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| NIGERIA AT 49 : THE WAY FORWARD::::::By ALEXANDER .I. TETENTA, LONDON (B.A. (Hons), London; LL.M, Glasgow) |
10/9/2009 |
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Congratulations our dear Nigeria, or do we now prefer to call you Naijaland these days. As you turn forty-nine, remember that your children are looking for a sign that you have not just grown old, but have also grown up. Was the case of independence merely one that sought to get rid of a previous boss who had a plan, but we thought they were ripping us off, replacing them with another set of bosses who had no plan except to take over the running of our affairs, to further entrench the divide and rule tactics, and to loot and plunder at an even more alarming rate than the previous bosses. I am not saying that this was the vision of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Belewa or Obafemi Awolowo during the independent struggle, but there was a colossal failure of their generation to rightfully articulate the kind of future they envisaged for our People beyond moving into the Government Houses Previously Occupied by their colonial Masters. Perhaps I may be wrong in this assumption, especially if we were to consider that line five of our National Anthem states that, “The Labour of Our heroes past shall never be in vain”.
However, it is pertinent to put that line into perspective. Who are our heroes and what were their labours? Let us take a trip down history for a moment. It is often said that the likes of Nkurumah, Azikiwe and Nyerere did have a vision at the dawn of Independence, but out of all the leaders that were around, those that murdered Nkurumah, murdered African Unity and Progress. I struggled to understand why the same cannot be said of those who Overthrew Azikiwe or those that Murdered Murtala Mohammed. The reason may be that the leaders of Nigeria found themselves enmeshed in a Political str uggle tainted by tribalism, as political parties began springing up along ethnic lines, probably highlighting that some who were involved in that struggle with Azikiwe were only looking out for their tribe and region. Little wonder, Azikiwe became a ceremonial head of state with no substantive powers.
As a matter of fact, shortly after independence was granted to Nigeria, cracks began showing on the walls on which our nation’s foundation was built. This was exposed by the outcome of the Western Regional election of 1965, which was classed as fraudulent, denying the winning party a chance to form a government. Thus, in the disillusionment at the failure of the polls, political discontent gave rise to widespread violence and unrest, and as such, at the beginning of 1966, the Western Region was in a state of near anarchy, and rumours were emerging with little evidence that Chief Akintola, the Premier of the Western Region and Sir Ahmadu Bello the Northern Premier were planning to take over the whole Federation with the aid of the military. “Tribalism, regionalism and corruption had invaded almost every sector of public life; politicians had fallen into universal contempt; Nigeria had lost its sense of purpose.”
That same year, Aguiyi Ironsi took over the Affairs of the Nation, toppling one of his own, Azikiwe, with the Assassination of the northern and the western Premiers, the (Eastern) Minister of Finance, and a bunch of other Senior Military Officers which may have sparked the first wave of resentment for and within Eastern Nigerian. However, it was his unification decree of May 24 1966 which triggered the first spate of violence as the North called for secession in place of his decree. Ironsi was further deposed by Gowon, and without going into the technicalities of the war, he fell out with Ojuk wu the then governor of the Eastern Region, whose personality battle with Gowon as well as his concerns about the killing of easterners, led him to call for the regions to “Draw Apart” for a time until the wounds inflicted by the two coups were healed. After the deadlock and contradictions of the Aburi Declaration of January 1967, Ojukwu Declared Biafra Independent on 30th of May and a Civil War Broke Out. Roles were played by various actors in that conflict, Effiong, Awolowo, and many more men like them, including the likes of Ken Saro Wiwa and even Obasanjo, all played roles that affected the lives of everybody directly.
The war did more to further deepen the divisions within Nigeria, but the Military Incursion into Government played and even major role in bringing our economy, polity, society, and even culture to its knees, as living conditions deteriorated even further. Yet out of the rubbles of that war, emerged a more vibrant, more, travelled, more prosperous, more educated, and more advanced citizenry. Nigeria therefore had the necessary resources to fulfil the promise of social, economic and political development for all Nigerians, as well as its national role conception as a regional and continental leader. Nigerian Leaders only had to use the resources effectively and efficiently in order to transform the country from a dependent former British Colony to a modern, democratic state.
