At 60: Nigeria seeking a way out of the wood

In 1984, Sunny Okosun, the late Nigerian musician, released an album he aptly tagged, ‘Which Way Nigeria’. In the album, the late music activist and social crusader, was worried over the slow pace of development in the country since gaining independence in 1960.

He also criticised the past and present Nigerian governments for the unforgivable neglect of the country to rot, the masses to suffer and reign of corruption and injustice in the land.

As well, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the late afrobeat legend, Ras Kimono, The Mandators, and many other revolutionary musicians have severally used their craft to highlight the plight of the masses, injustice and slow pace of development in the country since independence.

But nothing has changed for good since then; instead, the situation is getting out of hand.

As Ademola Olajide, a quantity surveyor with UACN Property, rightly puts it, “Time is gone when our parents keep reminding us of the ‘good old days’. As far as my generation is concerned, they are fairy tales of the 1960s and can never be in Nigeria again”.

Olajide, who turned 40 in July, thinks that the independence did not make Nigeria any better, as the masses are now enslaved by their own people who siphon funds meant for infrastructural development, politicians who collect millions for constituency development projects and buy tricycles instead, and civil servants who guide politicians and public office holders on safe ways to loot government treasury.

What manner of Independence

At 60 years, Ebenezer Elom, 65-years old retired accountant, who is now a traditional ruler in Iza, Ebonyi State, regrets that Nigeria should have been the leading light in Africa across all indices; developmental, political, economy, peaceful co-existence, merit among others.

“I was barely five years old when we gained independence. Since then, I have not felt that sense of independence because there is little or nothing to show for our freedom if one considers the good stories our parents told us on the orderliness, accountability and working structures under the colonial administration”, Elom lamented.

For the traditional ruler, Nigeria failed to review and improve on the structures handed over to it by the colonial government, as well as, to consolidate on the few developmental strides left behind by Britain.

“They accused Britain of building railways mainly across routes that served their exploitative business interests. How many new railway lines has Nigeria built since gaining independence, and will you also blame Britain for the sub-standard road construction, the shallow seaports and the outdated airports”, he queried.

However, while many are questioning what the past and present governments have done with Nigeria’s wealth since 1960, the country seems to be borrowing more than before, and leaving a huge debt profile behind for the unborn Nigerians.

On June 3, 2020, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, most Nigerians who were staying safe at their homes were stunned to hear that the country’s debt profile had risen to $79.5 billion, about N28.63 trillion.

According to the Debt Management Office (DMO), the Federal Government accounts for 50.77 percent of the total domestic debt, which is $40.26 billion (N14.53 trillion), whereas the state governments and Federal Capital Territory account for 14.34 percent of the total domestic borrowing, which is $11.37 billion (N4.11 trillion).

The worry for most Nigerians is that there is virtually little or nothing to show for the huge debt, while the government is hoping to borrow more.

According to Monday Akhime, convener, African Development Series, an economy and development platform, despite the huge borrowing, our unemployment rate is high, inflation is soaring daily, hardship is eminent, which means that the loans were not put into the right use.

“As at the second quarter of 2020, our unemployment rate was 27.1 percent indicating that about 21.7 million Nigerians are unemployed; our inflation rate stood at 12.82 percent in July this year and the GDP is slowing even before the pandemic. It means the loans the government obtained were not used to fix the economy, provide social infrastructure and other things needed to boost job creation and the GDP”, he said.

Akhime also decried that governments over the years have never given the needed attention to developmental projects, hence the huge deficit in Nigeria’s infrastructural development.

“Recently, the Minister of Finance stated that Nigeria needs an estimated N36 trillion annually for the next 30 years to solve our infrastructure problem. Where will you get that money now that crude oil is no longer selling, and what happened to all the funds allocated and budgeted for developmental projects in the past. If we cannot prosecute those who loot Nigeria’s treasury, recover the loot and put them into good use, the looting spree will continue and Nigeria will not record meaningful development in the next 60 years”, he warned.

For Pascal Yari, a Kaduna-based lawyer, Nigeria is more divided now than it was in 1960 as the government seems to favour some people more than others, and encourages nepotism and hatred.

“If the level of nepotism, tribal and religious sentiments had existed during the colonial era, the British would have withheld the freedom or divided the country along ethnic lines before giving independence to definitely more than two countries then”.

