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A video of President Buhari was passed around on social media recently, and created a lot of discontent. In the video, Buhari is seen speaking during a question-and-answer session of the Commonwealth Business Forum in London. The president said that a lot of Nigerians want to sit and do nothing yet expect the Government to provide free education, free healthcare and free housing. Well, that’s called the Welfare State ! That’s social security as it operates (in one form or another) in many developed countries like inEngland, the US, Canada, and in many oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai and Libya.
This is missing in the current debate: the absence of a Welfare State in Nigeria. In this age of twitter, Instagram and Facebook updates, only sound bites matter What is more disturbing is not so much what the President said what he said (and I completely disagree with his ideology here) but the reaction on social media and some newspapers which fed into the minds of many Nigerians. They now say President Buhari called Nigerians lazy. To say this is to take a conservative position on the ideological landscape. Many (including myself) would find it unfortunate that the beneficiaries of the Welfare State all over the world are regarded as lazy. The one thing I take from all this, is that President Buhari is obviously more akin to a British Conservative or an American Republican, ideologically. And more worrying is that many Nigerians are being misinformed to believe that a Welfare State is for lazy citizens.
The social and economic well-being of the citizens is the purpose of the Welfare State. The Welfare State is present in every developed society in one form or another. It is a form of protection, not unlike the protection the State provides via the police or the military, or through traffic regulations and the legal system. It must be regarded as a mark of civilization, progress and development: the Welfare State is an important aspect of capitalism in developed countries. Meeting half-way between capitalism and socialism, the Welfare State helps to blunt the sharp edges of unbridled capitalism. The Welfare State helps capitalist economies become socially and economically sustainable. It is a safety net that cushions the downtrodden and helps them rise up again.
Critics of the Welfare State say it creates a culture of dependency: it makes the poor poorer and saps the finances of a country. Bad for the economy. The most potent criticism is that it makes the young lazy. The Welfare State has been described as a ‘narcotic that saps the spirit’ for misfits in society. These criticisms have been taken into account and the Welfare State has gone through considerable reform in those countries.
Starting the middle of the 20th century, governments of countries such as Denmark, Australia, Germany, New Zealand and England experimented with a new form of government. These new governments had distinct and social characteristics. Even earlier in Germany, the Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck enacted social insurance laws in the 1880s. This move by Bismarck, created an embryonic version of the Welfare States that came into being in Europe and the US a few decades later. In the US, President Roosevelt created the New Deal (which included social security programs passed into law) in response to the Great Depression the country was passing through. In England the Fabian socialists had for decades pushed for social protection for the poor, and in that country The National Insurance Act of 1911 set up national insurance contribution for unemployment and ill-health protection. The Fabian Beatrice Webb was a lead writer of the Minority Report published by the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief Distress 1905-1909. Beatrice Webb stated that the purpose of the report was “to secure a national minimum of civilized life…sufficient nourishment and training when young, a living wage when able-bodied, treatment when sick, and a modest but secure livelihood when disabled or aged.” She could in many ways be regarded as the ‘patron saint’ of the British Welfare State. She was a co-founder the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The most famous Nigerian alumnus of the LSE is the late Chief ObafemiAwolowo. Awolowo enrolled at the LSE in 1944, two years after the Beatrice Webb-inspired Beveridge Report was published. The Beveridge Report, officially known as the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services, is the landmark document that established the Welfare State in England. The Beveridge Report sought to tackle “the five giants”: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Clearly influenced by Fabianism, Chief Awolowo sought to create a Welfare State in the Western Region of Nigerian during his time as Premier.
The debate now, regarding the Buhari video should be the role of government in the provision of housing, education and healthcare. It was be ‘lazy’ of us to focus only on the sensational at the expense of the fundamental.
Uyiosa Omoregie
Dr Omoregie is a Petroleum Economist and Project Analyst
