Nigeria’s government of puritans and preachers needs merchants and traders
Every government has a character, an orientation, which can be detected by looking at its leadership. Three things define the essence of the Buhari government. The first is that it is led by a puritan. The second is that its leadership is also made up of preachers. And, thirdly, it’s a statist government, with a socialist tendency to centralise, control or intervene in economic activities.This last characteristic – statism– is, I argue, influenced by the first two: puritanism and religiosity.
Of course, neither is bad. But history tells us that, when it comes to business-friendliness, the early puritans and religionists – like the socialists – were hostile towards merchants and traders! That parallel, between the medieval puritans and religionists and their progenies in this government, is what interests me here!
President Muhammadu Buhari, who is on medical vacation as I write, is by common consent a puritan. He adheres to strict moral principles. The president is not a follower of Epicurus, the philosopher of pleasure; but of Seneca, the philosopher of self-denial, of stoicism, of minimalism. The Economist once described Buhari as a “sandal-wearing ascetic”, and a columnist for the London Times, Roger Boyes, called him a “party pooper”, that is, someone who would throw gloom over social enjoyment.
Then to complement the president’s puritanism, we have the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, a man driven by strong moral conscience and religious fervour, a pastor. Never before was there a Christian vice president, or a Christian president, in Nigeria who wore his faith on his sleeve as Osinbajo does. Here is the country’s Number 2 citizen who hardly misses his church’s prayer events in Lagos, and who brought together former presidents and vice presidents, of the Christian faith, to sing a Christian hymn for Nigeria’s recovery.
As I said, neither puritanism nor religiousness should be despised. I would rather have a puritan president than a corrupt and gluttonous one, and a leader with a moral compass anchored on faith than one without godly fear or moral conscience. But when a leader’s piety or faith interferes with economic activities, it’s a cause for concern. This is because inappropriate moralisation can undermine business or economic dynamism.
Of course, business and economics must be underpinned by ethics and morality, but they are essentially wealth-creating activities that rely on the ethos of utility-maximisation. They are driven by self-interest, not altruism! As Adam Smith memorably put it, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest”. It is this self-interest, based on explicit calculations of the costs and benefits of incentives, that drives of progress and prosperity. Yet, this government’s moral disposition is often disdainful of the dynamics of business activities.
Last year, President Buhari said that his government was “averse to having an economic team with private sector members” because they “frequently steer government policy to suit their narrow interests”. At the same time, the vice president’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, who is also a pastor, said that the presidency regarded economic management as “a government affair”, hence the private sector was not directly involved in the policy process. In an interview to mark his first six months in office, President Buhari said “Nigerian business people don’t care about the country”, and, as I wrote recently, he implied in his 2017 Budget speech that manufacturers who import raw materials are unpatriotic!
As I considered this government’s reflex disdain for the notion of homo economicus at the heart of business activities, I remembered the attitudes of medieval puritans and religionists to merchants and traders. Douglas Irwin, a sociology professor, and Deirdre McCloskey, an economics professor, have both done powerful works on this subject; the former in his book, “Against the Tide”, and the latter in a trilogy just completed.
In ancient Greece and Rome, a merchant or a trader was considered to be engaged in a vulgar occupation. Indeed, the great Plato suggested in the “Republic” that trading was an activity reserved for inferior persons, and Aristotle maintained in “Politics” that the use of money in exchange, instead of barter trade, was “justly discredited”. And, as for the early Christian fathers, they believed that trade should be avoided because it promoted avarice, and diverted attention to worldly concerns. Indeed, St Augustine remonstrated: “Let Christians amend themselves, let them not trade”.
These were the prevailing views not only in Christian Europe but also in Confucius China and the age of the Shoguns in Japan. It took the scholastics and the Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, David Hume and Adam Smith to challenge these hostile puritanical and religious attitudes towards merchants and traders, and confer intellectual respectability on all those engaged in business or trading activities. Yet,today, disdain for business is still the leitmotif of left-wing politicians. Anti-business rhetoric is common among socialist governments.
Of course, President Buhari’s puritanical government is not exactly like the medieval ones. For instance, economic realities have forced the government to grudgingly accept limited market-based policies, such as the partial float of the naira. Indeed, Vice President Osinbajo led a delegation to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, although, in truth, most of the people at that global gathering of capitalists and economic liberals would consider his government’s economic values to be closer to those of the medieval puritans and religionists than those of Adam Smith or David Hume.
But it’s worth noting that while the Enlightenment thinkers provided the intellectual underpinning of free trade, it was the collaboration between statesmen like Richard Cobden and the Manchester merchants that ended the Corn Laws in the 19th century,and triggered prosperity in England and around the world. So here is the point: when politicians and business people work together to support open markets, prosperity happens. This is why Nigeria needs a government that loves merchants and traders!
- Thanks to Femi Ayeni who pointed out an error in last week’s column: Obama is not the first black US senator. He was the fifth. My apologies!
Olu Fasan