Okey Ndibe
This statement, for me, sums up clearly the most significant reason for a glaring lack of a social philosophy for/in Nigeria and the inability of the Nigerian leadership to fashion one.
I mean, apart from the listed items in Ndibe's list, we just need to add a few others to make it worse-a leadership that delights more in inconsequentials that national necessities i.e. Building a 2 billion naira party/event centre in Aso Rock; making the second stanza of the national anthem a prayer in public events; mandating the eating of cassava bread as a national staple; spending enormous and obscene amount on cutleries; etc.
The conceptual cluelessness of the Jonathan administration rates very high and most unfortunately above that of every other past presidents in Nigeria. The Transformative Agenda is the worst scam in the annals of national visioneering; the most banal understatement of all time.
I am therefore only confused when people attempt their glossy rescue of Nigeria and her 'democratic' experiment.
We have not even started.
Adeshina Afolayan
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
From: Okey Ndibe <okndibe@yahoo.com>
Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:53:04 -0800 (PST)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okay Ndibe: A case for abolishing democracy in Nigeria
Here's (a rather small) list of some facts/conjectures to disturb Ms. Gloria Emeagwali's prescription for an "analysis...tempered with reason": Nigerian state governors who collect more than $2 million per month in so-called security vote (that they don't account for); federal legislators who, every three months, collect several times the annual salary of President Obama (even though these law makers haven't passed a single law acknowledged as having improved the condition of Nigerians); a health care system so scary that few (if any) "prominent" Nigerians (president, governors, ministers, legislators--and members of their families), ever consider being treated in a Nigerian hospital (instead, they go to such locations as Germany, the UK, the US, South Africa, Dubai, India); a national network of roads that are hardly ever better than death traps; an educational system that's producing mediocre graduates in many fields (most of them unemployed and unemployable); a Federal Government (under President Obasanjo) that squandered between $10 and $16 billion on the power sector (and actually achieved the feat of worsening power outages!); a country that continues to rank near the top of generator importers in the world; a country that's now a global leader in private jet ownership; a country where elections (despite a few isolated success stories) remain fraudulent exercises; a country whose security apparati aren't able to curb the incessant killing of innocent Nigerians by Boko Haram; a country whose constitution offers immunity to governors and the president even when they commit crimes (especially then, in fact!); a country whose judicial machinery has managed to convict only one ex-governor (Alamiesiegha) for corruption in more than 12 years (even though the EFCC and other anti-corruption agencies--to say nothing of the evidence of our eyes and ears--suggest that most of the governors have engaged in unconscionable looting); a country whose police have not solved any major homicide case in the last twelve years (not Bola Ige, not Oyerinde, not Funso Williams, not Harry Marshall, not Dikibo); a country whose police force provided cover for thugs who in November, 2004 swept through Anambra State destroying public property (thus earning the title of lawlessness enforcement agency); a country whose police force frequently lends itself to the ruling party as a rigging tool; a country whose soldiers and police have slaughtered innocents in Maiduguri, Odi (and elsewhere in the Niger Delta), Onitsha, Zaki Biam etc; a country in which the vast majority of rural and urban dwellers have no access to pipe-borne water (much less decent private or public toilets); where many (if not most) people defecate and pee in the open; where the powerful and wealthy ride roughshod over the weak and poor; a country whose citizens pay for 100% of the president's/governors' meals (a billion naira budgeted for the Presidency's yearly food consumption)--even though (as Ms. Emeagwali well knows) Mr. Obama and US governors must pay for their personal meals and those of their families); a country where the minimum wage is a measly N18,000 . The list goes on and on and on!
