In April 2013, I stepped out of my airport taxi at the National Youth Service Corps headquarters at Tigris Crescent, Abuja. I was there to officially register in person for the NYSC program as foreign graduates were required to do for some reason. First came the security guard at the gate who needed to emphasize how powerful he was – a few barked instructions about signing in. Something about a pen, followed by a song and dance about directing me to the relevant office. Then came the registration office drama, featuring a distinctly bored-looking Hajiya slouched in the chair.
“Where is the passport with your UK student visa in it?” she wanted to know. Said passport had gone missing years before when a bag of mine was stolen in Bradford, and I informed her accordingly. Apparently, I had to get an affidavit from the Federal High Court across the road before I could be allowed to register, she said. “You can’t register today.” Bearing in mind that my Arik Air return flight was for 7 PM that evening, this was clearly not an option, so I set off on an epic odyssey across Abuja trying to obtain this elusive piece of paper.
“You have to get a “Police Extract,” I was informed at the court. I brought out the document I received from the West Yorkshire Police when I reported the theft of the bag with my old passport in it. “Oh no, you need a Nigerian Police Extract,” the grinning face informed me. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn he was almost enjoying watching me become increasingly flustered. Why on earth did I need a Nigerian Police Extract for an item which went missing on another continent, I wanted to know. “That’s just how it is here,” he said.
That’s just how it is here
When the news emerged last week that 12 systemically important Nigerian federal highways are finally being opened to private investment and management via a concession program by the Federal Ministry of Works, there were no doubt thousands of fists pumping the air from Lagos through Ore down to Port Harcourt. Finally the top-heavy, inefficient and historically incompetent Nigerian government was shuffling itself out of the way of trade and economic growth along some of the country’s most important trade corridors.
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The part of the story that perhaps did not make the headlines as much as it should have, was the fact that the long-overdue concession did not happen voluntarily. The Nigerian government did not finally sit down and take a long, critical look at its performance vis-a-vis what the country’s economic performance needs to be, and then decided to do the right thing. If that was the case, this decision would have been made at least 2 decades ago. Instead, as is always the case with the Nigerian government, the inefficient and unworkable status quo was allowed to deteriorate until the situation became completely untenable and then righted itself via hard reset.
Like the last time, Nigeria embarked on a series of private sector-driven reforms, this decision and the attendant decision to finally privatise the transmission part of the power sector value chain were made by budget cuts. To put it simply, as I have said repeatedly in this column over the past 2 years, the Nigerian government is so broke that it has finally been left with no choice but to let go of the state monopolies it so desperately wants to maintain and control. When it happened in the late 1980s under Ibrahim Babangida, an oil price crunch and a debt crisis necessitated the structural adjustment, which brought a second wind into Nigeria’s beached economy. It is happening now because of an unprecedented public debt crisis amid shrinking revenues and investment that is running for the hills. That’s just how it is here.
More public finance crises please!
What struck me about my sojourn through Abuja that day in 2013 was just how many people were employed in the public sector to do as little work as possible in as much time as possible. There was the distinctly uninterested Hajiya and the chorus of “Ina kwana” surrounding her fellow underemployed bureaucrats doing slight amounts of busywork. There was the adventure to the police station in Mpape that cost me N11,000 to get through 4 different uniformed pen pushers on my way to obtaining a document that was apparently “free.”
It was the dozens of people at the court whose jobs were not especially discernable, but who were nevertheless very conspicuously employed on a government payroll. It was the security guard at the gate of the NYSC HQ and the tiny army of underemployed minions flitting around him, also on Joe Public’s tab. I realised that day that something really has to give in the way Nigeria’s public finances are administered. The country was simply not wealthy enough to be that unreasonable and wasteful. After managing to get the required documents and complete my registration in the nick of time, I got onto my flight to Lagos wondering what it would take for that status quo to end.
8 years later, I think I have my answer now.
