Welfarism and Production - The Paradox of the Nigerian Context

STILL ON APC’S INSISTENCE ON THE N5,000 POLICY: WHAT IS THE PLAN? WHERE ARE THE RESOURCES? HOW SUSTAINABLE IS THIS?
I love campaigns and politics because both are platforms for elevated speeches and promises. But after elections, reality always beckons. Now, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the APC spokesperson has insisted that the APC intends to keep this promise.
While I am not entirely condemning this plan, I am just imagining the implication of paying N5,000 naira monthly to the bottom 25 million and the humongous bureaucracy we need to create to make that happen; and since governance is about the allocation of priorities, I am also looking at how a whopping 1.3 Trillion naira from the national treasury annually will help achieve the goal of diversifying our economy and creating a sustainable basis for national wealth. While the welfare pay-out may make some sense from a preventive giving perspective, it begs the question from an economic sense, given that we are not yet an industrial society, able to meet its local demand and possessing the capacity for broad-based growth away from dependence on commodities. So what really are we trying to achieve? How are we going to manage this without giving rise to other negative consequences? Is it possible to reduce inequality, decrease social tension and create vents for shared prosperity through other means?

WELFARISM IN A LARGELY CONSUMING ECONOMY - WILL THIS BE AN INCENTIVE OR A DIS-INCENTIVE TO PRODUCTION?
The Industrial Revolution changed human life greatly by introducing exponential efficiency and creating more prosperous societies. But alongside the gains of the industrial revolution came other social ills, chief of which was inequality and social tension between the owners of production and labour. Following the negative impacts of the Industrial Revolution, Britain went from being a Welfare State (one that reaches out to the poor and indigent using the resource of the state) to a Welfare Society (one that seeks through measures such as taxation to redistribute wealth in order to reduce inequality and social tension).
A welfare state provides a range of goods to its citizens through legal entitlements; the welfare society, provides welfare through private means, essentially by taxing the rich to pay the poor. The latter being a refinement of the former, coming out of the Liberal Reforms of the 1940’s Britain, at the end of World War II.

THE VALUE JUDGMENT THAT PREDISPOSES A COUNTRY TOWARD A WELFARE SYSTEM –IS NIGERIA THERE YET?
The most important values judgment that predisposes societies to welfarism is that, if at least one is better off but no one worse off, the economy is better off. This judgment presupposes that aggregate production and, by extension, national wealth is adequate to cater for the weak and the indigent, while not acting as a disruptive force against production. But is Nigeria there yet?

HOW DO YOU DIVERSIFY YOUR ECONOMY IN A SITUATION WHERE MORE THAN A QUARTER OF THE NATIONAL BUDGET THAT CAN HELP CREATE AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT FOR PRODUCTION IS GIVEN AS WELFARE PAY-OUTS?
For post-industrial societies, yes, welfarism may have some pertinence. But for societies hoping to build their productive base and aspire to a more efficiently run system which can guarantee more employment opportunities and increase national prosperity, welfarism may pose a big problem. This is because, in making the decision to push for welfarism, there is always the trade-off between equality and efficiency. While this may have some basis in a post-industrial society, it defeats the purpose in a pre-industrial arrangement. The APC need therefore to make its plan for implementing a N5,000 monthly stipend for the bottom 25 million clear so we can interrogate it. For like someone recently said, “a goal without a plan is merely a wish”. God bless Nigeria.