Is President Buhari Socialist?

I was having this conversation recently with a friend of mine. Everyone who knows me knows that I was vehemently against a Buhari presidency during the election campaigning last year. While many people did not base their passions on economic theory, one of my main reasons against an APC win was their socialist leanings — big government, big government spending, the socialization of resources, the focus on equalizing the playing field for all citizens. The Oxford Dictionary defines socialism as thus:

A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole

But what does that mean in real terms? Over the years people have begun to use the term socialist to cover everything from Nazism to Fascism (which by the way some say is for people who seek to impose their own understanding on others in an inflexible way….I’ll just digress there). In the US for example, I don’t think those who use the term know nor care about the actual meaning. They just use it to signify opposition, or even to say derogatorily, that a politician wants to give away the nation’s resources indiscriminately. I’m sure we can all agree that the sensational use of the term is different from the actual ideology. To me, in real terms, a socialist is someone who believes in big government and moreso over free enterprise. Such a person has a distrust of free enterprise and is obsessed (for lack of a better word) with creating equal opportunities for all individuals in the society, mostly through taxes, and redistribution of government wealth to public institutions. This I believe is President Buhari’s leaning and has been the steady pinnacle of APC’s popularism.

Now, I haven’t read all 1800 pages of Nigeria’s recent budget (and I will never since I’m not in NASS), but the highlight reel suggests several leanings of his administration. The intent to rely heavily on taxation, the intent to borrow for infrastructure (public good), the super ministry of Babatunde Fashola, the strong stance against freeing up the forex market. All points to a government who believes strongly that it can affect the lives of its citizen more than any concerted free enterprise effort can. Also, many of our pundits have, I think rightly, stated this government’s probable unwillingness to relinquish control over many factors of production and productivity.

Now back to the conversation with my friend, he’s quite convinced that Buhari is a believer in Keynesian economics i.e that economy will essentially sort itself out in the short run if government outruns the decline by spending more. It is hard for me to think of 74 year old Buhari as being any sort of stalwart of economic theory. But should we leave that aside and say that he could have been bought over to the theory by many of his (faceless) advisers, I still disagree that the thrust of his administration’s policies is guided by Keynesian economics. I disagree because I don’t think the policies are trying to stimulate the business cycle rather than take over the business cycle in of itself. This administration’s intent to actually tax all individuals and businesses MORE also flies in the face of this theory. All of which points to a more socialist leaning.

In any case, I think Keynesian policies will fail in this case we have on our hands. We are in this situation because of the imperfect state of our economy where there is an over-reliance on a single industry which is by and large not managed nor dictated by anything we do internally. The influence of increased government spending is not nearly strong. For example, exactly how many more Nigerians will be hired through this spending? Do we have capabilities internally? Is that income liberally spread across the society or just to the few government cronies who make a profit and promptly spend a lot of that profit outside Nigeria? We do not have a perfect closed economy here guys. Keynesian economics to stave off our recession is most likely to create and strengthen a class of government cronies. It is unlikely to stimulate our economy generally.

The results of this economic gambit that Buhari’s government is undertaking remains to be seen. I think ultimately though that we’re in such a bad spot, that any action is better than no action. However that this particular action is the best that could be embarked on is doubtful. I sincerely hope though that no one will argue with me during future elections that ideology and economic theories don’t matter. They always have and they always will. So when hitching your wagon to a horse, make sure you know where their leanings are because that is the real aspect that is going to affect all our lives. Not vague emotional concepts like change.