THE PRACTICE OF SOCIALISM IN NIGERIA AND THE NATIONAL REST ON PRECIPICE. Written by KEMKA S. IBEJI

Often read the quibbles of Karl Marx in the pursuit of what eventually turned out to be Marxism. Importantly, those ideas could hinge on socialism and Communism in the loosed sense. However, striking on his lines of extensive arguments are his stampede on the bad vagaries of religion and the cache of surplus value. These made excellent read for many young readers, scholars and members of the intellectual world.

Karl Marx was unappreciative of the underhand of religion. For him, religious practices have made lilliputians of giants and have tremendously decapitated good reasoning from the people. It was for this reason that his popular maxim that "religion is the opium of the masses" held the winds at a time within readers. Of course, when you begin to atomize or analyze issues with religious concerns, you will begin to realize how sentimentally held religious axioms have usurped the thinking capacity of humans and practitioners of these sect beliefs and have rendered them incapable of any iota of logico-mathematical propensity. These religious dogmas have certain traits that are characteristica of violence and abuse against ratiocinative mainstay of human social cooperation. These ill experiences were rich in the days of Karl Marx just as of this day.

But in the propagation of Socialism and Communism, the attraction is the simplification into the popular statement; "from everyone according to his/her strength and to everyone according his/her needs". What a wonder of unnatural existence! As an individual, I have over the years been sympathetic to/with Marxism and especially socialism and communism though without summarising into this faulty nutshell. I have sought to balance my ideas in the face of this summary. The informant of my attraction to socialism and communism is the need to curtail human excesses in extreme avarice and endless gusto to acquire and to possess. That excessive and unmitigated extremism was scary to me in thinking of the way of striking a moderate existence where humans can live in considerable sanity without the inordinate sense of amassment. But without success so far, we shall keep on searching for best ways to moderate social experiences within existential norms that guarantee equitable distribution and redistribution of scarce resources. This informing our tolerance of the inaccuracies we find in our methods of managing the common will hitherto.

Nevertheless, there is this detrimental forms of Socialism which is vocal but so subtle in Nigeria. This unfounded means of the distribution of the common will in Nigeria is not only inhuman but despicable. Starting with the world most unseen patterns of population enumeration, geographical demarcations, gerrymandering, production of goods and services and finally the distribution of resources in/of the commonwealth. One would have assumed that the creation of the National Character Commission would have been to cater for the endangering aspects of this challenge, but it is not in the main. How will one govern a state on the speculative numbering by the fingers or wishful pontificates of bigots and jingoists? This beats good reasoning.

Nigeria has persistently practiced what is best taxonomized as Representative Socialism/Communism. This form of Socialism or Communism runs akin to representative democracy. That's is, instead of dealing with the concept at the levels of individuals, it aggregates groups instead and deal in that accord. In other words, the groups represent their individual makeups and stand in same character of social and political distribution of the state patrimony such that where individuals used to be, the groups take over and stand in their stead.

The above practice has been on in Nigeria for decades now if not since inception. How can we begin to explain the lopsidedness in the country where the Northern Nigeria abhors alcohol and its economics but eat the lion share of the tax therefrom in the South? The Islamic North destroy all beers, all liquor, all spirits and brandy at sight. They do not give a hoot about the cost of their production, the labour employed, the funds deployed and all investments thereto. With reckless abandon, they set them to rubbish but turn to the Federal coffers that receive the income from the production, distribution and consumption of the variegated alcoholic forms from the South and pick up yet the largest of the shares. The distribution is done upon sentimental whims on population counts, land mass and other condemnable attributes from senselessness.

The Islamic North adds almost nothing to the Federal economy from tax to natural resources yet they consume the largest of the Federal budget. This is nothing less than the epithet of "from everyone according to his/her strength and to everyone according his/her needs". But I tell you that ours has turned even more dramatic in the far negative that it is now in Nigeria "from the South according to their strength and to the Islamic North according to their wants". What a miracle of a country! Nigeria has unfortunately segregated herself into groups of wants and strengths such that whereas others work, some others just sit with their wants handy at palms.

Any society that lives on such patterns as described in the foregoing can only be peaceful or calm with the highest level of ignorance or utter enslavement. Of course, we can only make this uncertain assertion upon calmness which is like peace of the graveyard and never to talk about development because none of such can feature in such society. It is therefore to state that Nigeria's frail unity thrives on ignorance and/or slavish coexistence fashioned in covert and sickening socialism/communism - Representative Socialism/Communism.

This in conclusive submission is to clearly set to obvious sight precipitating factors rich in catastrophic utensils for the destruction of Nigeria. These issues and practices outlined in the body of this writing are of immense importance if Nigeria must be reengineered to avert the looming days national doom. A day that the South will rise up, not to secede but, to retaliate in enslaving the Islamic North. This, which will be engaged in bitter zest to conquer the oppression and to suppress the oppressor can only be imagined as it must come with inevitably veiled venom that will spark of uncontrollable violence, if not war, if it is by any slightest means resisted by the oppressor. To avoid this doomsday, it has become vehemently important for the government to quickly reassess the hurriedly caving structural patterns of the state and restructure them accordingly before it is too late. Without this paramount consideration, we shall only continue to live on borrowed time and at the precipice.