One is bemused when some defend or excuse Nigeria's dysfunction by inventing fictitious narratives of success or drawing attention to the existence of similar (or worse) problems in places like the US, UK and elsewhere. It's sheer hypocrisy, I'm afraid. Nobody can make light of the serious crises in the US, the UK, Germany etc. But I dare say that Nigeria should be so lucky to be in the shoes of the US (trillion dollar debt and all)! In Nigeria, we have squandered most of our oil wealth without developing our infrastructure even to the levels that now obtain in such addresses as Ghana, Botswana, South Africa, Lebanon, the Philippines, Uganda, Jamaica, Kenya etc!
We can romanticize the so-called gains, "progress," and "significant reconfiguration of social consciousness" all we want--the truth is that Nigeria is in awful shape. And I think things are getting messier in critical areas.
Nigeria's crises are so deep-rooted that the diseased phenomenon that passes for "democracy" there is in no position to begin to address them. Instead, the operators of the "democratic" system are concerned, above all, with perpetuating their unconscionable privileges. Their greed is compounded, I suggest, by their incompetence, lack of imagination, and absence of a vision of transformation. That's why a growing number of Nigerians are looking for other departures, new approaches, even idiosyncratic answers. My recent piece was written in that spirit. If it did not rise to what the likes of Ms. Emeagwali consider to be "reason," I offer no apologies.
Okey
From: "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@mail.ccsu.edu>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2012 10:38 AM
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okay Ndibe: A case for abolishing democracy in Nigeria
'This progress has been painful in significant instances but it represents a significant
reconfiguration of social consciousness in ways that move the country forward.....'Toyin
I agree with Toyin.
The greatest irony is that the same people who call Nigeria a failed state, hold up as a model
a country with $14 trillion debt; laws that sanction arrest without trial;
contractors who make much more than the proverbial 10% on military and prison contracts;
penal systems that host most of the prisoners in the world and execute an alarming amount of them;
make- shift tent cities with the homeless, thanks to a fraudulent housing/ banking foreclosure system;
students who accumulate as much as $50,000 debt for an undergraduate/ university education;
countless graduates without jobs; highest on the list for obesity; centuries of discrimination against
its minority population; and corrupt politicians who make laws to suit campaign donors. Don't get
me wrong. I think the U.S is a great country, and much has to be done to get
Nigeria where we want it to be, but analysis should be tempered
with reason.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
www.africahistory.net<http://www.africahistory.net/>
www.vimeo.com/user5946750/videos<http://www.vimeo.com/user5946750/videos>
Documentaries on Africa and the African Diaspora
________________________________
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU [tvade3@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 5:53 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okay Ndibe: A case for abolishing democracy in Nigeria
I think Ogugua's effort to analyse Nigeria's democracy as not working is rather mechanistic. Mechanistic beceause he describes a complex system in terms of a few parameters in a manner better applied to mechanical or less complex forms.
A democratic system, however, is social not a mechanical system.
I think democracy in Nigeria is better described as 'developing' rather than having failed.
What is democracy?
Democracy may be understood as a social arrangement in which collective opinion is harnessed for the benefit of society. This is often done through representatives understood as embodying sections of this opinion.
I observe some significant progress in Nigerian democracy. This progress has been painful in significant instances but it represents a significant reconfiguration of social consciousness in ways that move the country forward.
What is or is not possible or likely within a society is an index of a society's health.
One demonstration of the growth of Nigerian democracy is the fact that the possibility of a military coup has become remote or impossible after the Abacha era.
This represents a sterling, major development in the consciousness of Nigerians beceause in the various coups up till Babangida, from the bloody Nzeogwu coup of January 1966, the even bloodier counter coup of later that year, the Buhari coup, the Babangida coup, to mention those I have either read about or remember how they were received, the coups were celebrated by large sections of the population as messianic interventions. On the Babangida coup, the Guardian, the most respected Nigerian paper at the time, ran a full page story of him, with an almost full page picture of him in full military uniform, charting his extensive travel within and acquaintance with Nigeria.