However, many Nigerians think that there is nothing to celebrate about Nigeria even at 60 years because injustice still reigns, killings, nepotism is at its peak, and the citizenry are now enslaved by their own people, who loot funds meant for developmental projects and their wellbeing.

On Thursday, October 1, Nigeria marked 60 years of independence from British colonial rule, which ended in 1960. The Federal Government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari rolled out the drums to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee tagged “60 years together”.

However, while Nigeria has managed to remain together after coming close to disintegration several times, including surviving a brutal 30 month-civil war, the unity of the diverse elements that make up the country has continued to be strained and its quest for greatness appears to be a mirage. The most populous black nation on earth is tottering and seemed befuddled in search of a pathway to genuine nationhood that will lead to peace and progress.

At independence, there was plentiful hope that Nigeria, judging by its vast and rich land, and very energetic and diverse people, will set the stage not just for its emancipation but in totality be the bastion of freedom and development for Africa and all peoples yearning for leadership direction around the world.

However, today Nigeria is in a quagmire. The nation is strangulated by poor leadership with no visionary economic agenda. Most Nigerians today did not have the enthusiasm to celebrate Nigeria at 60 because of their hapless and harsh economic conditions.

According to the World Poverty Clock, Nigeria is the headquarters of extreme poverty with nearly 100 million of its acclaimed 200 million people living below the poverty line.

Nigeria’s currency, the naira, has lost over 70percent of its value in the last five years; unemployment has risen to 27.1percent according to the National Bureau of Statistics for a country which annual population growth is 3.2percent. Inflation is at 12.58percent and still threatening to go higher. The nation’s economy has contracted by 6percent as manufacturing, services and other sectors have suffered contraction of over 6percent occasioned by the Covid-19. The World Bank December last year warned that if drastic measures are not put in place, a quarter of the world’s poor will be in Nigeria by 2030. Nigeria is highly indebted to China, IMF and other organisations following massive loans obtained to ostensibly build infrastructure stretching even to other countries.

These scary figures appear not to have moved the leaders from their slumber as most of them are neck deep in corruption and ostentatious life in the midst of growing misery of the larger population.

Nigeria is today considered the third most terrorized country in the world according to the Global Terrorist Index (GTI). The north eastern part of the country is ravaged by the growing threat of terrorism perpetuated by the Boko Haram sect and their allies, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) and al-Qaida. Nigeria has lost nearly 50, 000 lives to the insurgency and over 2.5 million have been displaced since 2009.

The North West is ravaged by bandits, who kill and maim without mercy including killing countless number of security personnel.

On the Global Corruption Perception Index, the Transparency International has also rated Nigeria as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

Speaking to BDSUNDAY on these myriad of crises and the fading hope of the citizenry, the Publicity Secretary of the Pan Yoruba cultural organisation, Afenifere, Yinka Odumakin said Nigeria has not been a settled nation because the country has not been properly constituted.

Odumakin noted that Nigeria is having political and economic crisis because it abandoned the path of true federal structure, which was disrupted by the military incursion into politics in 1966. He insisted that the best moments of Nigeria was when the nation practiced true federalism in the 1960s, stressing that the problem of Nigeria is a structural problem from which other variables revolve.

“It is the structure of Nigeria that will not allow good leaders to emerge,” he said.

He also blamed the crisis on the over centralisation of the power at the hands of the Federal government in the present time rather than what was obtainable in the First Republic where every region was productive because of a greater measure of autonomy.

Odumakin further said: “We need a constitution that will make every section of the country to become productive; we will see that we have more than enough rather than killing ourselves over the little in oil and gas. By making every section of Nigeria productive we will be a mighty country with extra -productivity. Then at that stage we will be looking at what unites us and not what divides us and that is how we can forge a proper nation out of these diverse peoples. Presently we are a country and not a nation and until we make a nation out of Nigeria, we are going nowhere.”

Also reacting to the current trajectory of the nation, former Nigeria Ambassador to Switzerland, Humphrey Orjiako in his book “Nigeria: The Forsaken Road to Nationhood and Development”, gave a compelling narrative of when and how Nigeria got it wrong and the concomitant crises the nation is confronted with. He also suggested redemptive steps Nigeria must take to find its way out of the quagmire.

He wrote: “Over-centralisation of power is a cardinal culprit in stymieing Nigeria’s prospects for economic growth and development, as well as an important factor in decelerating her pace of advancement to nationhood.

“At the same time, there is no case made in this regard, that unitary rule of a vast, multi-national country from a distant, all powerful centre is the sole villain in our present state of under –performance and general underdevelopment”.

