Friday Musings with
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“No one will describe Nigeria, in large part, as a well-governed country, or contend that the way in which many public institutions are administered- which is essentially what governance means, contributes positively to its development”.
– Richard Joseph, John Evans Professor of International History and Politics, Northwestern University.
Monday, October 1, is Nigeria’s 58th Independence Anniversary. Expectedly, parades of schoolboys and schoolgirls will be organised, speeches will be made by our leaders, and a carnival-like atmosphere will be created. Of course, this is something of a ritual, but don’t forget that rituals are needed, just like myths and memories, to foster a sense of nationhood. Nonetheless, as Distinguished Political Science professor, Richard Joseph, tells us in the opening quote, it is hard to think about Nigeria without alluding to lost opportunities, false starts, visionless leaders, dysfunctional structures and a host of other negative factors that have characterised our existence as a nation. But let us begin however with the uplifting side of matters, the happier narratives. If we consider events and dates, we can take a cursory look at October 1979, when Nigeria returned to civilian rule under an American-type presidential system, emphasising the choice of Nigerians to be governed under a democratic arrangement, May 1999, which ushered in the Fourth Republic, after 16 years of unbroken military rule. We can also look at October 1986, when Nigeria produced the first African Nobel laureate, as well as September 2014, when we beat back the relentless advance of the Ebola scourge. There were other inspirational moments and advances. The vigorous role that we played in ending apartheid in South Africa and enhancing liberation from colonial rule on the African continent. There was also the founding of the Economic Community of West African States.
That is not all, although a good deal of successive oil booms were frittered away, mismanaged and stolen, we managed to build infrastructure in the form of roads, bridges and flyovers as well as schools, hospitals and universities, even if we have failed to maintain them. Democracy, once threatened by repeated military incursions, has become the only game in town; we can debate the quality of that democracy, but hardly anyone speaks today with any seriousness of the possibility of the return of military rule. There is also the point that many Nigerian professionals driven into exile have become stars abroad and contribute in some way to the revaluation of Nigeria.
On the not so exciting side, we can begin with Joseph’s pinpointing of the governance lacuna as the primary cause of our developmental arrest, the failure to maintain quality in our multiplying universities, as well as the lack of an inclusive growth model that will speak to deepening poverty, the chaos in our cities, rising crime, unacceptable levels of youth unemployment and the lack of social policy that will provide safety nets for the desperately poor. In our politics, we have thankfully, some will say hopefully, done away with the years of blatantly rigged elections, in which what matters most is not the electorate but the politicians who declare whatever results suit their fancies. The early years of the Fourth Republic were marked by frantic concerns about whether elections would ever mean little more than the allocation of votes to the ruling party by political bosses. Happily however, and beginning with the 2015 elections, and the introduction of card readers, elections have tended to reflect a great deal, the will of the electorate. It will be silly to pretend that the edifying trend has come to stay or that it is not reversible. All it takes for the yet-to be-consolidated gains to go down the drain is a group of politicians in the ruling party aiding a President who is determined that his party will win at any cost.
As this writer has repeatedly admonished, President Muhammadu Buhari, and the All Progressives Congress will have to allow their role as umpire to override their roles as candidates and contestants. A direct way of putting this is that the Independent National Electoral Commission should be allowed the leeway that it requires to do its job honestly and professionally, without political interference, especially now that the whole world has put on magnifying glasses to see how things are going with our elections. Still on politics, we still have quite some way to go in bringing about credible political parties, thriving as institutions, offering alternative policy viewpoints that will enhance governance, de-emphasising the role of money and party barons in our elections. This will also mean that the constitutional ceiling on election expenses will be maintained, vote-buying, violence and the falsification of results will have to recede to the barest minimum.
Beyond that, there is the need, as many citizens have canvassed, to reinvent our federalism so that states and local governments will not be mere appendages of an imperious underperforming centre. Considering that some of our more populous states have more people in them than some European countries, keeping subnational governments in the harness in which they currently exist is a tragic waste of resources. That is another way of saying that, like it or not, the agenda to restructure federalism can no longer be consigned to the back burner, where it has remained for much of our post-Independence years.
It takes more than a restructured federation to overcome the crisis of governance. Over time, state structures and institutions have become drastically enfeebled to the point where they are overwhelmed by criminal gangs, insurgent groups, militia herdsmen, and other non-state actors that routinely take advantage of an incompetent state. So, side by side with the recompacting of our wobbly federalism, state institutions, now in various stages of atrophy, must be rebuilt so that they can deliver welfare dividends that are often lost in transit between policy proclamation and implementation.
The economy remains a one-legged one, to the extent that it depends overwhelmingly on oil receipts whose volume or cycles of bust and boom, we have no control over. We have talked forever about developing the non-oil sector, without doing much to bring it about, outside of recent advances in agriculture and telecommunications. The recent recession has taught the lesson that it is catastrophic for a nation to have a one-track economic outlet, but I am not sure we have learnt the lesson. A vigorous pursuit of agricultural revitalization and the granting of new life to a stagnant industrial status are needed to construct buoyant underpinnings for a viable economic future. We already have such blueprints but a lot depends on whether we muster the purpose to put them to work for our collective good.
There are other problems, but limitations of space will not permit me to deal with them in detail. Let it be said however, that finding the remedies for the rent seeking and extravagant culture in public institutions, tackling the demographic surge, building a nation where no person or group of persons is oppressed, are the cardinal imperatives of the new governance culture that we must urgently begin to institute.
We wish our readers Happy 58th Independence Anniversary.
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