In Yu-Gi-Oh!, a Japanese cartoon, one of the characters is a brash American called Bandit Keith. Once, he got into an argument with his Japanese subordinates over their distaste for Michael Bay’s movies. ‘Mess with Michael Bay, and you mess with America. I want you guys out of my country by tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘But, this is Japan!’, they replied. ‘Every country in the world belongs to America’ he retorted.
‘Every country in the world belongs to America’ are some of the truest words ever said. The US occupies a position of unparalleled cultural hegemony. Big Tech and the internet have shaped the world in the image of the US. .
That explains the unusual interest taken by many in the recent American elections. Most of that enthusiasm is rather embarrassing because while the people of the world might think of Americans often, Americans barely think of them at all.
While I would love to rail against how being obsessed with the US is a drain, especially for Nigerians, I will not. I realise that one cannot battle an addiction without a substitute. For Nigerians, online participation in American politics and culture wars is a coping mechanism for the failures of our national experiment. Instead, I will draw some useful lessons from American history. By learning the best from the US, we lay the foundation to, perhaps, one day surpass it.
The first lesson the US has to teach is that a home is a precious thing. It should not be taken for granted. Once it is lost, it may be forever gone. Today, when we think of Americans, we likely mean the descendants of European colonists and later immigrants. The natives the newcomers displaced have faded away like the echoes of a passing train.
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Nigerians have a home, for now. Yet, as millions of our fellow citizens languish in internally displaced camps, we may want to examine the fate of the Native Americans. A home can be lost forever. They could have been like the Japanese who strengthened their institutions and were thus able to beat back European predation. Instead, a combination of fate and their incapacity for reform took away what was once theirs.
The second lesson from the Americans is that resources are not a curse. The US, much like our dear country, has been on a continuous cycle of commodity booms since its foundation. Tobacco gave way to cotton, which gave way to gold. Gold then gave way to crude oil. The past decade has seen the US surf past other advanced economies on a wave of shale. What is more fascinating is that the US has always produced more of her commodities than Nigeria ever has of ours. For example, while the US produces around 13 million barrels of crude oil daily, Nigeria languishes at below 2 million barrels.
The difference in outcomes can be explained thus: Americans see their resources as a means to increased production and efficiency; Nigerians see ours as an end in itself. Americans, in other words, see resources in the literal sense of the word; we merely see loot. That is why we have introduced no technological innovations to the process of extracting any of our resources. We have not even been able to refine our crude oil into supplementary products like plastics, fertilisers and petroleum. Put concretely, the US recently achieved a record refining capacity of 19.0 million barrels per calendar day, Nigeria languishes with a refining capacity of 445,000 barrels. The US refines more than 100% of its crude oil production, Nigeria, on a good day, can only achieve 23%.
The third lesson is that connectivity + standardisation + security = prosperity. A lot has been written, and no doubt more will be written about the cause of American prosperity. All those odes to American grit, hustle and genius can, however, be reduced to the following: The US is rich because it is one of the largest integrated markets in the world. Conversely, Nigeria is poor because having been gifted an immense country by the British, we have failed to exploit its market potential.
Criminals, corrupt security officials, bad roads, white elephant transport corridors and insecure property rights are harmful on their own merits. Together, they deter production and stunt our market formation process. The effects are clear to see, witness the transformation of onions from suya freebies to rarer than diamonds. To change this course, we must connect our production centres to our consumption areas, standardise our terms of exchange and ensure the security of life, property and credit. They are simple on paper, but hard to implement.
Finally, the failures of the US to deal with COVID-19 under an administration that said it would ‘Make America Great Again’ is eerily familiar. Nigerians still starve despite ‘Operation Feed the Nation’ and the ‘Change!’ administration looks like the doppelganger of a past government from the 1980s. If nothing else, remember that words without action are a waste of oxygen.
‘A Republic, if you can keep it’ were supposedly the first words spoken by Benjamin Franklin after emerging from the congress that created much of the structures that still govern the US. Those words remind us that nations rise and fall ultimately on the efforts of their citizens. Are we worthy of our country; will we keep it?
Emmanuel-Francis Nwaolisa is a Nigerian by conviction
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