As some on this forum know, there is a serious debate going on about the administrative structure of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. They call it RESTRUCTURING. I have serious reservation about it and I do not hesitate to explain myself to anyone who cares. I understand Nigerians have the right to grant every family their own state for the sake of "empowerment." That is their choice. But I do not see any good reasons for that. I attended the 6th Annual Lecture in Honor of Nigeria's First President, in the person of Dr. NNAMDI AZIKIWE. The lecture is annually organized by Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, the capital of Anambra State in Southeastern Nigeria. There were many dignitaries in attendance at the occasion. We sat down for good four and a half hours at the event because it seems events in many Nigerian Universities have many traditional and cultural ceremonies that would be considered unnecessary in the United States.
The title of the lecture is: "The Political Economy of Restructuring in Nigeria: Problems and Prospects." It was presented by Chief John Nnia Nwodo, who is the President of OHANAEZE NDIGBO WORLDWIDE. This is a very important and high ranking position in southeastern Nigeria and the country at large. The tone of his presentation suggests he was not just speaking for himself but for the whole region. My sense is that by reading his speech carefully, whether you are a Nigerian or not, you can get a sense of the kind of quarrels that Nigerians are having among themselves and maybe some other African countries too are going through similar challenges.
I am writing a reflection on the document and will share it later. Again, I will be candid by saying that my own personal preference is that Nigeria does not decrease the degree of integration in the federation, and I am convinced frankly after being in Nigeria for some time now that merely restructuring the country will not solve the real problems of Nigeria. Sometimes in terms of vision, Cecil Rhodes vision of having a rail from Cape to Cairo, even though colonial is more encompassing. I do not deny that there are problems in Nigeria and in many respects my assessment now is that the demand for restructuring is just an accident owing to fear. I got a sense that the restructuring demand has more to do with President Buhari being in power. On a critical note, most of the problems that were identified at the federal level by those calling for restructuring, also exist at states and local government levels in their region. But states and local governments operate under the supervision of local elites who have full control over resources they receive from the federal government. And they do receive quite a lot, as the former finance minister of Nigeria, Iwela-Okonjo disclosed publicly in the past. If all states and local governments in Nigeria use the resources they receive judiciously, Nigeria would still have been a better country, in spite of.... And the efficiency at the state and local government levels, if such exists all across the country, will create a political atmosphere where it will be difficult for the federal government to continue to be inept. The Obi of Onitsha who was at the lecture and a calm and truly senior statesman confirmed this suspicion of inadequacies in the management of resources at the state and local government levels. Based on evidence, I do not believe that the states or local government elites have moral grounds to criticize the federal level because they themselves do not take the masses seriously.
It seems to me that from listening to the lecture, there is a kind of generational difference among older gentlemen from the southeastern region and the current younger generation. The younger generation, not the youngest, are in a hurry to be somewhere, which is understandable. But the conundrum is that many of the decisions that led to the current constitution of Nigeria were made with many elders from the southeastern region involved. During the lecture, at one point I felt like, the president should have first met with the older gentlemen from the region who approved of many things he is now condemning and thrash out their differences. But now a younger generation from the region feels otherwise. And when you talk to the very young, like college graduates or even market women, restructuring frankly is not their concern. And for persons in my generation, we have been deceived by creation of more states and local governments to bring the government closer the people but all turned out to be a farce. My current local government in Nigeria is less effective and less efficient compared to when the local government was made up of three present day local governments. When I visited the elementary school I attended in my hometown, tears rolled down my eyes because all the windows of the classroom are destroyed and so you can enter the classroom from the window any time. There was not a single seat in the classroom. How can anyone justify the creation of more local governments and states in this respect.
