This short essay is a reply to an online post anchored in the reality of today’s world. There was no such extreme global inequality in any decade of the last century after 1914. The “gilded age” that preceded it from the 1880s was run by plutocratic bankers like the Rothschilds and J P Morgan. But the concentration of wealth is now much larger and consolidated. The NYSE has 2/3rds the turnover of all stock exchanges in the world. The Pentagon spends more than the arms budgets of the next nine countries. Even Trump can’t break that consolidation of monetary power which made him reverse policy on tariffs in a matter of hours on the command of the money men who elected him.
As for Nigeria, I concede to your first-hand knowledge. But it has already the third largest national population in the world—displacing the United States—and population is the main factor in economic strength. Lenin’s The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899)—still the best book on economic development from behind and free on marxists.org—showed that home-market integration is the key to building up large-scale industry and commerce. I published a book in 1982 on The Political Economy of West African Agriculture (Cambridge U.P.)that suggested Nigeria could be the Prussia of African unification. Its rulers can’t even handle the small desiccated ex-French countries in the Sahel or the Wagner Group. They are even cosying up to President Macron who has totally lost control of his country and its former African dependencies.
It takes real talent to waste such an advantage. Countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh are powerful just because of their population size and better management. What are the Nigerian masses up to if they suffer corrupt elites who have made a much larger postcolonial state that is weak, divided and vulnerable?
The Third World War will be over the mineral riches in the DRC that are essential for the digital revolution. A handful of Rwandan and Ugandan generals and assorted warlords paid for by foreign mining companies have killed 4 million Congolese in the last few decades. What is the Nigerian military for if it cannot or is hesitant to intervene in the slaughter of a neighbor’s citizens in a crisis that is strategic for its own country’s future?
PS Some world population forecasts for 2100 have Nigeria second to India with 800mn people, just ahead of China with 770mn, the US is fourth with 350mn.
