I am still excited about President Buhari’s pre-election promises to suppress corruption and to effect change in our country. I believe he has the honest inclination to accomplish these things, but as I watch his presidency in the weeks since his inauguration, I am gradually being compelled to wonder whether the fundamental realities of our country are not just too powerful for anybody’s urge for change. I hope I am wrong – but I doubt that.
In the circumstance, I find myself having to revisit universal thoughts about the feasibility of a country like ours – about the possibility of orderly and harmonious growth, progress and prosperity in a country like Nigeria. Of course, my strong desire has always been that Nigeria should survive, thrive, and prosper. But, even the little girl who is buying biscuits on one street to go and sell for a little profit on other streets must ask herself the question at every turn whether it is possible for her little transaction to yield her desired outcome. Questions of that nature about a huge enterprise like a country may not necessarily yield a “Yes” or “No” answer, but it can help to identify the fundamental problems and how to tackle them.
Our Nigeria is a country of great diversities, but the most significant diversity is the ethnic national diversity. Nigeria is a country of about 300 ethnic nationalities large and small. Each ethnic nationality is identified by its own homeland, culture, acceptance of itself as a group, possession of its own image and pride and, having managed its own life somehow for probably thousands of years, desirous of managing its own life and destiny. For such a nationality, large or small, having to live with other nationalities in a country, sharing the sovereignty of one country with other similar nationalities, or even having to accept any sovereignty above its own ethnic national sovereignty, has never been easy in human history.
Actions of the most powerful nations in recent history ignored that vital fact and produced many of today’s countries in which many weak nations are combined together with one another, or subsumed under more powerful nations – such as the creation of Belgium in 1831 by the Concert of Europe, the creation of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, etc., by the victors of the First World War, the inclusion of many small nations with Russia in the Soviet Union, and the creation of many multi-nation countries in Asia and Africa by late 19th century European imperialists. In the course of the 20th century, nationalities included in these modern arrangements, and even nationalities similarly involved in earlier periods of history (like the Irish, Scotts and Welsh in Britain, the Basques and Catalans in Spain, the French Canadians in Canada, etc.) have increasingly sought to free themselves in order to establish their own autonomous and separate countries.
In our modern world, the general growth of literacy and education has served, and is serving, as a dynamic stimulus to the growth of the phenomenon of ethnic nationalism and demand for ethnic national autonomy. Universally, education tends to enhance ethnic national group knowledge, pride and desire for self-rule.
Another factor boosting the desire for ethnic national separateness in our time is the observed tendency of multi-nationality countries to be slow in socio-economic development. Among developing countries, those that comprise diverse nationalities have tended to suffer significantly slow socio-economic development. As one Gerald Scully points out in a report for a policy agency in the United States, “Culture standardizes relationships by allowing people to make reasonably confident assumptions about the reactions of those with whom they interact. Even if different groups live together peacefully (in the same country), the lack of a common language and common norms reduces cooperation and increases the costs of transacting.” And the consequence of that is usually the enhancement of inefficiency and waste in the economic system – resulting in slow development and poverty. Stephen Lampe in Building Future Societies argues that development finds a fertile ground in an atmosphere of homogeneity: “The more closely development projects reflect the circumstances of a people, the more the projects can be said to have conformed to the Law of Homogeneity; and the more sustainable such projects are likely to be”.
Also, the growth of every culture has its own unique trajectory – the direction in which its customs, laws, economy, political traditions, and its system of rewards, are growing. When the diverse cultures of diverse nationalities cohabit and compete in a country, especially an underdeveloped country, confusion and inefficiency are usually the consequences. The common experience is that a dominant nationality (whether the dominance is numerical or political), is prone to structure economic and political opportunities to the benefit of itself and its members – with the usual result of conflict, economic inefficiency, and increased chances of poverty for the country. A report by Japan’s Institute of Comprehensive Studies asserts that without a strong national spirit and confident identity, a country cannot efficiently take advantage of development assets in the world and rise to high levels of development.
Two Japanese economists with considerable experience in the study of the Japanese development model in the years after the Second World War, Yujiro Hayami and Yoshihisa Godo, assert that the development efforts of a culturally homogenous country are likely to be more productive than the development efforts of a culturally heterogeneous country – that the more development efforts, assimilation of technology, and transformation of institutions, are correlated to the culture of a people, the greater are the chances of success.
Furthermore, experience in most countries indicates that a country, especially an underdeveloped country, comprising diverse nationalities, is less likely to adopt institutions of freedom, or to run them sincerely and with integrity. In such a country, the endless jostling of the component nationalities for advantage, and the manoeuvres of the dominant nationality to sustain its dominance and allocate the most advantages to its members – all these usually tend to result in distortions of the political process, the manipulation of elections, the falsification of vital records, the appointment of poorly trained and ill-equipped ethnic national favourites to vital public jobs (even when more educated and better trained citizens may be available), the padding of important institutions (like the courts, the police, the military, the regulatory agencies, etc.) with persons dedicated to ethnic-sectional missions, discrimination in the allocation of public appointments and economic opportunities, and so on. All these detract from human freedom and dignity. In the report earlier referred to, Gerald Scully opines that “a lack of personal freedom is correlated with the degree of cultural heterogeneity in many non-Western societies”.
National heterogeneity in a country also fosters inefficiency in the political and economic systems in some other ways. There is no question that economic freedom and rule of law are fundamental requirements for the achievement of high levels of economic growth in the modern world. According again to Scully, scholars are coming more and more to the recognition “that the key to economic transformation of the Third World is to move toward freer institutions, and that cultural heterogeneity is the major barrier to such transformation”.
In short, countries comprising diverse ethnic nationalities have very serious troubles. On all continents, the nationalities that are parts of such countries are agitating, and challenging in various ways the continued existence of the countries to which they belong. The poorer the quality of the governance of a multi-nationality country, the greater the chances of ethnic national conflicts in it – and the greater the chances of secessions and even total break up.
The needed change of direction won’t be easy; but Buhari can lead us to accomplish it if he sincerely tries. Will he? Or, will they let him?