After the slow horror of Babangida, as he educated us on the nature of intrigue, and our eyes opened slowly but surely, an experience spiked by the Dele Giwa assassination which some predicted on the very day it happened that nothing would ever emerge from any investigation into it as has turned out to be the case, and the morphing into the Abacha nightmare, climaxed by his horrifying effort to succeed himself in the midst of a national reign of terror, we were now largely or fully cured of military myopia.
I believe the military knows this too. Any military coup, with whatever level of firepower or cunning, is almost certain to fail simply by absolute rejection by Nigerians.
That is great progress that took us more than 40 years to achieve.
We now run a more democratic system in which the peoples' voice is significant even if the system may be manipulated to a degree.
The competitive space in Nigerian politics has expanded with the appointment of Goodluck Jonathan as President.
The tight hold of Northern Nigeria and the military on the Presidency was shifted by that appointment.
The Boko Haram horror, designed by the terrorists and their backers to undermine his credibility, among other goals it seems, has strengthened that credibility.
The sheer embarrassment and confusion it caused the Northern elite has and further weakened the bargaining power of the North, compelling a more equitable bargaining between that region and the rest of Nigeria.
In fact Boko Haram may be seen as cathartic in relation to the North in exemplifying the possibilities of certain tendencies in the region when taken to an extreme. The cycle of the crisis has seen various perspectives and personalities come and go. Through it all, the Presidency has been strengthened as as a pan-Nigerian institution through its approach to the crisis an approach at times misfiring against the victims but generally balanced in favour of the task and against a sectionalist approach to the problem.
Significant examples exist of people electing popular politicians through the ballot box. Oshiomole in Edo state and Fashola in Lagos are two examples.
There are serious problems of crime, from Boko Haram to kidnapping and armed robbery. Does the scale this has reached sugest a failed state?
I dont think so and the govt is fighting these steadily as it is doing with Boko Haram.
What is the scope of efforts to combat some of the root causes of these problems through poverty alleviation?
I dont know since I know less about the economics of the country.
I see the country however as virgin territory for many business opportunities.
This is my understanding so far.
toyin
On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Anunoby, Ogugua <AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu<mailto:AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu>> wrote:
If a system is flawed that system is not working. A system works if it is efficient and effective which are measured by costs and expected outcomes achieved respectively. Democracy in Nigeria is neither efficient or effective. Costs are exceptionally high, increasingly unaffordable, and rising. Expected outcomes are unclear and hardly ever achieved. Public officials and politicians have authority, some responsibility, and little or no accountability. The rule of law is jagged and a joke. Those are not what one finds when democracy works. My question to some who choose to argue that democracy "is working in Nigeria but it is flawed" is a simple one; what is their statement intended to mean? How flawed does a system have to be before it is acknowledged to have failed?
Political systems are a choice for independent countries. Systems can always be replaced by better systems as Nigeria's political systems' experimentation and experience bear out. Would it be correct to argue that military dictatorships work but they are flawed? NO. Not if the one knows what purpose government should serve and does serve for free peoples who have ownership of it.
oa
________________________________
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of John MBAKU [jmbaku@weber.edu<mailto:jmbaku@weber.edu>]
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 4:23 PM
To: tvade3@gmail.com<mailto:tvade3@gmail.com>; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okay Ndibe: A case for abolishing democracy in Nigeria
Why is Nigeria's democracy flawed? If we know why, then perhaps we could make it more efficient and responsive to the needs of the people. "Flawed" democracies have the habit of imposing significant costs (economic, social and political) on vulnerable groups and communities.
I am quite interested in working to make things better. Educate me.
JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
3807 University Circle
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442<tel:%28801%29%20626-7442> Phone
(801) 626-7423<tel:%28801%29%20626-7423> Fax
>>> OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU 11/28/12 2:16 PM >>>
I am certainly hopeful.
Democracy is working in Nigeria.
It is a flawed democracy but it is functional.
Rigging exists but the voice of voters also plays a significant role.
There exists an active culture of political engagement by people of various social strata.
