My Thoughts On Nigeria (1)  The Nation

By

Bello Abdullahi

belloabd2005@yahoo.com

Nigeria, by any standard, is a blessed nation. With abundant natural resources, talented population, good climate, you wonder why it is occupying the unenviable position it is today amongst the countries of the World after the post-Independence and Civil War brief spell as an internationally acclaimed African country.  Nigeria, today, has more resources than most emerging nations of the World such as Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Brazil. With the Amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914, Independence in 1960, and having survived the Civil War in 1970, the achievements we recorded as a Sovereign Nation are far below average when you compare the achievements of other countries in Africa such as South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, or Egypt; or against other emerging countries like Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, or, for that matter, Venezuela.

With the departure of the colonialists and the truncating of the First Republic and the “accidental discovery” of oil things started going wrong politically, socially, and economically as the nation started a tortuous drift into a deep abyss. Nigeria’s became squandering riches as all other sectors of the economy started experiencing abject neglect. “The money was not the problem, but how to spend it.” That was the mantra of the leaders back then. Expensive jamborees and elephant projects that were never completed or are allowed to disintegrate after elaborate commissioning became the order of the day. The little genuine efforts made in agriculture in some areas were later abandoned as the projects were starved of funds and research. This is in spite of the key role the agricultural sector, though largely subsistence, played after Amalgamation and immediately after Independence.  

With the introduction of the military into the political life of the country after the bloody coup d’etat of 1966, which decimated the pioneer administrative and military leaders of the country, the Military shifted its constituency from the Barracks to the Presidential Mansion, and like they say, the rest is history. Coup or no coup, the military is still claiming relevance in the political equation of the nation.  Since the demise of the First Republic administrative structures, infrastructures, as well as the economy have degenerated into their present state. The only thing the country could boast of is the geometrical population explosion, from a mere 54 Million after Independence to the present 120 Million. Hear Professor Sam Aluko in an interview in 2000, “The national income per capita of Nigeria today is less than what it was in 1960. We were happier, richer, were able to live a better life in 1960 than today. This is the average person. There could be a few people who have made a lot of money and were able to live well today but the generality of Nigerians were able to live better in 1960 than today.”  Out of the forty five years since Independence the Military ruled the country for a total of thirty years, or thereabout.  In my opinion, the issue of whether it is a democratic or military regime is only a matter of franchise. Some civilian presidents, particularly in Africa, are worse than military dictatorships, while some military dictatorships perform better than the so-called democratically elected presidents in terms of meeting the needs of their citizens and running the economy. In Nigeria we simply choose to make a mess of any type of system with each regime ending up worse than the previous one. In our case it is not the system yet, but the people. As a people we need re-orientation from how to discharge our responsibilities to queuing up for petrol at a filling station or staying on the right lane in a traffic jam. We are as a bad as that. Period! May be our oil is a curse rather than a blessing, because, come to think of it, it is the center of all our present political, economic, and social predicaments as a nation.  Otherwise why should other non-oil rich and land-locked countries like Niger be more habitable than our country? Even where we copy systems religiously, sold, or imposed on us hook, line and sinker, we never seem to get it right first time. The Americans are making a mockery of us after seeing what it is costing us to run the presidential system they sold to us: it is expensive and messy. Why? This is a BIG why!

As stated earlier, the discovery of oil resulted in the neglect of other sectors. Nigeria became an import-dependent nation. Items from industrial machines to toothpaste, toothpick and orange juice, and of course, sand, were some of the items being imported. Forget about banned lists that were released at the beginning of every financial year! The few industries inherited soon became moribund, and the residual multinational companies inherited after Independence and the ones that came to partake in the “oil boom” started closing shop one after the other. The hand writing was becoming clearer on the wall that the party will soon be over. Well, almost! Even though the oil still remains in the wells the environment and the economy are no longer conducive for any viable business. Think of any big name in manufacturing that existed between colonial period through Independence up to the end of the Civil War you will find out that they have either closed shop long time ago or are just there in name only, their buildings weather beaten and in ruins. When the required infrastructure are in total collapse, a foreign exchange regime that defies all economic theories is in place, there is no security of life and property and no incentive from the government, why won’t they leave? The so-called indigenization tamely pursued in the seventies did not come close to achieving the desired result. Instead of long term investments in productive sectors of the economy, Nigerians opted for the easiest and quickest way of “making it” through contracts, commission,  foreign exchange deals, drug trafficking, and oil bunkering, among others. This is the beginning of the “get- rich- quick- syndrome” that is still with us today. Overnight-wealth is nothing strange and therefore conveniently accepted by the society and overlooked by the government. The few Nigerians with genuine desire to contribute to the political economy are frustrated one way or another. Government structures became convenient conduits of enrichment. Most, if not all public officials see their position or appointment as a convenient avenue of making money: they will either convert government funds entrusted to them for their personal use, or use their position to make money, one way or another, or both. They are no longer public servants but public masters: “biro-robbers” as they are called in some quarters.

