Nigeria is beset with many challenges. The basic tenets of nation-building have been ignored. As the country celebrates 100 years of amalgamation, it is drifting towards anarchy. Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI reflects on the plight of the most populous African country battling with crises of development.
Then a convoy of nine new Hilux pick up vans hit the sleepy towns of Shuwa, Kirchinga, Kabla and Michika in Adamawa State last week, with men in military uniform firing sporadically and throwing explosives, security agents at checkpoints scampered for safety. Residents of the communities headed for the hills. The gunmen, according to reports quoting eyewitnesses, are members of the Boko Haram terrorist group, who were exhibiting their regular deeds of madness to sound a note of warning to Nigerian authorities, as world leaders gathered in Abuja last week to witness part of the activities marking the centenary of Nigeria’s amalgamation. Abdul Kassim, a Michika resident, said the militants arrived about 9.30 pm, “armed with rocket propelled grenades and explosives, which they hurled indiscriminately at homes and public buildings.” They burnt three banks, a police station, shops and part of Michika Local Government secretariat, in Michika alone, during the attack which claimed no fewer than 32 lives.
The night before the Adamawa massacre, the insurgents killed 43 persons, mostly students, in an overnight attack on a boarding school in Yobe State. Like previous ones, the recent coordinated attacks of the sect are their way of registering disaffection with the way the country is being governed. Owing to rising insecurity and breakdown of law and order in the three flashpoint states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, the Federal Government declared a state of emergency in those states in May 2013 and launched a military offensive to curtail the activities of the terrorists. Since then, the insurgency, which escalated after the general elections in 2011, has almost degenerated into a full-blown war.
Besides, as the country gradually approaches the 2015 general elections, different ethnic nationalities have been dropping the hint, every now and then, that they would resort to bloodshed, if things do not go their way politically. As Monday Ubani, chairman, Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ikeja Chapter, aptly puts it, the American prediction looms large as the country approaches 2015. He added: “Remember the threats from several geo-political zones; the east is threatening, the north is threatening and the south-south is also threatening… Nigeria is currently sitting on a keg of gunpowder. The disaster that may take place after 2015 may be more than what took place during the civil war, if care is not taken. This is because there is bottled up anger.”
After 100 years of cohabitation, Nigeria is at crossroads; most of the ethnic nationalities are complaining of being marginalised and want a better deal within the union. For instance, during its 13th annual congress last Thursday, the Yoruba Council of Elders, a non-partisan, non-sectarian and non-profit socio-cultural organisation, declared that the Yoruba are being marginalised in the entity called Nigeria. In the words of the National President of the group, Major-General Adeyinka Adebayo: “In its 100 years of existence, Yoruba people have been relegated from the foremost, most urbanised, most educated, most economically vibrant, most populous and being the first in everything needed for outstanding nation-building, to the state of neglect, deprivation and marginalisation.”
Indeed, as the country marks the centenary of its amalgamation, it is very evident there is much apprehension and dissatisfaction in the land. For instance, Tanko Yakassai, a former special adviser to President Shehu Shagari and commentator on national issues, is very much disappointed about the way things have turned for the country. He captured his feelings very aptly in the following words: “Countries like Singapore and Malaysia became independent around the same time with Nigeria. But today, they are far ahead of us because we did not stick consistently to running the country on a democratic basis. If democracy had been nurtured and allowed to take root in the country, it would have been a question of competition on the basis of ideas and programmes, not a fierce struggle to grab power at all costs.”
Nnaemeka Amechina, a Lagos-based legal practitioner, is also disillusioned about the inequality, lack of social justice and discrimination prevalent in the Nigerian society today. He is particularly sad about the varying cut-off marks for admission into public universities in the country, which gives students from a certain part of the country better chances of admission and the issue of state of origin generally that invariably crops up in all facets of life in the country. “This should not be. The people of the country should be able to walk the length and breadth of the country without any limitation,” he lamented, adding: “The country is actually struggling to remain together as one because of the problems of inequality and wrong polity that engenders these inequalities. It is only when there are equal opportunities that everybody can feel committed to the union.”
Tade Makun, lecturer, Department of Engineering, Offa Polytechnic, Offa, Kwara State, aptly captured the mood of the nation in the following words: “There is palpable anger and frustration. In a land so blessed, it is a great irony that whereas a few, very few, are living prodigally on our common patrimony the vast, indeterminate majority are subjected to the punishing pains of poverty in the midst of plenty!” As the Federal Government embarks on the celebration of the centenary of the amalgamation, Nigerians are getting increasingly exasperated about their country, particularly over the parlous state of the economy and how it is impacting on their daily lives. Year after year, the economy has been posting impressive growth rates, according to government officials, but this has not been impacting positively on their lives.
With current unemployment rate at 23.9 per cent and unemployed youth population put at 20.3 million, Nigeria has been living on the edge for over five years. A report compiled in December 2008 by the Federal Ministry of Youth Development, stated as of then that the country generated about 4.5 million new entrants into the labour market annually. The figure, it stated, was made up of one million people out of the school system, 2.2 million primary school leavers not proceeding to secondary school, one million secondary school leavers not proceeding to the tertiary level and 300,000 tertiary graduates finding no placement anywhere for productivity. Another survey by the Federal Ministry of Education puts the yearly graduate turnover at over 600,000. Even at that, the official statistical presentation is nothing compared to the reality of the situation.