There is plenty of poverty but the country is significantly an economic virgin territory, where so much is available to be done and can be done, even if with more difficulty than necessary.
Also, we all need to consider the challenge a challenge for all of us, rather than a challenge for 'them', the government authorities and the political class and other authority figures.
Government is central to national development, but efforts of individuals and groups are also central to national growth, both forms of effort operating as either a dialectic or a unity.
The Jewish saying is most apt "The task is not yours to finish but neither are you free to take no part in it".
thanks
toyin
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Anunoby, Ogugua <AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu<mailto:AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu>> wrote:
Everyone hopes that democracy will work in Nigeria sooner rather than later.
The exasperation and frustration that many Nigerians and others feel and have expressed are not based on figments of the imagination. The predictions being made by some attentive friends and foe alike about Nigeria's likely future are not "doomsday prophesies" as some have described them to be. They are based on facts. Nigeria is a grossly underachieving country for its endowment and potential. The country is not working for the vast majority of citizens. There is not enough that is being done to change things for the better. Everyone know that this has been and is still the case. The hope is that things will change and soon too.
A country is not very likely to achieve its true potential if her problem is her people, more than anything else.
Hope is still alive and well. Will it continue to be? That is the question in my considered opinion.
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 1:30 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okay Ndibe: A case for abolishing democracy in Nigeria
I think we should give the country a chance and wish it well.
The doomsday prophecies and perpetual lacerations are excessive.
Toyin
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 7:11 PM, John MBAKU <jmbaku@weber.edu<mailto:jmbaku@weber.edu>> wrote:
There is a case to be made that what is being practiced in Nigeria's political economy is not democracy--at least, not the type undergirded by the rule of law. At a minimum, the behavior of many state custodians is not in line with what is expected of public servants in a country with a fully functioning democratic system.
JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
3807 University Circle
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442<tel:%28801%29%20626-7442> Phone
(801) 626-7423<tel:%28801%29%20626-7423> Fax
>>> "Anunoby, Ogugua" 11/28/12 11:09 AM >>>
What do you do with a very high cost arrangement, process, or system that does not and will not deliver expected outcomes after reasonable time? Do you persevere with it infinitely? I am just asking?
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Ikhide
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2012 4:46 PM
To: Toyin Falola
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okay Ndibe: A case for abolishing democracy in Nigeria
"Nigerians have worked awfully hard for more than fifty years to achieve expertise in sheer badness. Even if we discounted the reports that ranked Nigeria as the most fraudulent place in Africa or the worst address for a new-born baby, we can hardly deny that Nigeria is a shadow, an inhuman space. We have lifted mediocrity to an art.
Name any sector of life in Nigeria and it?s infected by a malignant disease. Each year, Nigerian universities, private as well as public, churn out hundreds of thousands of unemployed and mostly unemployable illiterates. Too many academics sell grades for sex or cash. The Nigerian police strike fear in the heart not of criminals, but those without the cash to offer bribes. Too many Nigerian bishops, priests, pastors and imams are embedded with the politicians who daily wreck their country. For a bag or two of naira, these ostensible servants of God are willing to venerate any form of evil. The Nigerian president?s only formula for tackling serious crises is, one, to issue a hollow speech or, two, to form a committee. With either approach, the goal is to buy time for people to forget how messy the particular problem was. Most members of the president?s cabinet are in it for what they can steal and put away. Nigeria?s legislators, whether in Abuja or the state capitals, don?t have the foggiest idea how to use the legislative process to improve their environments.
Nigeria is worse and more dangerous than many other failed states. Its failure is both comprehensive and deep. It?s in a state of suspension, waiting for something to give, for an inevitable explosion to take place. Unless we act now, the roof is bound to fall on all our heads."
- Okey Ndibe
Read on...
http://saharareporters.com/column/case-abolishing-nigeria%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cdemocracy%E2%80%9D-okey-ndibe
- Ikhide
Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/
Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide<http://www.facebook.com/ikhide>
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