Our universities have since deteriorated from half-baking to sub-standard and our hospitals changed from mere consulting clinics to mortuaries. When the lecturers are being forced to stay and contribute only 30% towards a student’s performance, our medical doctors slip out of the country for greener pastures even if they will end up doing professional nurses’ job. With population explosion, un-employment soared as our graduates could not find jobs – any jobs! State governments are busy competing with one another to establish their own universities, in most cases without thorough professional feasibility studies, when they have found it difficult to fill their quotas in the existing federal universities.  Any meaningful feasibility study for the establishment of a university should be a long term project of, say, fifty years and above. But from the locations of such universities in the states there is no doubt this was not taken into consideration and the only conclusion, rightly or wrongly, one could draw is that apart from competing with one another the governors’ main aim is a convenient means of siphoning funds or to score cheap political points, or both. My dear reader, visit your Alma mater today and you will be shocked at the sight of the structures you left behind. You will be more shocked should you discuss one on one with the first 500 level Undergraduate you come across! Quantity, rather than quality is the focus of our educational policy. Now that the Federal Government has started dishing out licenses for private universities like it did for banks in the 1990’s, the quality of university education in this country in the next twenty years is better imagined! This is the sorry state of our education system today, when at Independence our super administrators were either “Middle” or “Teachers’ College Graduates”. Experts have said it time without number that education is the bedrock of industrialization just as industrialization is the path to the Promised Land for any country. This has been proved by many countries of the world – ask Germany, Japan, Brazil, India, and closer home, South Africa. It is beyond a theory. Unfortunately education does not top the priority lists of the Federal Government and indeed most of our Governors today, while the very few that have it on their lists often politicize them to nothingness.

The situation is even worse with the economy. Since the discovery of oil when our leaders back then  picked up the mantra  of money not being our problem but how to spend it, most of the governments to date spend money impulsively, budget or no budget. No expenditure discipline as most of the expenditures are outside budget, priorities are lopsided and more often than not, the governments do not get them right. Nigeria has been blessed with renowned economists, accountants, lawyers, bankers, etc, since Independence. While the genuine attempts by some to chart a course for the country are just filed away to gather dust, others are too lily-livered to challenge the government of the day for fear of persecution or termination of their appointment, or both. As the few industries that remain continue to operate far below their capacity utilization under the heavy pressure of high exchange rate, infrastructure decay and heavy importation, among others, the GDP of the country continues to deteriorate in absolute terms even where exaggerated, and often doctored  indices are always released by the Federal Ministry of Finance Inc and CBN at the beginning of each financial year to convince Nigerians otherwise. While the country is groaning under the heavy weight of foreign debt repayment and interest recapitalization, the revenue being generated from oil was  squandered through misappropriation, jamborees, foreign exchange auction  and elephant projects, other productive sectors of the economy such as  agriculture, education and manufacturing are abandoned. Misplaced, and often poorly executed projects such as FERMA (Road Rehabilitation), Debt “Forgiveness” for failed banks, Monetization, Political Reform Conference, Debt Conversion, Poverty Alleviation, NESS, Privatisation,  and National ID, readily come to mind. Nigeria is about the only oil producing country among the OPEC cartel that has refineries but relies on importation for local consumption! The country only saw the proliferation of banks. Licenses were indiscriminately issued for cliques to set up banks with branches in Lagos and Port Harcourt only to declare profits in the region of upper eight digits back then within their first year of operations! It was much later those regulatory authorities “woke up” from their slumber and discovered that most of these banks are no better than licensed bureau de change offices with round tripping as their main line of business! These banks continued to operate like this for a very long time since there was no effective supervision from the regulatory authorities.