Even at Independence, We had an enviable supply of human resources in most sectors of the economy and government, the country had sufficient numbers of well-trained people and it could afford to send human resources to other African countries. By most accounts, the current situation in Nigeria has defied common logic and explanation. In the 1960s and 1970s, Nigeria was widely perceived as a regional power, a country with a historic mission and potential destiny to lead Africa and champion the cause of Black people everywhere in the world. She received praises from the comity of nations as a budding democracy on the road to economic development and modernisation. Indeed, it had all the necessary attributes- the largest population and market, and next to South Africa, the biggest army and gross domestic product in Africa. Policy Makers soon fell under the illusion that money was no longer the problem of Nigeria- the problem was how to spend it. As such, Natural and financial resources were not the only advantage Nigeria had in its economic and political development trajectory.
But, instead of experiencing growth, development and transformation, Nigeria has since independence existed precariously on the verge of social, economic and political collapse. The questions therefore remain; “ Why is this the case with Nigeria?” Why has Nigeria not achieved its full potential as a Democracy? What factors have resulted in the current state of decadence in the Nigerian Society?
From a promise as a regional power, a country with a historic mission and potential destiny to lead Africa and champion the cause of Black people everywhere in the world, our country descended into chaos, with militarisation leading to authoritarianism and ultimately to a system of unaccountability, and one in which even the civilian elements in government were there to loot like there was no tomorrow, because nobody knew when the next regime would take over or when the military guys would fire them without explanation. Suffice it to say that even though people have benefitted personally from the leadership of our nation, that maybe we could start inviting them to put those resources together so that we could build a nation that’ll help preserve the Black race that is already threatened economically, culturally, and politically from all angles, from the West to Arabia, especially if we consider the current race to acquire agricultural land from Africa- everyone now wants a piece of what we have.
Let us also not forget that the first sense of unity engendered by Nigerians, wasn’t during the colonial struggle per se, which was spearheaded by the elite Nigerians, but ultimately the unity of purpose we shared in saying no to Military rule. At that point of desperation, it was easier for us to see what we were against, but not to articulate what we stood for. Some people for instance wanted Babangida to go so badly that it didn’t even matter if the next guy, Abacha, would come in to loot lorry loads of money. He too was to help Nigerians foster a further sense of unity about what we wanted in place of military rule, but little did we know before May 1999 that democracy would only create more mouths to feed out of our national cake, and more people “like the special assistant to the special adviser” with no real jobs, except to spread the looting and plundering to friends and families of those in power. Well since 1999, let us assess if we now need to cut down on the size of government, or to truly create a system of accountability not based on witch-hunting, but based on genuinely doing what is right for the people. Maybe as we try to address the problem, we could make “Corruption Eradication and Fiscal Accountability” a course to study in our Universities as we try to tailor our education to those things we need to help our country grow.
Many have since blamed the colonial legacy for the kind of divisiveness it may have perpetuated, if one were to consider for instance the kind of roles played and comments made by people like Sirs Rex Nivon and Frederick Lugard. In particular, Lord Lugard’s role as both part of the Royal Niger Company leadership, and as the head of the Administration which later amalgamated the Northern and the Southern Protectorates cannot go unnoticed if we are to tell the Nigerian Story. He maintained that his task was not to unite peoples, but to unify administrations, and insisted on preserving the separate identities, despite being advised that this would make the future of Nigeria as a single entity very difficult (especially when it comes to governance, democracy, and ruling by the consent of the people). Lugard’s attitude was not just based on the principle of divide and rule; but he also wanted to protect the admirable traits he had found in the Hausa-Fulani, at the dawn of the century, and as such his affinity to the north may have formed part of British Policy towards Nigeria till today. However the English Language could now provide us with the language of communication, trade and commerce which could drive our unity and progress.