Executive Director of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Auwal Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani, blamed the backwardness of the country on the destruction of the nation’s value system especially its education and the destruction of the civil service.

He decried the dearth of patriotic leadership, adding that most of the people who called themselves leaders are just looters of national treasury.

“In Nigeria, looting, corruption and misappropriation have become the order of the day, that’s why our abundant human and material resources do not translate into any meaningful development. 60 years after independence we have become the poverty capital of the world,” the CISLAC boss said.

He suggested a reorientation of Nigeria’s value system, ” which needs to be inculcated into the minds of Nigerians,” warning that “if we continue the way we are going, there is no way we can produce quality persons to lead us.”

He also called for electoral reforms to ensure transparency and accountability in “selecting patriotic leaders, with ideas and vision that will bring the people out of these economic and political crises.”

The journey to the present sorry state

Just few years after independence, the cracks in the wall of Nigeria began to show serious cleavages of ethnic, regional and religious dimensions worsened by the politics of attrition as the First Republic (1960-1966) politicians also formed their political parties along those fault lines.

The then northern region, ruled by the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) led by the late Ahmadu Bello, the Sadaurna of Sokoto, made no pretenses that their party is for the north dominated by the Hausa/Fulani Oligarchy. The Action Group led by the late Sage, Obafemi Awolowo, an offshoot of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, defines politics principally as it concerns the protection of the then Western region predominantly of the Yoruba ethnic stock while the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) led by the late Nnamdi Azikiwe, had the Igbo people of the former Eastern region as the landlords.

The leaders despite the divisions found a formula of that ushered in self-rule in 1960, with each region enjoying large measure of autonomy in terms of control of their resources in a true federal sense. This was perhaps when Nigeria made more economic progress as posited by some analysts.

But no sooner had the leaders settled down for the business of governance, than the crises started in quick succession. First, it was the controversial census crisis of 1962/63, where each group tried to have advantage over the others by manipulating the results. Then there were the 1964 federal elections that were marred by rigging and irregularities as parties tried to profit from electoral mayhem. It led to enormous crises such that at some points the nation was without government but wise counsel prevailed to avert total anarchy.

But the 1965 Western region election was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. It turned out a very bloody episode as rival groups desperate to capture power, unleashed arson, looting and killings on opponents with the situation threatening to spread to other regions as the government of then Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, became either allegedly complicit in the crisis, or could not muster enough courage to deal with the matter.

And so, on January 15, 1966, a group of young radical elements in the Nigeria army, led by Chukwuma Nzeogwu, a major, staged a bloody coup that ended the First Republic. The Coup culminated in the killing of Prime Minister, Balewa and the very influential and powerful Ahmadu Below, Premier of the northern region. Also killed was the Premier of the Western region, Samuel Akintiola and Festus Okotieboh, the Finance Minister.

Some senior military officers were also not spared by the coupists, but as the dust raised by the coup settled, patterns began to emerge and a very dangerous interpretation was given that most of the coup plotters were of Igbo extraction, while most of their victims were non-Igbo especially northerners. In no time, anger against the Igbo boiled as military officers from the north staged a bloodier counter coup against their Igbo colleagues in a maddening mentality of retaliation that almost wiped out the officer corps of the Igbo in the army between late July and Early August 1966.

The Igbo civilians living in the north were not spared the wave of violence. Many of them were killed by northern mobs engineered by leaders of the region and this caused hysteria among the Igbo who clamoured for safety in a separate country with the declaration of the Republic of Biafra led by late Chukwuemeka Ojukwu on May 30, 1967. This led to a bloody civil war that caused the death of over 2 million lives and much devastation. The crisis that culminated into the war led to a prolonged military rule, which changed the political and economic dynamics of the country.

Former Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, who led the nation at the end of the civil war in January 1970, made the famous “No Victor, No Vanquished” declaration to set the tone of a new nation after the fratricidal war, with unity of the people as a sing song.

However, the equation has changed with the unitary arrangement introduced by the military with over centralisation of resources of the country in the hands of the Federal Government after it fragmented the once flourishing four regions into today’s 36 states and a Federal capital, Abuja, and 774 local government areas that are hardly viable. The current constituent parts go cap in hand to solicit funds from the central government especially after crude oil was made the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy.

Nigeria has continued to struggle to diversify its economy in the face of dwindling oil prices and it has continued to face grim consequences.