Akintola Williams Memorial Lecture (Concluding Part)

With a sizable number of medical professionals relocating overseas, the health of citizens is in jeopardy. The wealthy fly abroad for medical treatment. Medical tourism sets Nigeria back by $2 billion yearly, per the Nigerian Medical Association.

Fifty-eight years after independence, Nigeria went from bad to worse. That year, it gained global disdain after overtaking India as the global poverty capital with 87 million nationals. Unfortunately, things are much worse. In 2022, the NBS estimated that 133 million Nigerians lived in multidimensional poverty. The situation degenerated in 2023 after Tinubu cancelled the petrol subsidy that had kept transportation prices affordable and floated the currency. The World Bank said the twin policies added 7 million Nigerians to the poverty rate. Data by the NBS put the poverty rate at 27.2 percent, or 17.1 million citizens, in 1980 and 69.0 percent, or 112.47 million, in 2010. Multidimensional poverty is at 63 percent and income poverty at 40 percent, the AfDB said.

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Its economy is disarticulated. This is reflected boldly in the 10 percent tax-to-GDP ratio, one of the lowest in the world. The OECD pegs the minimum for economic development at 16 percent tax-to-GDP.

Labour is poorly rewarded. Most states are struggling with the new national minimum wage of N70,000 per month. On its part, the Federal Government is incurring debt to pay federal civil servants, although the national debt stock crossed the N121 trillion barrier in 2024. The Federal Government serviced its debt by 74 percent of income in Q1. There is a wide gap in income equality. Unemployment remains unusually high.

Unwisely, Nigeria is unwilling to change a political structure that has delivered discontent, agitations, and extreme privations. The political leadership is driving the system to ruination, and implosion is imminent.

Its only positive claim is that democracy is in operation after the exit of the military from governance in 1999. That is as best as it gets. Elections, a healthy measure of democracy, are hollow; they end up in litigation, and winners are decided by the judiciary instead of the electorate. This creates deeper fissures after each election cycle.

It was not so at the beginning. The 1963 Republican Constitution recognised the importance of federalism, which accommodates disparate interests, especially that of minorities. The three regions—East, West, and North—developed at their own pace, begetting healthy competition and development. Those three regions are now atomised as 36 states. Most are not economically viable.

The misguided military coup of 1966 destroyed Nigeria’s incipient political soul. Since then, the country has experienced a three-year internecine war. Amidst renewed violence, Biafra separatist agitators are asking for their own country again. The North is defined by religious bloodletting, a sign that Nigeria is a failing state. Others are emphatic that it has failed.

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Nigeria has a few options left. One, it can continue pretending as a unitary state and eventually self-destruct. Two, it can instigate true federalism—the devolution of power to the constituent units as it was in the First Republic. Here, the federating units are co-equals to the centre, not subservient as it is currently, in which they go to Abuja with begging bowls.

The third option is to negotiate a peaceful separation, as occurred in the ‘Velvet (Gentle) Revolution’ in defunct Czechoslovakia in 1989 to form two countries—Czechia (originally the Czech Republic) and Slovakia.

Without taking any of this route, the ultimate cost is violent disintegration. The obdurate forces in the former Yugoslavia travelled this road with devastating outcomes as the country split violently into over seven countries.

The degenerate political class should redeem itself and avoid this at all costs, but delay is dangerous.

It was Professor Travis Mathew-Hunt who insisted that we should approach Baroness Valerie Amos, Master of University College, Oxford University, so that our project could be formally adopted as a university post-graduate enterprise. However, Professor David Matthews-Kellett insisted that we must subject our submissions to empiricism and peer review. By way of illustration, he provided the following extract from erudite Professor Soji Adelaja.