The adverse effect of all these are the social decay, lawlessness, insecurity, and above all, pervasive corruption that characterize our polity today forty five years after the attainment of Independence.  Armed robbers strike at will in broad daylight and night, 419 transactions are prevalent, economic and financial crimes are the order of the day; drug trafficking, smuggling, fake drugs and bootlicking are some of the “professions” we thrive on.  Tribalism, nepotism, sycophancy, praise singing, religious bigotry, as well as laziness are our common characteristics as individuals.  While some are like this by choice, the system and environment forced others to acquire these infamous characteristics.  It is no surprise then that our nation occupies the unenviable top position of the list of anything negative in the World: from Transparency International, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, or Travel Advisory Watch list. Are we going to remain like this? Is there no hope? Don’t we as a Nation aspire to drop the shackles of underdevelopment and catch up with even the emerging nations of the World? If the answer to this last question is in the affirmative, then from where do we start? And how do we start?

Nigeria has the potentials of becoming one of the great nations in the World – the human and material resources are there in abundance to achieve this. What we need is the fighting spirit of the Japanese, the determination of the Germans, the I-can attitude of the Chinese and the nationalism of the Americans.  Sounds uphill but we can do it and change things for the better in our country.

First and foremost, we have to get our priorities right. Pervasive corruption, illiteracy, mismanagement and waste, lawlessness, and dishonesty are the main vices militating against our progress as a nation. In overcoming these vices our leaders must show the way – political, religious and traditional leaders all have a key role to play in this gargantuan task. When they lead by example without shenanigans, sleaze, fear or favor the path will be clear for all and sundry to copy and follow. Our leaders, and indeed other citizens  of the country, beseech countries in Europe and the Americas daily where they see first hand how administrative structures are run, how efficient infrastructures are, and how law enforcement agents and agencies operate but make no attempt to change things back home. Funny enough, they often compare and contrast how inefficient and backward our own systems are (or how efficient the systems in those countries are) – from the system of government we adapted to the corrupt and ill-equipped immigration and custom agencies we operate.

Our politicians will do well to start by seeking for political office to serve and not as an investment with upfront and compound interest payments. Their desire should be to serve the nation and make life better for its citizens – value-adding laws should be of more interest than their salaries and allowances. Contracts that will directly impact on the lives of the citizens should be awarded to professionals with the financial muscle instead of sharing it amongst themselves or their cronies. They, or indeed any Nigerian, should not pay lip service to thinking of what the nation can do for them but what he or she can do for the Nation. It is as simple as that!  Should this be the case the politicians would not spend a whole four-year term discussing their salaries and allowances; and wasting the tax payers’ money in financing esta codes, posh accommodations, sleek cars, designer mobile phones, etc. If you are a keen watcher of the NTA programs from the Senate or National Assembly you are by now familiar with our honorable legislators carrying excess weight, spotting pot bellies, or outright obese! The cameras have caught many of them sleeping! Of course the Senators are looking more robust and overweight than the Members. Little wonder then that winning elections and re-elections in Nigeria today are a matter of life and death: it is either how deep one’s pocket is, how ruthless he or she is, the caliber of his sponsor/godfather, or both. Some of them have never visited their constituencies for the better half of the first term and yet they collect constituency allowances and nobody will ask questions because the whole system is rotten and therefore stinks! Or, come to think of it, why must the Executive “lobby” with “Ghana-must-go” before a Budget is passed? In any civilized polity in the World it is the legislature that appropriates and not to collect money and rubber-stamp proposals submitted by the executive, or for that matter, any ministry or parastatal. Or why should the legislators be settled before they screen and pass political appointees just as the presidency will need to ensure that such appointees toe its lines. Why should the welfare of committee members like those of Banks and Agriculture be taken care of before they can do the job for which they were elected? Any serious debate you hear about or executive-legislature squabbles that come to the open more often than not, border on making money through contracts-sharing, travels or money exchanging hands. Now I see the logic behind the call for making the legislators’ job “part-time”. If the effort of the Federal Government on the so-called monetization is a serious one we should start eliminating waste from the National Assembly by making their job a part-time one. The Presidency should also shed weight.  They may even perform better by achieving more this way. It will really be interesting to know exactly how much is spent in absolute terms on each legislator in a year. In other words since his position is a permanent one, what is the “Compensation Package” of each legislator?  Within the first term of this Republic the turnover of the leadership in the legislature and the ruling party is unprecedented any where in the civilised World. A learning process indeed! This is the genesis of our problem as a nation and it must be tackled decisively. All other economic and social maladies revolve around it; once we get it right it will have a direct positive effect on our socio-economic life as a nation.

