By Douglas Anele

Several weeks ago when the movement called Occupy Wall Street began in the United States of America, it is not surprising that people in different parts of the world have adopted the same format to protest the widening existential gap between the rich and the poor in various countries.

Moreover, despite the hugely unpopular and reactionary Occupy Occupy Wall Street, humanity is gradually but steadily waking up to the realisation that free market economy, neo-liberal capitalist formation, and globalisation instead of helping to spread the benefits of industrial production and services justly across all socio-economic classes, actually exacerbate the faultlines of inequalities that have bedevilled humanity since the dawn of civilisation.

In the United States, the global superpower with the biggest economy in the world, expanding eddies of poverty are aggravated by unprecedented job losses. The present biting economic recession in America is a consequence of the expensive warmongering regime of former President G.W. Bush and entrenched immoralities in the operations of the housing markets and financial services sector in America.

It is heart-wrenching to watch on cable television, in a purported God’s Own Country, college graduates that were gainfully employed previously now relying on charity to survive. In London at the moment, people are organising under the banner of Occupy London: there is a charity organisation called Fare Share which goes around the city collecting foodstuff and other basic items from supermarkets and affluent households for distribution to those in need, people that are so poor they cannot even buy food to eat.

In South Africa, there is Operation Ubuntu motivated by precisely the same factors that led to Occupy Wall Street and similar movements across Europe. Available information shows that the protesters are not united by a well-articulated set of ideological beliefs.

Also, they are not restricted to the lower classes, since college professors and people from wealthy background have joined the movement to showcase their disenchantment with a skewed world economic order that sacrifices the welfare of people on the altar of free market and globalisation.

In the case of Occupy Wall Street, for example, some of the protesters expressed displeasure that American tax payers’ money was used to bail out banks and other institutions whose excessive financial rascality led to the collapse of the mortgage sector in the first instance.

For many of the Occupiers therefore, it appears that through bailout funds the American government has rewarded the very people whose financial recklessness and unbridled greed engendered the economic meltdown which adversely affected the global economy.

The concept of banks “that are too big to fail,” they argue, is one of the fairytales used to swindle the public, in the false belief that it is better to rescue such banks than to risk the negative consequences of those institutions filing for bankruptcy.

But the problem is that old habits die hard, and once the belief that a particular financial institution is too big to fail becomes entrenched, there is no reason why the bad mistakes of the past will not be repeated, and the cycle of bailout rears its ugly head again.

It cannot be denied that any economic model that puts profit and free market mechanism above the interests of human beings is bound to have terrible repercussions on the society as a whole. That is why sensible countries particularly the Asian Tigers did not swallow lock, stock, and barrel the economic prescriptions of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But countries in sub-Saharan Africa such as Nigeria that uncritically adopted those prescriptions are worse off now than they were before.

Nigeria’s slippage down the abyss of economic strangulation gathered momentum during Gen. Babangida’s regime (1985 -1993) when the Structural Adjustment Programme was implemented in accordance with IMF’s recommendations.

The crippling effects of SAP, as it is generally referred to here, are still with us 18 years after Babangida stepped aside. Presently, President Goodluck Jonathan and his lieutenants, instead of implementing programmes that will ameliorate the sufferings of our people, have connived with the very rich to visit class war on the toiling masses.

His proposal to remove fuel subsidy is the latest in a series of policies that will further plunge desperate Nigerians down the black hole of poverty. Of course, there is heated controversy regarding the reality of such subsidy and its exact amount.

Government’s plan is that whenever the so-called subsidy is removed prices of petroleum products will be determined solely by the forces of demand and supply. This is not the place to clinically dissect in detail the implications of Jonathan’s “gift” to Nigerians who voted for him to alleviate their sufferings.

However, there is a general consensus that the removal of fuel subsidy, whatever that translates to in cash, would occasion unprecedented inflation in the economy which will directly multiply the hardships of Nigerians already traumatised by decades of mediocre leadership.

So fellow Nigerians, when are we going to join others globally to occupy the centres of economic and political power in Nigeria to express our displeasure with, and rejection of, policies that have worsened, or will aggravate, our sufferings? When shall we occupy Broad Street to call attention to the plight of the underprivileged, the unemployed, the destitute, and the voiceless masses? To a large extent, the suffering in America and Europe is child’s play compared to the situation in our country.

At least over there prices of basic items such as food, housing, and clothes are relatively affordable for the underclass, and the amenities are reliable. In Nigeria, everywhere you look signs of decay, neglect and planlessness are ubiquitous.

The quanta of sufferings our people have been enduring since 1985 more than justify even the occupation of Aso Rock! We must therefore seriously consider Occupy Broad Street or Occupy the National Assembly to register peacefully our total rejection of anti-people policies of the federal government led by President Jonathan.