Compared to Malaysia, Nigeria took this dubious and lousy approach to development, which amounted to creating more opportunities for corruption and paying salaries, instead of investing in capital projects like infrastructure, healthcare, education etc. which can benefit not just present but future generations also. Malaysia invested more in making state structures and institutions work more efficiently and effectively and they saw the results clearly in their pursuit of capitalist development, which Nigeria is equally trying to do. Once the people in Malaysia tasted the benefit of efficient and effective state institutions, they push for more of that and Malaysia saw how efficient and effective state institutions helped the country to attract foreign investment, technology transfer etc. Even the World Bank commended the country for that. Malaysia was ahead of the World Bank in understanding that merely implementing neoliberal economic reforms without social, socio-cultural and attitudinal change, the reforms per se will go no where. In Nigeria, neoliberal economic reforms were implemented but it had little or no impact on efficiency. Take for instance the privatization of the national electric power authority. It has done little to improve regular power supply even though it is privatized. Capitalism is not just about economics, it is also about certain socio-cultural and behavioral changes attitudes. It is like a secular religion. Understanding what makes institutions work effectively and efficiently is at the core of pursuing capitalist development if this is what a country chooses to do. How you achieve this can vary in terms of strategies and contexts but at the end without efficient and effective institutions, you cannot succeed. In this respect, the great majority of African elites do not have the courage to focus on justice, fairness, genuine efficiency and effectiveness of public institutions. They may say so, but the reality on the ground says something else in many cases.
Interestingly, one of the Elder Statesman from the Southeastern region of Nigeria, Chief Iwuanyanwu warned during his short impromptu comment that those clamoring for Nigeria to return to regional government structure should forget about that because even within the same southeastern region, areas that currently have state governments would not like to abandon that for a regional government. He did not get into the details of explaining why he thought so but he highlighted a very important issue that everyone should take seriously. States in Nigeria are structures that allow some elites to claim identity and control access to power and scarce resources. This situation makes such elites politically relevant in the country, because they have a base. Reverting back to regional government will cause greater competition, maybe even ruthless one in the various regions for power because controlling the state means controlling access to means for patronage and patronage enables ruling elites in Nigeria to become like demi-god as the masses come and beg the elites for access to scarce resources and public institutions. I am very confident that mere restructuring will NOT do away with this modus-operandi of public institutions, which many of the Nigerian elites calling for political restructuring take for granted.
Two persons from Northern Nigeria were invited to the lecture but only one came. Professor Ango Adullahi who is the leader of the Northern Elders Forum was invited but he did not show up. I am not sure that one can assume all elders in Northern Nigeria speak with the same voice but people do make such claims. Professor Addullahi in my assessment represents the very conservative north that is not in a hurry for social transformation and adopts a more antiquarian approach to history as Friedrich Nietzsche would describe it. The other person invited was Alhaji Tanko Yakassai. I visited Yakassai ward so many times in Kano City when I was an undergraduate, and he was invited to speak to us as students then. For those who do not know, it was great that Yakassai was invited because he represents a different voice in northern Nigeria. He was imprisoned several times by the NPC which was the government in charge of Northern Nigeria. He was not part of NPC but NEPO who were more attuned to the masses. If Professor Abdullahi was present, many in the audience would be shocked to know that the simplistic view of some people that there is a monolithic voice in northern Nigeria is mistaken. In any case, Gayatri Spivak makes the point that even the subaltern group or people do not speak with one coherent voice.
Alhaji Yakassai is very articulate and willing to stand for what he believes, no matter what, and he told this to the audience. He even called for the need to use scientific evidence to resolve some controversies instead of basing claims on sentiment. I have not heard many people in his generation in Nigeria talking about the "scientific method." He is now 92 years old. But the organizers made one terrible mistake. The occasion totally ignored him in spite of the fact that he was the oldest in the forum and they invited him and he accepted to come to Awka from Kano for that purpose. And for a man of his age to grace the occasion was truly a sign of commitment. It was obvious that he has very close relationship with some high ranking Igbo people that he met since the days of Nigeria's First Republic and they were very sincere and close friends with each other. He mentioned some of the names right there and I sensed from the context that the current president of Ohanaeze, coming from a younger generation, does not have that kind of cross-cultural or regional relationships as the older generation.