The government must create an enabling environment for local and foreign direct investment. It really beats the imagination of any right thinking human being why our leaders should be globe trotting looking for foreign investors when back home the environment is, to say the least, not investment friendly. The mere fact that they waste their energy in this venture by running helter-skelter suggests that all is not well with our economy. Leaders of other countries of the world do not glob trot looking for investors – their economies and the enabling environment sell themselves. If they have to visit other countries of the world is to discuss things like trade quotas, tariffs, trade barriers, custom duty, etc. How many times have we received the visit of the South African leaders in Nigeria calling us to come and invest in their country? The basic infrastructure that is necessary and therefore key to the survival of any industry such as uninterrupted power supply, water and communication are non-existent while inflation is at run away double-digit level and a foreign exchange regime that defies all theories is the order of the day.  The few that come to do business in our country even under these poor operating conditions milk our economy dry with exorbitant prices and tariffs for their products and services. Government must also address the serious issue of security of life and property as it is as critical as the other two. Nigeria’s image abroad in terms of security of life and property is nothing to write home about. If countries like South Africa within our Continent can attract investors and tourists there is no reason why Nigeria cannot do it, despite the fact that crime rate is higher in South Africa than in Nigeria, if the available statistics are to be believed. The only difference is that while the South African government has an efficient system in place that tackles the problem, in Nigeria it is either in a sorry state or non-existent.

As Nigerians we should have confidence in our country as we have no other place of abode. Only few Nigerians have genuine productive investments in popular companies across the shores of this country – the rest stash the money (ill-gotten?) in popular banks in Europe and America either in real estate, checking accounts or term deposits that they can easily have access to when on their shopping sprees with their families and girl friends. A number of Nigerians that you can count on one hand have investments worth more than the $35 Billion the two “Clubs” owe us which our leaders have been running from pillar to post for cancellation. Personally I think we are just wasting our time and energy in this venture. Europe and America have records of our earnings as an oil producing country, have records of the ill-gotten wealth our leaders stashed in their banks and have full intelligence reports of our mismanagement and wastes on a daily basis. They have said it through their various representatives at different forums that Nigeria does not qualify for debt forgiveness.  Late MKO Abiola made even more sense in asking for reparations from Europe for enslaving our great grand parents, exploiting our resources, and colonizing our country! Government should provide incentives for bringing back home these investments to boost the economy by resuscitating our moribund industries to stabilize our GDP growth and take care of unemployment. This, definitely, will not be easy as the economies of Europe and America are benefiting from the investments and loots stashed in their banks.

Each and every Nigerian, no matter how low and high, has a contribution to make in turning things around, but our leaders must show the way by setting good example and bringing out policies that will add value to the lives of citizens in the areas of manufacturing, education, agriculture, infrastructure, among others. We as a Nation must make an earnest resolve to change from a heavily import-oriented country to an export one to give our economy the necessary stimulant for growth. Our politicians should put the nation and its citizens first in whatever they do even at the expense of their own welfare or benefit. Other public officials should operate as the “public servants” they are and not to turn their positions into money spinners. Corrupt and scandalous politicians or public servants should be investigated, prosecuted and flushed out of the system no matter how highly placed.

One of the ways that will help us reach the Promised Land is for us to de-emphasize voting for a political party and look at the individual and vote for integrity, professionalism, proven track record, and personality: reject money politics and band-wagon liberation. This is making a case for Independent Candidature in our Constitution. Each and every citizen should swallow the seeds of patriotism, nationalism, self-sacrifice, law and order and above all the I-can attitude. There is enough wealth in this country for it to go round the 120 Million people, not necessarily as a “National Cake”, instead of the ugly lopsided income distribution of a privileged 5% monopolizing 75% of the nation’s wealth, while the remaining 95% are left with a paltry 25%. (This is my estimates and not statistically authenticated by the Federal Office of Statistics, if at all one expects to find these figures there!)

It is not late but if you consider what the United States has achieved since it declared independence in 1776, the success of Japan since Hiroshima, the emergence of Germany after WW II as the leader of the New  Europe, Singapore since the attainment of independence in 1995, or indeed what South Africa has achieved so far since the demise of apartheid with what we have so far recorded in all spheres of life in Nigeria since our Independence forty five years ago, there is cause for concern.

Unless we make an honest resolve to address these issues to turn things around in our country the ominous predictions in the American Intelligence Report will definitely come to pass.

We must not allow this to happen!

Therefore we have to start NOW.

BELLO ABDULLAHI

20, MALALI GRA,

KADUNA,

KADUNA STATE

N I G E R I A