Continued from Tuesday
Anyhow, while all that was going on, World Wars were taking place. Europe received its first pounding between 1914 and 1918 in the First World War. The USA was physically too removed to be drawn in with the available technology of that time. Ditto between 1939 and 1944 when the second gory global episode took place. This relative advantage turned the USA into the world leader as she took the World War opportunity to sell loads of ammunition to the warring parties, especially Britain. As the war drew to an end, the USA called the meetings of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and set up the World Bank, the IMF and other subsidiaries. The American dollar was announced as the global currency, to which other currencies should be pegged, while the dollar was backed by gold at $37 an ounce. The British pound -which was the former global currency- took a shellacking, losing 60% of its value overnight. That was how the British Empire collapsed. The Americans collapsed the empire and an American Empire emerged. These Caucasians never forget anything. The Americans never forgot the oppression they suffered under the British crown. They had to fight a Revolutionary War to free themselves. White on white. That Revolutionary War against the Brits, started in April 1775, caused the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and did not end until 1783.
The decolonisation of African countries was the natural next stage in bottling up Britain, and by extension France, Spain, Portugal and whoever else had colonial territories. The USA never took Liberia or the Philippines very seriously anyway, at least not in the way Britain and France made capital out of their colonies, milking them for strength. So there you have it, let us tone down all the haughtiness and face the reality of our existence. France was more reluctant to hand off its African colonies and its strategy was cruder than that of Britain. It made those colonies sign all sorts of things. It even asked them to vote, and Guinea under Sekou Toure, Mali under Modibbo Keita and Algeria under Ahmed Ben Bella voted they didn’t want colonisation. For that, the French destroyed everything substantial in Guinea. From Charles De Gaulle, to Pompidou, Giscard D’Estaing, Mitterand, Chirac, Sarkozy to the present young man, Emmanuel Macron, French leaders have often voiced racist ideas. Nigeria will be remiss to have anything to do with that country. More so there are allegations that France has a hand in the destablisation of the region, because most of the communication from Boko Haram come first from Alliance France Presse, plus that country has never given any of the affected countries any intelligence on the movement of terrorists and ammunition in that region. Sarkozy, for example, is alleged to have given the order for Gaddafi to be killed on the streets, even though everybody knows the latter financed his election with tens of millions of euros. That joint venture between these ‘wise’ countries (UK, USA and France) has led not only to the total destruction of Libya but by extension the entire Africa has not known peace since. By all means, the fall of Gaddafi was the beginning of serious terrorism in Nigeria. I believe these three superpowers knew what they wanted to achieve by opening the route for ammunition when they took out Gaddafi. Smooth-talking Barack Obama says he regrets doing what he did but he should tell that to the thousands of children, women and old people that the coalition of mass murderers killed and which mainstream media like Aljazeera, CNN and co have covered up till today.
Macron in June 2017 said he believed that Africa’s problem was ‘civlisational’, in response to a suggestion that a Marshall-Plan type of solution be offered to Africa. By Marshall Plan is meant that the same type of massive bailout given to Europe (especially France and the UK) by the USA, after the Second World War be given to Africa to help her lift off. Not only did Macron wave it off, he rubbed insult to our injury. He probably prefers black Africa to be continually exploited for everything she has, just like his predecessors. By ‘civilisational’ Macron meant we were a retarded lot, still living in a different, distant civilisation. Short of calling us underevolved Neanderthals! To explain further, he stated offhandedly how African women were having seven or eight children. There was no one around to tell him that in most of Africa, you wouldn’t find many of such practices and in Europe until recently, the same practice occurred. A recent research (though disputed) showed that that index is only true for Niger Republic, and some of their cousins in northern Nigeria.
This is the background for the problem we have with the eco currency which France has jumped with the assistance of Ouattara today.
I repeat we can never go into French slavery. One slavery is enough for a lifetime. Countries like France will not even offer you any tangibles like the Chinese. But can the eco even work? As a political currency, it cannot. We must give it a wide berth. Ghana may decide to go down that route because her management of the Ghana Cedi has been disastrous. The convergence criterion that was set for the eco (meaning the figures that countries must present in order to join), has not been met by any country. Only Togo seemed to be on course to have a single digit inflation, a fiscal deficit not more than four per cent of GDP, and tax revenue to be 20% of GDP etc. Nigeria is wide of the mark on most of the 10 criteria despite our large nominal GDP.
From the experience of the euro- to which Macron’s eco has now been unfortunately tethered- we saw how the currency almost unravelled but for Germany’s deep purse and determination. That the currency is still surviving today is due to the fact that it serves Germany’s interests anyway. When Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain cooked their books and carried too much external loans, deficits and inflation, the Eurozone suddenly realised that there was no protocol to rein in a nation at default. A nation is not a bank or corporate. Yet, a debt default by a nation within a monetary union was a default by all, and once the financial markets and indeed the man on the streets lose confidence, the currency will tank and become worth less than the paper it is printed on. A great lesson learnt in the Euro saga was that Germany had it all sown tight; great economic indices, flat wages which meant it produced at a discount compared to other countries in the union. Economic complexity, which means it had more knowledge quotient embedded in every product it exported compared with the rest. Greece on the other extreme, only sold tourism. How can you match tourism with German machines? Both of them are not mates at all.
Nigeria may have to stand strong with her naira, in the event that every other West African nation foolishly joins the French eco. That is if we cannot sue Macron for damages and theft. Standing strong means we must become a serious producing nation, and must figure economic complexity into what we do (how much knowledge quotient can we muster). This means a retraining of our youths to be producing machines. That means an adherence to excellence in everything we do because we will meet with resistance and a counterstrategy from France. We must produce what our neighbours cannot do without or resist. We must brace ourselves and take strategic, productive and operational charge of the AfCFTA beyond merely attending wasteful conferences. We also must start by fulfilling our own people’s needs, just in case these countries will not accept any of our products. This could even be a push back against the closure of our borders. Sometimes, we need this punch upside the jaw so that our brains may reset. Perhaps, Macron and his predecessors are right about the black man. We just need to brace ourselves, wake up and understand that our burden is to be twice as clean, twice as intelligent, twice as smart, twice as visionary, than everybody else. The burden will pay off in generations to come. Negligence means eventual extinction.
Concluded
Fasua, an economist, is based in Abuja
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