The economic connotations of Nigeria’s colonialisation, was a reflection of trading interest along the River Niger, and further pointed to Nigeria’s economic potentials which we currently have no excuse of exploring by ourselves and expanding on. Since the British left Nigeria, one could no longer catch a train from Oshodi, and whilst we like to say that they built these trains mainly to take goods to the coast, what have we done to ensure that we find our own reason for railways, or that we use it to solve the problem of public transportation, and maybe take some pressure off the roads whilst they are being reconstructed? What have we done to ensure that, maybe the man who herds Cattle from the North to the South, could probably put them on trains and they would get to the South quicker. Maybe, the people in the So uth could put yams, palm oil, some mangoes and oranges on the train, and they could go from Okigwe to Nguru in three hours. Maybe the woman in Akwete could travel quicker to Lagos with her traditional Akwete cloths for an international exhibition, and on her way back she could stop over at the “Oduduwa Musuem” (Of the Future) at Ile Ife, to showcase Nigeria’s cultural heritage with some of her son’s friends from Turin, Italy. Maybe the goods would be getting to the market as such a rate that it could trigger innovation, as farmers start thinking of how to preserve their produce.
Perhaps our scientists and industrialist would join in the search to find how we can preserve the goods, turning orange into juice, plantain into sachets of plantain chips, and even stew into bottled sauces for export. Maybe in the process our scientists might bump into the cure for malaria, or maybe they’ll find a way to increase the yield of Palm nuts as the world seeks alternative sources of energy. And maybe, just like I have seen in Dubai, or in Israel, or heard from people who have been to Las Vegas, they could find a way to turn the desert north into grassland. Maybe while they’re at it, urban developers, town planners, civil engineers, and architects would start thinking of how to build nicer places for people to live and work in, and afterwards moving people into those place, and getting rid of the numerous batchers made of wood and zinc where people live in the ghettos, as well as helping us plan and construct the infrastructure on which our industrial age would run. Maybe Marine Engineers , Scientists and Technicians could help us clear our waterways, making way for commerce and Tourism. Maybe the poor people in the slums could get jobs working on these projects, as we even incorporate these into our national curri culum, giving them a chance to acquire some training and qualification in Construction/Building/Plumbering, etc. Maybe our school curriculums would begin to look at areas we really need to train people, like in Sanitation and Waste Management, then we could have environmental assessors and scientists. Maybe we could start seeing the need to finally and sincerely complete the Ajaokuta Steel Complex, and could even invite those who have benefitted from that project so far to buy stakes in the project instead of putting their money in Swiss Banks, and maybe we could start making the bodies of our cars, train coaches, trams, and public transport buses of the future. Perhaps at almost every train stop, there could be a major shopping centre, with some stores, and even offices that could employ average Nigerians, which could perhaps replace some batchers of wood and zinc at our motor parks and streets.
The possibility of developing such an infrastructure may lead to us thinking progressively about how we could now tap the millions of cubic metric tonnes of gas we currently flare, to power our infrastructural recovery, and perhaps to have enough to export, whilst not forgetting to power gas to the homes citizens, who could now stop cutting wood from our forests to cook. We could finally stop paying lip service to climate change and environmental degradation, and end up killing almost three birds with one stone: Deforestation, Ozone layer Depletion, and Desertification. Maybe we would halt selling our ancestral lands to foreign interests and start looking at how we could employ ordinary Nigerians mainly in the rural areas, to work on industrial scaled agro-projects of the future. Maybe with our oil, and gas energy we could fuel these changes, but first we must be sincere about fixing our refineries, which could employ man y more Nigerians, and cater for movement of goods, peoples and services including serving the needs of industries. Maybe we could give our younger engineers and technicians a reason to be proud of being Nigerians, by giving them an incentive to come up with innovative ideas that’ll help us tap the wind energy along our coastlines, or the solar energy from above.