Alhaji Yakassai also was a witness of many of the things that the presenter made reference to in his speech and he quickly corrected what he thought were some glaring errors and insisted that if anyone disagreed with him he or she can go and get the contrary evidence if it is in existence somewhere. The place was quiet as the old man explained himself. Having been ignored, when Yakassai stood up, he scolded the organizers on grounds that that if they were committed to protocol as they claimed they were, what they did to him was inappropriate. Second, he told the audience that the ovation that were made in response to some of the things the presenter said suggests that the audience was an uncritical one and he gave them the reasons why he thought so. By all standards the Ohanaeze president is a very sharp, intelligent and passionate person. The problem is how everyone of us channels his or her passion and knowledge. I always feel bad when I see the way a highly educated person in Nigeria like Femi Fani-Kayode who is a product of Cambridge University, but yet reduced himself to pursuing petty squabbles across the country. He can do far better than that. But in my discussion with a Professor in the Sociology Department at Nnamdi Azikiwe University whom we sat close to each other, we agreed that the problem was the forum was more like a political one, but it was publicly advertised as a scholarly one. There are many things that can be said and go unchallenged politically, but in a scholarly forum, this would not be possible.
I have attached the speech read by the President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide for you to read. There was discussion in the forum that the speech will be printed and distributed across Nigeria. But my sense is that given even what some of my graduate students said in class to me about their feelings with regard to the lecture, the speech may not be a true representation of the vision or opinions of all Ndigbo people. I think this will be true for any similar lecture given in any region of Nigeria, not just this one. Some may think differently, just as Alhaji Yakassai's position would have been different from that of Professor Adullahi. Yakassai would have obviously been critical of some of Professor Ango Abdullahi's claims as representing a monolithic northern Nigeria even though they are both from the same region. But why should anyone in any case assume that simply because people come from the same region, they will have to necessarily share the same opinions or beliefs. We live in a much more complicated world. If life was such simple, we just need one person as a representative sample of the whole region. Maybe that would work in a simple hunter and gatherer society. But anthropologically, once humans had the courage at a point in their evolutionary history to claim nature, something they did not create or own, but appropriated it, saying they own it and privatized it, excluding others from accessing it, at that point, we reached a turning point in how we relate to teach other. Ownership of property in various ways distort and vitiate ordinary human relations, among other numerous factors.
The President General of Ohanaeze in his speech raised the concern that the various constitutions of Nigeria have never been democratic because there was no referendum to validate the documents based on the voices of the Nigerian people. The audience clapped for that, but amazingly for the whole four and a half hours of the lecture, there was no attempt to allow the members of the audience to ask any question such as by writing the question on a card and giving it to the organizers to read it out, so that the president and other elites on the high table can respond and clarify some of their assertions. People were just expected to sit down and listen or so it seems. My students complained about being denied the opportunity to ask questions at the forum, when we later met in class. Wherever such an important document or speech is presented in my assessment, I think the audience should be allowed to ask questions. If nothing, this will have more credibility if one is making case for people's voices in shaping a complex decision. Social inequality and differentiation is an indisputable reality in all regions of Nigeria, and such realities, shape people's consciousness in divergent ways. They cannot be ignored.
For the reader who is not familiar with Nigeria, the country is in her 57th year after independence. But the identity question, the problem of developing effective and efficient institutions that will promote inclusive development, and how to manage competition for scarce resources are challenges that the country is seriously struggling with. These are of course concerns that are equally relevant in other African countries as well. Indeed some developing countries in other regions of the world are equally dealing with these challenges too. Until these questions are resolved to a level that is optimum, no one should expect Nigeria taking giant strides. And if it does, it will be "growth without development." The gap between the elites and masses in all regions and even in places of worship is just so wide. The intense pursuit of lucre and material wealth has not only penetrated the inner-sanctum of places of worship and distorting and vitiating the message from the podium or pulpit, but it has also captured any kind of social imaginary and vision of the people by making it a slave and servant to appetitive human desires. As a result, the peoples' vision has become fuzzy and therefore it is difficult to see the common good or what we are in our shared humanity, in spite of our racial, ethnic religious, class and other differences. I believe the U.S. is going through similar challenges. The only major difference is that there are relatively strong social institutions and civil society groups that are already in existence with guaranteed rights there than here. It is a very diffiuclt situation when you go through all these difficult situations that are made possible by centrifugal forces prior to having strong institutions and civil society organizations with guaranteed rights. The concern about appetitive human desires which lead to acquisitive tendencies that are insatiable led Aristotle even during his time to raise concern in his vision of civic republic tradition about how distorted commerce and acquisitive tendencies can constitute a threat to the cohesion and stability of ancient Greek city of his time. His observation is still relevant for us today.
Samuel
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