It has been generally acknowledged that unemployment is one of the most critical problems facing Nigeria. The years of corruption, civil war, military rule, and mismanagement have hindered economic growth of the country, which is otherwise endowed with diverse and abundant resources, both human and material. Years of negligence and adverse policies have led to the under-utilization of the country’s resources. Most basic amenities and infrastructures are grossly inadequate. In most cases, these are in advanced stages of decay. “From roads, to education, to healthcare, to power supply, to security, the story is the same across the land: Citizens are left to cater to these various needs by their personal resources,” Makun enthused. The unemployment situation is aggravated by the lack of functional infrastructures, the collapse in educational and health sectors.
With this state of affairs, the energy of the growing army of unemployed youths is being channeled to crime and other anti-social activities. Many observers have described the youth unemployment situation as a bomb waiting to explode. Indeed, the unemployment situation has been blamed for the escalation of the Boko Haram insurgency, ethnic and sectarian violence armed robbery and the rise in spate of kidnappings round the country. According to a report published recently in the Economist, Nigeria had the most kidnap attempts in the world within the first half of 2013, as it accounted for 26 per cent of all such recorded incidents. Mexico was second with 10 per cent, while Pakistan was ranked third with seven per cent of recorded incidents of kidnapping within the period globally.
While progress in curbing the spate of violence has been appallingly slow, the road to the 2015 general elections continues to be laden with mantraps. Apart from terrorism and other violent crimes, geo-political power contest, particularly within the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the centre is a major threat to the country’s existence as a nation.
How did the country arrive at this sorry pass? In the opinion of Ubani, after reading a recent book written by Olusegun Adeniyi, the former spokesman of late President Umaru Yar’Adua titled “Politics, Power and Death”, he has come to the inescapable conclusion that what is troubling Nigeria are too many and would therefore require several approaches to tackle them effectively. “To start with, there was no foundation laid for this nation. The British were driven away and they left in a hurry and in our bid to take over their position and the country, no serious thought was spared for the foundation of the country,” he argued.
As a result, Ubani added, symptoms of a poorly planned country manifested early after the flag independence, which culminated into an unnecessary civil war that caused lives and materials. “The country has never been a sane country after the pogrom and civil war. The military leaders who took over went on stealing spree and surpassed by the civilian bureaucrats and politicians. Selfish, thieving and morally bankrupt leaders have actually been the bane of Nigeria,” the NBA chairman noted. Rather than build on what the whites left behind, he argued further, “our successive leaders have destroyed and stolen almost all the resources of the country.”
Makun, on the other hand, is categorical in his submission that the reason for Nigeria’s failure to attain true greatness, in spite of her potentials, is absence of a National Vision, coupled with the depressing selfishness and greed of the misruling elite. To Yakassai, however, there are a lot of factors responsible for this. One of the factors, he reiterated, is the fact that successive leaders have not been able to run the country on a democratic basis for a long time after independence. The result, he argued, was that most of the development programmes fashioned by the country’s founding fathers as a way of uplifting the wellbeing of the people were jettisoned midway.
For instance, he said the administration of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the first prime minister of Nigeria, started with about five or six of such programmes. “He conceived the idea of restructuring Kainji Dam in three phases, for the purpose of power generation and irrigation. Since he was killed in the coup d’état, successive leaders did not implement the programme of restructuring Kainji Dam; they were not even able to complete the first phase,” he said, adding: “If the three phases had been completed, enough power would have been generated for the industrialization of the country.”
In the area of transportation, Balewa, Yakassai observed, conceived the idea of extending the railway system to all parts of the country, such as from Jos to Bauchi, Gombe and Borno. Apart from the first phase, from Jos to Maiduguri, the octogenarian noted that all the other components of the railway extension project, which would connected parts of the South-west to the South-east and the South-south, were abandoned after the coup in 1966. “There was also the idea of dredging the River Niger to accommodate ocean-going vessels and thereby make the transport of goods and persons cheaper through the waterways. Since his demise, that idea has been abandoned.
Yakassai also noted that politicians see elections merely as an opportunity to grab power, instead of one of providing service to the people. “It is unfortunate that in our democracy we spend much of the time fighting who should run for an office, rather than allowing the ideas and programmes of the aspirants to determine who gets the ticket,” he added. For instance, he said Nigeria has about five or six major political parties today, “but if you look closely you’ll find that there is no marked difference between Party A and Party B and so on, in terms of ideology and programmes.” He explains: “You will find out that what is happening in one party is equally happening in the other parties. Take the issue of local government elections, for instance. Almost all the parties are averse to holding elections when due. When they do hold such elections, the party in power employs everything at its disposal to put its men in power in all the local governments, irrespective of the strength of the opposition.”
Felix Morka, executive director, Socio-Economic Rights and Action Centre, SERAC, agrees with Yakassai, when he said people with selfish interest are running the country. “Their interest is merely to build up their personal wealth, and use such wealth to get more political and with their political power to expand their personal wealth,” he noted.
In line with Ubani and Yakassai’s positions, one of the things that have destroyed productivity and the healthy rivalry that existed among the regions that constituted the federating units following independence in 1960 was basically the change in revenue sharing formula at the outset of the war in 1967. This was a politically expedient policy that was introduced then to accumulate more funds at the centre to prosecute the civil war. Indeed, the years following independence in 1960 have been dubbed the country’s golden era. Then, the country was divided into three regions (later four with the creation of the defunct Mid West), with each one having autonomy over its affairs in many respects. Back then every region had its own plans for generating revenue internally via agriculture and other activities. Today, in contrast, most of the 36 states that were created subsequently are almost solely dependent on oil money that is distributed by the central government. With the present situation of things, that widespread desire that propelled the federating units to be as productive and self-sufficient as possible no longer exists.
