Thanks, Ojogbon:
Should we not be bothered that we are using our scarce resources to train young men and women to work elsewhere?
We are facing too many contradictions. There are arguments that parents should not pay unaffordable tuition and fees in federal universities based on the assumption that education is for the public good. What happens if the recipients of this education don't deliver that good?
TF
TF
From: Ayo Olukotun <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
Date: Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 5:40 AM
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Subject: WILL 2023 ARREST OUR TRUST CRUNCH?
WILL 2023 ARREST OUR TRUST CRUNCH?
Ayo Olukotun
"When social trust collapses, nations fail."
David Brooks,
American author and columnist, New York Times.
One of the major characteristics of our polity is what is increasingly described as a trust crunch. It is conceived as the fading of trust between citizens and government as well as between citizens themselves. It is not that the trust meltdown, especially as it affects politicians, the political system., governmental institutions is anything new; it is just that there is a resurgence of distrust in recent times and exacerbation of cynicism regarding public affairs. It is not uniquely Nigerian, considering for instance that the British are talking about a post-trust political universe which refers to a reawakening of public distrust of politics and governance institutions especially in the wake of the fall of Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister. Equally so, if not more pungently the case, the United States has experienced its own paroxysm of distrust and withdrawal of faith in the political system. Influential writer and columnist for the New York Times, David Brooks, has spoken of United States as a country undergoing "a moral convulsion". Indeed, United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has spoken not too long ago about the entire globe as afflicted with "trust deficit disorder". I make this point early enough in order to underline as this columnist has always argued the very concept of Nigerian exceptionalism expressed in the widespread remark "it is only in Nigeria that such and such happen" is mostly bunkum. That said, it is one thing to go through a seizure of distrust, recognize it and begin to reverse it; it is quite another not to even recognize it at all as a problem, not to talk of doing anything about it.
In the Nigerian case, it is a sad thing that neither the politicians nor civil society actors appear to see exceptional distrust as an issue, much less thinking out remedies that can mitigate it. Needless to say, or harp on, the extraordinary levels of distrust, especially in the political arena that is almost becoming a signature tune of Nigerian politics in recent times. To give an example, many young Nigerians and not so young ones have left the country to seek fortunes in other nations despite the awareness that these other nations are undergoing their share of hardship and the consequences of inflationary upswings. The social media are awash with cases of immigrants who arrived at their new destinations with songs of triumph for having "escaped" the hellhole that Nigeria has become. Interestingly, several of these countries are hunting feverishly for professionals in the Medical and Nursing sciences, Information Technology; and travel-hungry Nigerians have taken full advantage of the situation. Never forget, however, that as I once wrote in this column, their gain is our loss as several banks discovered recently that their IT sections have nearly collapsed because of the departure overseas of the ablest hands. So, the trust crunch, which in the Nigerian case is partly derivative of promises upon promises by politicians without fulfillment is not something a country can afford to toy with.
The downturn in trust, in our case, has arisen from factors such as high manifestation of political corruption, blatant denials of observable facts by government, double standards, running government as if it is a cabal, substituting propaganda and regime salesmanship for truth-telling, election rigging and the lack of transparency in governance processes. Regarding the elections, for example, there are still many Nigerians who do not bother to vote because they have come to believe that their votes will not have appreciable impact either on election results or on the presumed journey towards a new Nigeria. This is because election after election have not produced the expected or anticipated transformational change that the politicians are never tired of marketing. In other words, a trust deficit arising from the gap between promises and performance has not only enlarged the anomie but has spawned a crisis of legitimacy.
In every country, there is always a gap between the rosy promises of politicians and their performance levels. What we have in our case is not just a gap but a chasm between what the politicians say they will do and how much they will actually get done. True, in recent elections, the application of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System has improved the susceptibility of our elections to whims and caprices which is thumbs up for our election managers. However, new problems such as vote buying have arisen, dangerously threatening the sanctity of our elections.
The other driver of trust deficit in our politics is not just the opaqueness of governance but the whitewashing of palpable problems even crises by public relations experts. To give an example, only recently and after the Federal Capital Territory was besieged by bandits and terrorists, did the government admit that Nigeria faces a mortal challenge on a state almost comparable to the Nigerian Civil War. The question to ask is: has government only recently discovered this when most Nigerians and even the international community have frequently lamented the dreadful upsurge of these existential distresses? In other words, government and its publicists were busy projecting an impression of normalcy while swathes of Nigerian territory were busily occupied by terrorists of different descriptions. Perhaps if government had tackled ferociously the onset of terrorism in the North West, and for that matter the South East and South West, the country would have denied them the oxygen of escalation in the midst of apparent helplessness of government. Perhaps if the siege on Abuja had not occurred, including threats on the President himself we would not have witnessed the recent counter-attack on the terrorists. Trust deficit build on matters like these when there is an unfortunate pretense that nothing serious is afoot while citizens experience a different reality in the brutality of their daily lives.
Furthermore, and in the case of the current administration, conflicting consequences and narratives have attended the fight against corruption. In some instances, reformism, which is desirable even if tepid has provided ammunition for critics of government to berate "gargantuan corruption". However, we must not forget that reformism is double-edged in the sense that it publicizes corruption and also deflates it. The issue of the former Accountant General of the Federation comes in handy here. It lends credence to the claim that government is utterly corrupt but it does not consider that in some previous administration such theft on an industrial scale has occurred without notice. That granted, government would have had a better case even become more trusted if the horse had been apprehended before bolting out of the stable.
That is to say that as in many other debilities it would have been edifying if high level culprits have been hindered from committing the crime, kidnappers had been apprehended before they carry out their infamies and loopholes in the system had been closed making them crime-proof. We must begin now to reverse the kind of governance decay that breeds widening trust deficit, make governance more accountable and open, punish confirmed scoundrels and restore the legitimacy of public institutions. Unless we do this, and quickly enough, our politics will hardly rise above living a lie and that will be a tragic pity.
Professor Ayo Olukotun is a director at the Oba (Dr.) S. K. Adetona Institute for Governance Studies, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye.
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