By Ike Okonta
There is nothing like a national crisis to show up the profound inadequacies of Neoliberal capitalism that Bernie Sanders has been campaigning against for the past thirty years. The Corona virus has exposed the US health system for the joke it is.
It really does not matter if Democrats refuse to heed Sander’s counsel and nominate him as their presidential candidate. He has made his point. The fact is that he did not run against Joe Biden. He ran against Corporate America that has since the advent of the Cold War in the late 1940s turned Socialism into a scareword the easier to impose a vicious economic system on hapless Americans.
In the 1980s this vicious system was extended to Africa by the Republican government of Ronald Reagan using the IMF, WORLD BANK and corrupt dictators like General Ibrahim Babangida as willing agents.
Neoliberalism has failed profoundly in Nigeria and Africa. As I write thousands of Africans are voting with their feet and dying in the Mediterranean. Something has to be done to end this economic carnage. That is why the November 2020 election in America matters. America introduced the Neoliberal virus to Nigeria.
The battle to end its deadly reign has rightly been joined also in America with Bernie Sanders in the lead.
The Corona virus, before it is through with the world, will prove Bernie Sanders right.If the Democrats fail to heed his warning this election cycle his successors will continue the struggle until victory is won. That is why thinking Nigerians and other Africans are with Sanders in this election. His fight is their fight.
-Ike Okonta, journalist and public intellectual, writes from Abuja