|
 Daily Independent Online.
* Monday, August 09, 2004.
My doubts
about Charles Soludo
By Omoyele Sowore
For two years I
was a student at Columbia University in the city of New York, United
States. Columbia University sits like an irony to me - it is an Ivy
League School, which means that it’s one of the first and top ten schools
in the US. The real irony is
that the school sits on a plush environment six blocks from Harlem, New
York. Just like Columbia
boasts of the richest school kids in America, Harlem undoubtedly is home
to some of America’s poorest kids and adults. It is serenity sitting back-to-back with fiasco and
chaos. Columbia University
is largely a white school, whereas Harlem is largely a pool of poor black
people.
While I was doing my Masters
at Columbia, I happened to be one of the few black people there who were
not workers or doing support services on campus. As a matter of fact,
Columbia didn’t have a tenured black professor until the late sixties or
mid-seventies really. Yet
Columbia played a great role in the anti-war movement in the sixties.
Like every other institution
of higher learning, Columbia University has a handful of “name-brand
professors”. Popular
professors sometimes can be likened to Nigerian football stars that get
begged to play for Serie ‘A’ clubs in Europe with promises of huge
salaries and pecks that may include white blondes sometimes. During my student days there,
Professor Joseph Stiglitz was the hot star; he was hired by Columbia from
Stanford University in California, but prior to that he had become famous
by virtue of his opposition to World Bank policies. He had served as a
senior vice president of the World Bank and quickly concluded that their
policies were bad for the development of the Third World.
Professor Joseph Stiglitz
later won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001. It must have been his best moment
as he rode on the back of popular discontent around the world against the
World Bank and the IMF, and he was able to win the highest prize in the
world of economics.
Joe Stiglitz taught a class at
Columbia. To get into that class you had to apply. It was an “application course”.
Naturally as a student activist who cut my teeth in the late 80’s and
early 90’s fighting with other student heroes against the Structural Adjustment
Programme (SAP), I was in love with the idea of taking his class. I applied and was admitted into
the class amongst other students from about 12 countries around the
world. In my first day in
class, I couldn’t help but ask Professor Stiglitz why he waited for so
long before he started attacking World Bank policies. He was very smart in answering
that it took him a lot of time to research from country to country the
effects of the policies of the World Bank and the IMF. I thought to myself that had
Professors Olorode, Obaro Ikime and Festus Iyayi been white, they would
have been greatly honoured for fighting against World Bank policies in
the early 80’s.
One day Professor Stiglitz
walked into class, on his
return trip from one of the countries in which he had instituted country
dialogue, and as usual he railed against the World Bank, IMF,
multinational corporations and the US government, (though he was
Clinton’s Economic Adviser. He didn’t like George W. Bush). As soon as
the ritual was over he announced that there was going to be a meeting of
the Institute of Policy Dialogue (IPD) conference in New York. So, all the members of his class
would have to volunteer to take notes at the conference. I was excited, because I thought
it was going to be a gathering of “economics dissidents” and those who
are on the firing line from the Third World countries. I was thrilled because I saw that
Ayo Obe, former CLO president was attending. I also saw that Charles Soludo was coming from
Nigeria. I decided to cover
two sessions; both of them had both Ayo Obe and Charles Soludo as
participants.
On the D-Day, I sat next to
Ayo Obe and we just talked about the horrible things Obasanjo was doing
to the Nigerian economy.
When it was the time for the other session, where Soludo was to
present a paper, the session was cancelled. Yet, I went looking for Charles Soludo at the “working
lunch” meeting.
I introduced myself to him and
thinking that he shared my views on Obasanjo, I started to rail against
his (Obasanjo’s) economic policies. I described how the naira went down
and how Nigerians are now poorer than he met them. Charles Soludo looked at me and
snapped: “No, no, the President is doing a lot for Nigerians”; then the
familiar refrain, “those military guys had bastardised the Nigerian State
before Obasanjo came to power. It will take some time to fix things.” And
then the clincher: “You know, Nigerians are very impatient people. I
don’t understand why they cannot wait for some time so that they will
continue to see the benefit of the economic reforms undertaken by the
President.” I felt like
punching him on the face! This guy was acting crazy to me!
I abruptly left him and wished
him good luck with defending the “economic reforms in Nigeria.” I walked
in briefly to listen to his presentation at the lunch. Charles Soludo was
very shallow and boring to me; he sounded like my former high school
economics teacher, who always warned that he wasn’t teaching people to
become rich, otherwise he had no business being a teacher.
I walked out feeling said,
depressed and betrayed. I couldn’t find anyone to complain about the fake
Economic Professor from Nigeria; it made me a bit sceptical about
Stiglitz. I wondered where he got his own assembly of “dissidents” who
were themselves opposed to positive changes. In my head I started to feel
that Stiglitz might as well have been a neo-liberal economist being used
by the Western powers to divert attention from the World Bank and IMF.
Somehow his boys are getting planted in powerhouses of Third World
economies, and in the real sense they are not different from the evils we
use to know, because something inside of me was saying that Charles
Soludo was positioning himself for some role or position with the
Nigerian government. Shortly
after the encounter, I read on the internet that he had been appointed as
the Chief Economic Adviser to the President. Going by what I have heard about OBJ, Charles Soludo
would fit perfectly into his kitchen cabinet; he was exactly the type of
economist that would tell the President what he likes to hear.
Now, Charles Soludo is the
Central Bank governor, I am in doubt about his so-called academic
prowess, the Central Bank is placed where people who can make
independent, well informed decision are needed. I have my serious doubt if Charles Soludo will make
any difference.
•
Sowore wrote in from New York.
|