After all, I know Nigerians who have made computers, who work in Boeing making planes, and others who are Scientist helping the west go to outer space, and by the way, one of the first Black Women to be heading to space is a Nigerian. Other Nigerians I know, work in Car manufacturing plants, or are the head of Oil companies around the world, whilst some work to help deliver good governance in western countries or are helping with the research for HIV/AIDS. As such, the question is not whether we could individually achieve success, but whether collectively, we could achieve success as a people, especially given that those Nigerians, we hear about; in football and science, IT and Aerospace Technology, from Medicine to Geophysics, from Nursing to teaching, from International Law to Business who are doing things on the world stage are actually doing so mostly under the ausopices of Western comfort zones, in Western countries and outside Nigeria, not inside Nigeria. Their fellow compatriots who were not so talented, or who have not been blessed with the where-with-all to move freely to the west and east in search of opportunity, are the ones who end up dead in the desserts of Libya on their way to Europe, or the numerous prostitutes on the streets of Italy who sell their bodies for money even though they are graduates of History and Economics from our Universities and Polytechnics, which are now fast becoming corridors of shame, with the spate of in cessant strikes like the on-going one, further crippling our economy and future prospects. The other Nigerians who make it to the West or East in Search of opportunity, end up sweeping the underground trains for Londoners, or working as cab drivers in New York, or teaching in a School in Moscow, or working in factories all of which we could build in our own country, and employ our own people.
This is where the government comes in, because, let the truth be told, those in government are not really sincere about solving our education problems, as long as their children could afford to attend universities abroad, whilst living in houses bought by looted Nigerian funds. They are not really sincere about solving our power crisis, as long as their houses have automatic trip-on generators that come on as soon as power cuts off, making the man in Japan and China even richer every day. They are not sincere about solving our petrol problems, because if they are, we would not be exporting crude oil and importing petrol, whilst people queue up in the Land of oil, to buy oil, and when prices go up, those in power could afford it because they have looted enough money to afford it, and even when goods and services go up as the cost of petrol is added on. They are not sincere about fixing our roads, as long as they can drive in their Jeeps with their windows wound up, whilst blaring their sirens, splashing muddy, pot-hole water on passers bye, and flogging the rest with koboko (whip) to get them out of the way. They are not even sincere about solving our security crisis, by ensuring that our policemen and women are trained by the same people they go to beg for aid, and maybe we could equip our police department with enough resources to tackle crime, but instead, we prefer to make the police work only for the rich. Why s hould you blame them, after all, how much is their salary? I met a policeman in Ikeja last February who told me that his salary was only Nine Thousand Naira which, when you divide by 250 is roughly about £50.
So we see that in place of a civil society, our leaders have created a militant society, one that seeks to turn their former political and oil bunkering thugs into kidnappers whose message of “fixing the Niger-Delta” is often lost in this idea that a ransom could provide the solution to the oil spillages, air pollution or deforestation. They know no better, because if our government had created jobs in the areas I had identified earlier, particularly those to do with oil, gas, and infrastructural development, we would have employed these young men, whose first crime was being born in a land blessed with oil. Meanwhile our country continues to exists precariously at the verge of imminent conflict, with most of the energetic young men and women in the Niger Delta, some parts of the North, and in the South-East in particular, looking for how to express their dissatisfaction with a country that has constantly neglected and marginalised them. Whose interests are we serving when we create a condition that makes us use arms made by foreigners to destroy ourselves, instead of using them to guard ourselves and our infrastructure. Bearing in mind that our God and our People shall judge us not by what we destroyed, but by what we built, what are we doing to ensure that, the next generation of Nigerian leaders could be supported to rebuild a nation where peace, unity and justice could finally reign.
Igbo people say that “agba mga, aburu enyi” (after the conflict emerges true friendship), and there is no disputing the fact that out of our previous disagreements with one another on questions about governance , economy, religion, tribe, polity and about how our society should run, that we are now in an even better position to get together to solve those problems which binds us all together. The problem of desertification is no longer a Northern Nigerian problem, but an African problem, likewise, the problem of the Niger-Delta, is no longer an Ijaw or Ogoni problem, but is ultimately an African Problem, and more so, a Global problem because of the potential of affecting oil prices. When we fail to educate our next generation, it is not just a problem for the poor, but it speaks volumes about the kind of future we want for our children, especially in this rapidly globalising world which may see them being outsmarted, outwitted, and perhaps even more subjugated by an even smarter race of peoples. When we neglect Agriculture, which should be the basis of our industrialisation, by allowing countries like Malaysia to overtake us in Oil Palm production after they had come to our country not too long ago to pick up some palm kernels, we create a condition that makes the world look upon us as an inferior people who do not know how to harness their God-given talents. When we decide not to invest in laboratories that’ll employ our scientists to come up with a cures for diseases that affect people in the rain forest, the tropics, people in Sub-Saharan African and people of African descent, and instead wait for someone else to do it for us, then we surrender the entire destiny of our people in the hands of others.
