EDITORIAL: The Opt-Out Clause
SOCIAL arrangements at all levels are based on written down rules and a plethora of informal and unwritten agreements. Britain famously does not have a written constitution.
Nigeria’s rentier state an entity based on consumption as opposed to production had now in the fierce heat of economic turbulence is now evolving its own survival skills for citizens who can no longer just grin and best economic uncertainties.
It has been a long time coming-going-back decades. With the state focussed on grandiose and white-elephant projects rather than the well being of the citizens.
The citizens opted for self-help. It started with the mundane such as the now ubiquitous” lesson teacher “ as a response to collapsing school standards and subsequently moved on up.
Today it is routine to have personal water systems, electricity generators, security systems paid for by communities as well as street lights installed through community contributions.
We have now revved up a gear; individuals and communities are now into a scramble for the acquisition of Solar Panels and Satellite links for increasingly disrupted telecommunications link. It goes on and on.
What then is the purpose of any definition of society now that the citizens have opted out ?, The role of the State is now focussed on it will appear the levy of a myriad of taxes the collection of which I’d ruthlessly enforced even involving the use of non state actors.
The most punitive tax of course is Inflation the effect of which I’d most pronounced and destructive on the least protected sectors.
Accompanied by under – performance the Nigerian state must now reinvent itself or be stymied under the weight of its internal contradictions.
It is vital now to draw up a new social contract and restate the rights as well as the obligations of the citizens. Interwoven is the need to move away from the rentier state and into a state based on productions and subsequently the principle of progressive taxation.
The evidence is clear that the rentier state is unjust and unsustainable. We must start the reinvention of Nigeria straight in order to avoid a social combustion.
