USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Anniversary Blues: Contemplating Nigeria at 52

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From: suzzy@mtnnigeria.blackberry.com
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2012 16:23:00
To: <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: suzzy@mtnnigeria.blackberry.com
Subject: Anniversary Blues: Contemplating Nigeria at 52

ANNIVERSARY BLUES: CONTEMPLATING NIGERIA AT 52
BY
AYO OLUKOTUN
A large, rapidly growing population; vast ungoverned and perhaps ungovernable spaces; elusive, difficult to police borders and a riot of ethnic nationalities whose variegated tongues evoke the Biblical Tower of Babel would have tasked the most auspicious governance clime to its very wits. Recall that the British did not really try to govern; they simply administered by remote control leaving the 'natives' to worry about the hard grind of constituting political order so long of course as the economic dues were duly rendered to the treasury in London.
In retrospect, the centrifugal logic of concentrating authority in the regions and enfeebling the centre during the First Republic has proved to be the most efficacious formula for governing Nigeria. Consider how much development took place in the regions and in economies powered by agricultural produce. Oil and the military changed all of that. Power and resources were concentrated at the centre as the federating units became, as the number of states multiplied, mere outposts of an overcentralised and imperious behemoth. In theory, the lengthening number of states ought to spread the goodies of development more evenly. But do they? Hardly. The centre has become even stronger; contentions for it do or die affairs, while the sharing of oil rents breed disdain for productivity as well as fuel corruption and squardamania. There is too an insatiable demand for the creation of more mini states which do little more than receive 'allocations' most of which are gobbled up in the state capitals leaving the hinterlands in varying states of picturesque desolation. Hence, the problem of governing, a far flung and unwieldy political space is compounded by a fundamentally defective centripetal logic and the disconnect between the power to spend and the responsibility to account for the disbursement of public funds since oil is considered a largesse bestowed by nature.
In years gone by and up till the Second Republic, political parties were like movements with identifiable governance platforms. Today, they are convenient labels which exist to facilitate the distribution of public funds. Many politicians have been members of at least three different parties in a classic case of democracy without the demos (the people). Nigeria runs following the logic of its distributive political culture, one of the most expensive political systems in the world. When I went to Ghana to observe the last elections in that country, I was surprised at the simplicity and casual character of the ballot boxes which apparently are simply recycled for use from election to election. As everyone knows elections in Nigeria cost a huge fortune; the syndrome of easy money and easy spending epitomized by the Yoruba supplication "Ise kekere owo nla nla" (small work plenty of money) play out in the culture of overlapping ministries and parastatals, the appointment of sundry special assistants to special advisers with their harvest of bonuses and entitlements. It shows up too in the deluge of contracts executed or not and in running government as the equivalent of a Father Christmas patrimony. This self indulgent, ostentatious culture seeps through the entire society as illustrated by the prevalence of quick fixes and downgrading of hard work as the route to wealth. In spite of several policies and recommendations the current government is yet to make a clear dent on the agenda of pruning the cost of governance which escalates by the day. It is not a secret that our legislators are amongst the highest paid in the world and are currently stretching out for even higher pay. If the tide of expenditure driven by swelling personal emoluments becomes unsustainable the country goes aborrowing or in the alternative removes a phantom subsidy on petroleum prices even if this drives the desperately poor to extinction.
A day before Nigeria's 52nd Independence anniversary, a much smaller country than Nigeria celebrated its 46th anniversary. The rise to eminence of the landlocked country of Botswana which was once one of the world's poorest countries is a narrator's delight. Today, Botswana is one of the world's fastest growing economies and is rated by Transparency International as the least corrupt country in Africa. It achieved this governance feat without oil and with far fewer natural endowments than Nigeria. The question then is: Why do some nations move rapidly up the development ladder while others stay on the same spot or descend to the lowest rungs? A great deal of the explanation lies in the quality and character of leadership. Nigeria, even when we allow for the disabilities of a rapid population growth of Malthusian proportions- suitably harnessed this could sometimes be an advantage- and the unwieldy ethnic configuration has never been fortunate to have a leadership especially at the centre that can invigorate its potentials with perhaps one honorable exception. In other words, Nigeria lags because as Chinua Achebe famously remarked it is beset with a distinct crisis of leadership and this manifests in the failure to follow through development plans as well as alter the prevailing political culture of profligacy and the pillage of public funds.
Related to this is a crisis of institutions at almost every level. So hollowed out are institutions of state that virtually every department of governance is outsourced. For example, the seemingly elementary task of policing oil pipelines is given out in contract bazaars to warlords in the Niger-Delta. Similarly, institutions that ought to deliver public goods are often paralyzed by sheer incompetence, corruption, or protracted strike by workers. Worse still this creeping dysfunction is amplified by the dilemmas created by a pervasive culture of faking in which criminals and bandits sometimes camouflage in police uniforms; fake drugs are sold in some public hospitals, while fake certificates are becoming a notable feature among the emergent political elite thus blurring the distinction between fiction and real life. Institutional decay also manifests when the courts hand out rigged or purchased verdicts and when citizens provide for themselves and at huge cost services which they ought to have taken for granted had the institutions responsible for them not become so violently dysfunctional or fictional.
Compared to other oil producing countries, Nigeria has cruelly shortchanged its citizens. It is for example no secret that several oil producing countries have been able to make the transition from exclusive reliance on petroleum for domestic consumption to expanding bio fuel programs which are cost effective and less harsh on the environment. Brazil for example which along with the United States produce close to 90% of the world's stock of ethanol operate in its major cities a dual fuel service in which cars are powered by either gasoline or ethanol. To be sure Nigeria announced in 2007 a bio fuel program but not much has been heard about it since the announcement; a failure replicated in the lack of a comprehensive energy policy which can tap into alternative sources of energy on an increasing industrial scale.
Nigeria will either sink into further political and social decay and perhaps dissolve in terminal chaos or under the impetus of a visionary leader and reform minded leadership begin to realize its dreams of national greatness and a role on the world stage. Regrettably, the shadow jostling for power that has commenced two full years ahead of the 2015 elections have remained trapped in the same decadent political arithmetic of geo-political zoning and a game of musical chairs in which power is rotated among jaded members of the political elite leaving little or no room for alternative conceptions of power rooted in service and the upliftment of the lives of the 70% that live below the poverty line. Though dim we must in closing recognize the possibility of an edifying reformist conjuncture emerging from the current blues.

Professor Olukotun is the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Entrepreneurial Studies in Lead City University Ibadan.


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