Worst still, when we sit back, and let those who have no love for our nation, or simply those with no vision to take over the leadership our country, we send a message to the rest of the world that out of this huge population of a hundred plus million people, that we could not find a set of people patriotic an d sincere enough to lead us out of this political, social and economic darkness. Instead we are stuck with the same set of people since the 1960s and 70s, who still run our country as though it were a child to be fathered, instead of running it as though it were a people to be served. This is what leadership is about, it’s about service to the nation and the people, and never an opportunity to get rich quick. For any man or woman who sees government as an opportunity to enrich themselves is lacking in ideas of how to enrich themselves, and as such is in no better position to lead people and inspire them to enrich themselves, materially, mentally, spiritually or otherwise. It is now time to reverse this trend, and to start setting the pace for a real change of generational leadership and indeed a change of mentality and fortunes our people.
The Bible tells us that we shall not continue in sin that Grace may abound, and as long as we have been given resources by our maker, just like in the parable of the Talent, our creator shall judge us by what we did with our talent, maybe that is why others who do not have as much as us, have been blessed for turning nothing into something. The Quran tells us that, “in our colours and in our tongues are signs of God, they are not reasons to have hostilities, but reasons to marvel at this extraordinary creation of diversity”, and both the Bible and the Quran tell us that “when you respond to a wrong with a right, you eradicate the power of the wrong”. As such we admit that these have been crucial times in our nation building effort. We could say that the military incursions into politics, the bitter civil war, the looting and plundering, the politically motivated assassinations, the disregard of the rule of law, the malfunctioning of our Federalism, the marginalisat ion and neglect of certain regions and of the next generation- we say that these were learning processes and that we have now learnt that these ways of doing things are not working for us.
We have seen that instead we have created conditions that make our citizens walk across the Sahara desert in search of a better life. We have seen that these conditions we have created have further entrenched the divisions and animosities that exist within and between regions and tribes. We have seen that our young people are increasingly leaving our shores in search of education that is not really tailored to suit the needs of our people, and increasing they find themselves lost in foreign land, often doing menial jobs unrelated to their degrees, just to survive instead of going back home, as there is nothing for them to do there. We have seen how we have gradually started discouraging foreign visitors and investors to Nigeria by creating a militant society with no security assurances for even Nigerians like me who would want to return home and play their part to deliver the change we earnestly seek.
To this end, it is now time to revisit the tenets of our federalism, to revisit, the purpose of our existence not just as a united country, but as an African people with a mandate to make every other African around the world proud of their heritage as we embark on changing our fortunes. This shall not be done by a mere rebranding, which could essentially be like putting the same old product in a different package, but can be done by seriously thinking that if federalism isn’t working, then perhaps we could even learn from those who colonised us, who have now found a way to deal with their divisions by granting some degree of autonomy to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Maybe we can rebrand by ensuring that all these young people mentioned in this piece do play a part in the rebuilding efforts. Maybe we can rebrand by ensuring that our policemen are better paid and equipped, and that we take education seriously. Maybe we can rebrand by ensuring that we take our Internal Security very seriously, and this must include food security, communication security, infrastructural continuity and security, education security, health security, water security, environmental security, cultural security, etc, all of which would make us a bit more secure, more peaceful, and more progressive. Maybe we could finally reverse the trend by uniting our economics which would organically unite not just administrations like Lugard envisaged, but ultimately unify our peoples. In the end, we hope that if we do the right things, and get the right people to lead our country, that out of this darkness that looms over Nigeria, perhaps brighter day would come.
Alexander Tetenta © 2009
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