiary production rose from 24.6% to 51.6%. This increased the GDP from $175 billion in 1977 to $12.6 trillion in 2017 and  increased the capital per income from $187 to $8,989. In China, USA and other advancing nations, massive public works moved people out from low wages agriculture jobs to higher wages of railways, heavy manufacturing etc.
“Therefore any government that wants to tackle poverty must engage in creating everyday at least 7,000 houses and 10 kilometers of railway cumulatively across the nation. There must be free education, free healthcare like in Europe and not based on loans and insurance. The reason why we exist as a  commonwealth to which we pay taxes is to benefit from social contracts concerning housing, unemployment, health and production.

“Peter Obi, Tinubu and the rest of the political class, with the exception of SDP Prince Adewole Adebayo, claim we can’t afford to have a social democracy because they have been programmed to believe funding can only come from IMF and the Western international finance system. The truth is that we have remained a neocolony that can’t create its own money according to the Modern Monetary Theory, because to do so we must ensure none seeps into imports because it will cause inflation.
“So we must cut imports to the barest minimum which goes against the economic objectives of why we were colonized – to act as a dumping ground of our colonial masters produce and export our raw materials. And even if we trade off employment and inflation, as long as we created more value in terms of housing and railways than the value wiped off by inflation, we make a profit and economically advance. It is never a problem to cause inflation through subsidy removal and devaluation, but they complain if it is for nation benefit. Ultimately, without an electoral revolution at the ballot box to social democracy, there would be a class revolution.”