Labour party is a political ideology that ranges from the center left to the extreme left of the western political philosophy, depending on settings and mode of operation this parties operate a communist or socialist governments.
Primarily the labor party is meant for the working people, working people in this sense implies the established and or institutional workers from both government and private establishments.
So officially labour party is the party of the trade unions, and anybody outside that framework is a secondary concern of the party. From the above it can be envisaged that the LP is designed to protect the interest of a minute segment of the society, which makes the party sectional, divisive and somewhat one sided and incompatible with the ideology of southeast who mainly rely on trade and investment as source of livelihoods. These amongst other traits make LP party unfit for ruling Nigeria in general and the southeast in particular.
The socialist ideology of the labour party is incompatible with the dominant capitalist ideology of the Southeast, considering the fact that the Southeast are traditionally progressive and capitalist in nature, where trade and innovation form the fulcrum of there very economy a socialist government which tend to over tax the working people and give welfare package to non working people will be catastrophic to the region.
Let us review the ideology of the LP in a lay man's language, now consider a country with a population of over 200m people where the government and the private sector can only provide employment for 30-35% of the working age of that country and the same government will tax the 30-35% of those working people 70% of their income to pay welfare package to the remaining 65-70% non working people. This is not only counter productive but will make people unwilling to work since either they work or not they will still have the same package from the government with those working, it will also cripple innovation and productivity. Likewise It will be an additional burden to the working people the LP seek to protect because they have to over work in oder to feed those that are not working. Pls note that working here include both government and private businesses.
The Southeast is bitterly complaining about the revenue mobilisation, allocation and distribution under the current federal setting where resources are put together from various regions and redistributed to component States thus agitation for resource control is high from the southern part of the country, but according to the ideology the labour party, government will not only share resources of the federal government, but will also tax a common shoe maker on the streets of Aba to cater for a bagger on the streets of Sokoto, Kano and or Katsina amongst others and southeast will bear the brunt being a traditionally business community.
The struck that will break the camel's back which in this case is the economy of the Southeast is there is a high rate of unemployment in Nigeria, so to keep up with the socialist manifesto of the labor party the government have to over tax businesses the more, meaning more import and export duties, more income tax, more transport and market levies more and more taxes in all ramifications in oder to cater for the socialist policy of the welfare state. Businesses will crumble under an over taxed economy as it happens in Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez and other socialist economies all over the globe.
On a final note its important to note that the leading principle of socialist and communist governments is the control of forces of demands and supply, that is government will directly control the businesses and the main objective of the socialist cum communist government is to fight and suppress private ownership of the means of productions so the southeast will be worst affected because a labour party government aim and objective is to take over your businesses and pay you stipends for working for it. As a matter of fact the southeast need to fear the labour party more than it fears kidnappers.
Mohammed Bello Doka is the Chairman and CEO of Abuja Network News.
Disclaimer. Pls note that the Opinions expressed in this articles are the opinions of the author and does not in anyway represent the opinions of the Abuja Network News.
Tags
Opinion