By Segun Gbadegesin
We just bid goodbye to a decade that was, at inception, full of hope. The decade before the last had witnessed a mix of positive and negative developments. We were six months into our newly minted democracy when that first decade of a new millennium made its debut. Naturally, we were full of expectation, first for the new millennium, and then, as an afterthought, for the decade. It was normal.
We had experienced numerous decades in our lifetime; but a new millennium is an entirely new thing. What with the panic! As Lily Rothman of Time magazine reported five years ago, “TIME was prepared for the worst.” The January 18, 1999 cover of the magazine which Rothman reproduced was captioned “The End of the World!?! Y2K Insanity! Apocalypse Now!” etc. There were worries that computers may melt down and that the world itself would come to an end.
The fear of Y2K turned out to be much ado about nothing. As Rothman reminded us, the only significant event on that day 20 years ago was the resignation of Boris Yeltsin as the president of Russia. Well, in view of the fact that Putin was the Yeltsin-anointed replacement, and the developments in geopolitics since then, the West knows now that that event was quite significant. But as significant as it was, Y2K had nothing to do with it.
Back in our beloved land, we took it in stride. Our democracy was midwifed by dictators, who were its original saboteurs, as they imposed one of their rank. Good luck with that, friends wished us. Those friends were right. Even as they were shamed out of political power, the military ensured that they left an indelible mark in a new constitution which centralised power and made a mockery of our foundational federal system. This singular move ensured that a president with an authoritarian mindset can grab as much power as s/he wants to the detriment of states and other branches of government.
What does it matter? Many of our compatriots ask this question innocently. What does it matter if we had a benevolent dictator, who focuses on and achieves good governance that benefits the greatest number of citizens? If folk can put food on the table, educate their children, and enjoy the good of life, why bother about constitutional niceties? Indeed, why should we worry that the Federal Government and not the states feed children in primary schools throughout the 774 constitutionally recognised local governments as long as the children are fed? What if the Federal Government provides fire service in cities and towns across the country? What matters is that these services are provided efficiently and effectively. So the argument goes.
What matters is the fact that we have a federal constitution for a good reason. We have a diversity of “tribe and tongue”, the respect for which ensures an enduring national unity, which is our ultimate goal. Incidentally, however, respect for diversity is also in the interest of citizens both materially and psychologically. Our cultural and linguistic identities are inalienable aspects of our being. Therefore, providing the amenities of life for a population from a far centre without their input is akin to a colonial power’s contempt for “native” cultures and customs. That it is internal does not negate its description as a “benevolent” dictatorship.
The foregoing is simply an attempt to capture how we lied to ourselves at the beginning of that decade and millennium. Recall that the constitution that the new democratic republic was founded upon was not released until the eve of the new dispensation. And despite the fact that we have all since become aware of many of its defects, our lawmakers have, in various amendment efforts, only attended to the ones that cater to their interests, scornfully ignoring the fundamental issue of the structure of the nation. The reality of our experience in the last decade is a salient reminder of the problem with that approach.
First, there is no denying the fact of the recklessness of the abuse of federal power since 1999. This observation does not deny that states and local governments also behaved recklessly for the most part. But because much more power was vested in the federal than state governments, the impact of that abuse was much more damaging to the system. We saw this in the prevalence of electoral malpractice. We witnessed it in the depth of corruption and fiscal irresponsibility, with ministers and special advisers accumulating humongous wealth at the expense of the public. We saw it in the diversion of security funds to party members to buy votes and bend the will of the people while criminally abandoning soldiers fighting insurgency to their fate.
In short, the argument that the Federal Government is best placed to use resources for the good of the people and the nation fell flat in the face of high-scale corruption. In the circumstance, investment in education, health, and critical infrastructure suffered terribly. Worse, people see the careless display of such ill-gotten wealth in high places. And this has a debilitating effect on the populace who are naturally angry with a system that treats them as expendables.
There are at least two consequences of this high-level corruption. One is various degrees of social crisis from cultism to money ritual and armed robbery. It is a no-brainer. We have a higher rate of reproduction than many other nations, developed or less-developed. Those nations with lower rate of reproduction take seriously the plan for the education and development of the children they produce. We don’t. We just bring them into the world and release them like animals in the wild do. What do we expect?
The other consequence of high-level corruption is the internal conflict that it generates among various social-cultural groups. We tend to forget these days about the various inter-ethnic crises that the nation went through from 1999 to 2007 with the various ethnic militants vying for attention and supremacy to corner what they considered their own slice of the national cake, especially when they were convinced that the system was rigged against them. All these are the fallout of a corruption-ridden system.
Second, assume that the central government, with an anti-corruption mandate, declares an open and full commitment to the war against corruption, as the Buhari administration did in 2015. The administration has escalated the fight and has been successful to some extent with announcements of fund recovery from some culprits and conviction of others. You would expect that such a commitment would garner support from the masses and you’d be right. After all, as observed above, the masses bear the brunt of the abuse of governmental power that corruption entails. Yet, we have seen that since 2015, rather than abate, there has been an intensification of sectional and sectarian conflicts, from insurgency in the Northeast to herdsmen-farmer conflicts in the Northcentral, Southwest, and Southeast.
There are several reasons for this rise in conflicts, three of which are worth our attention for what they demonstrate. One is that based on their past experiences, many citizens do not trust the government as an honest broker in the fight against corruption. Consider the numerous sceptical and cynical comments published in social media. Furthermore, as the government would have us believe, corruption has a way of fighting back and, because of its strength and strategic superiority, is capable of entering into collaboration with likeminds.
The third reason for the rise in conflicts has little to do with corruption and more to do with our underlying crisis of mistrust. Many who see something commendable in the efforts of the present administration in tackling corruption, investing in infrastructure, agriculture, and diversifying the economy, are nevertheless bothered about alleged lopsidedness of political and bureaucratic appointments and heavy-handedness of the government against critics, both of which are tied directly or indirectly to the structure of governance. For them, a pass on anti-corruption doesn’t justify sectionalism.
For President Buhari, this is Nigeria’s decade. To make it so, we must build a united nation on a truly federal system of governance.
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