IT was a short letter to the editor. Yet, it managed to present, in an ordinary language, a complete thesis on President Olusegun Obasanjo's economic and social legacy. Writing from Lagos in the March 28, 2007 issue of The Guardian, Lekan Alabu said: "In the history of this great country, Nigeria, whether under military dictatorship or liberal democracy, there is no other government that has ever vigorously pursued World Bank's programmes more than Chief Olusegun Obasanjo". The inspiration for Alabu's assessment - from which he derived his caption - was the recent appointment of Nigeria's Federal Minister of Education, Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili, as World Bank's Vice President for Africa. The letter was titled: "Ezekwesili's appointment".

I am sure that not even President Obasanjo would dispute Alabu's opening statement. I can even go on to say that the President and his government would take pride in this total commitment to executing the World Bank's social and economic diktats. Yet, as The Guardian lamented in its editorial of Sunday, March 11, 2007, Nigeria has, since President Obasanjo assumed power in 1999, been variously classified by the World Bank as a "fragile state", member of "Heavily Indebted Poor Countries" (HIPCs), and member of "Low Income Countries Under Stress (LICUS). According to the editorial, countries so classified are "conflict prone, largely unstable, and lacking in basic institutional capacity to guarantee security and human rights inside their countries, with the tendency to become a source of refugees to their neighbours". They face the challenge of "poor and weak governance characterised by weak administrative machinery, low in capacity building initiatives, leading to chronic humanitarian and social crises manifesting in severe development constraints, sometimes a legacy of a civil war".

The continuing inclusion of Nigeria - and some other countries - among the states so categorised, according to The Guardian, is both wrong and unfair. It is wrong because it is done in disregard of the "advice of experts across the world" who urge the World Bank to be "a little more painstaking in its research and be seen to be sufficiently analytical in the findings emanating from the research on problem issues in developing countries". And it is unfair, and even dangerous, because such categorisations may be a "clandestine attempt not only to apply HIPC or Naples Terms policies in Nigeria but return the so-called fragile states to the harsh years of questionable Structural Adjustment policies". And, if this happens, "war and eventual demise of a country like Nigeria in less than 15-years as predicted by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will then be a matter of time". As Alabu said in the last sentence of his letter, the World Bank is "like a doctor that kills his patient".

In the second sentence of the first paragraph of his letter, Alabu said": "In the last eight years of our democratic experiment, the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP), under Obasanjo's presidency, has handed over our economy to multinationals and private individuals, under guise of reforms which is a blatant violation of the provisions of Section 16 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999". The name is privatisation, deregulation and commercialisation. Under this scheme all state enterprises and national assets, including the "commanding sectors" of the economy were "sold" to members of the "public" - national and foreign.

The operational words are "the public" and "sold". But everyone leaders themselves, their relations, family members, business associates, business fronts, leading party members, godfathers and godmothers. And by "sold" they mean "auctioned" to these narrow circles of the Nigerian nation. This looting of collective property - some call it patrimony - is continuing systematically and relentlessly at both federal and state levels. In some states there is now hardly anything one can point to as belonging to the people. All state enterprises, assets, and even monuments have been appropriated, literally stolen.

The second paragraph of Alabu's letter reads: "Under the Obasanjo reforms, Nigerians have been isolated in the economic activities of their country, workers have been sacked in different sectors of the economy, purchasing power is very low. The Nigerian people have become poorer, while a few elite have become richer, since the state abandoned its primary responsibilities". The power of this statement lies in its simplicity and undeniability. You can see and feel what you are reading. Most people also live it, and directly relate to other people in the same situation. Alabu did not mention the tragic state of electricity supply and the fact that the price of petrol which was N18 per litre in 1999 has risen to N65 and above.

The only "non-factual" part of the statement is the reference to the "primary responsibilities of the state" to the people - all the people, not some people or "lucky" people. These responsibilities, Alabu would take to include the provision of basic education, basic healthcare, shelter, water, employment, individual and collective security, electricity, means of transpiration and communication. This assertion is both historical and ideological. It would however be opposed with the ideology of globalised neoliberal capitalism which asserts that state intervention in the economy is either responsible for poverty, or is the main factor inhibiting the eradication of poverty. Eliminate the state from the economy, the adherents of this ideology swear, and everything will be well or will begin to be well.

Poverty, these ideologues say, will be eliminated by the "creation of wealth", and wealth can be created, or can best be created by "private initiative". When wealth is created everyone will have enough. Just remove the state and promote the market, and poverty will be a thing of the past. What a mockery of the poor! This is the message of the institutions of neoliberal capitalism, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the "money lenders" in the triad that controls the globalised neoliberal capitalism: America, Western Europe and Japan. Samir Amin correctly calls the World Bank the Ministry of Propaganda for this "triad".

Then the third paragraph: "Working under Obasanjo's administration, Ezekwesili, a vocal Minister of Education, has drummed unequivocal support for her boss' reforms. In the department she handles, Education Ministry, she has relentlessly executed privatisation and commercialisation of education at all levels. In this country, our students unjustifiably pay for services that are not in existence. We now operate a warped and obtuse tertiary education system, which is very expensive".

True enough. In our tertiary institutions, students pay all sorts of levies: to the central administration, to faculties, to departments, and to individual lecturers. While some of the levies have names, others do not; while some of the monies are transmitted, in part or in full, to the offices or authorities named, others are "chopped" by the "receiving officers". Students often pay for their scripts to be assessed, or favourably assessed; they pay for equipment bought for faculty or departmental use, they pay for the transportation and upkeep of external examiners. It is impossible to exhaust the list of payments. The authorities are not able to do much in checking this phenomenon because of the policy of "self-help" formulated by the state and then transmitted down the line, under the inspiration of the World Bank. To re-inforce the principle of self-help, "an economistic discourse exalting capitalist neoliberalism as part of the natural and inescapable order of things now forms the framework of both higher learning and popular culture across the globe", according to Henry Heller.

Federal Government Colleges were established after the Civil War as institutions of national unity. Now, under a deceptive - and, in fact, ridiculous - arrangement the schools have been effectively privatised. Just like workers in the liquidated Nigeria Airways, thousands of teachers and non-teaching staff in the privatised schools have now been left to "help" themselves. How? Like inhabitants of a city invaded by a murderous army, inhabitants who had all along been assured by their government that there was no cause for alarm, that the situation was under control. If you feel that my analogy is bizarre or extreme, I advise you to relax and ask yourself if this regime does not have certain features in common with an army of occupation.

The last paragraph of Alabu's letter reads: "Of course, this robust credential (Ezekwesili's) has enhanced her chances to be appointed as World Bank's Vice President for Africa. Aptly described by Paul Wolfwitz as 'a very great reformer and very courageous woman', I believe this appointment is an acknowledgement of a job well done under President Obasanjo. However, Africa should not place its hope on World Bank for it is like a doctor that kills his patient".

President Obasanjo's "economic team" was constituted under the inspiration of the World Bank which "released" some of its Nigerian personnel to us. The status of this all- powerful "economic team" is lower than that of the World Bank delegation in Nigeria. When the former Finance Minister, loaned to Nigeria by the World Bank, disengaged under unclear circumstances, the "International Community" absorbed her in other capacities. Now, the current Education Minister is being groomed by the World Bank to take a front seat in the execution of the imperialist - dictated "economic reforms" of President Obasanjo - reforms that Nigerians have been assured would continue under the president's successor.

Who will save Nigeria?