Being a Keynote Address presented at the Public Presentation of Time to Reclaim Nigeria by Chido Onumah on the 15th of December, Rockview Hotel Abuja.
Chido Onumah’s Time to Reclaim Nigeria couldn’t have come at a more auspicious time than this. That Nigeria is on a drift is not news, reclaiming it is therefore an important rallying call. Nigeria has a long history of popular struggle. Although very intermittent and sometimes disorganised with all the trappings of class, ethnic, regional, gender and related fissures, Nigerians have often succeeded in attaining the intent of their struggles, albeit minimally and in most cases short term. In all cases, those who led the struggles ended being the victims of their victories – is either a different class violently over threw them or a new class occupy the space that has been created by these struggles.
Nigeria’s democracy is not an accident of history, neither is it a product of the generosity of the military, but a result of people’s action. The tragedy however, is that the peoples struggle has been usurped by a different group with different political and economic agenda. This is the trajectory and tragedy of our democracy. The ruling class has not fundamentally changed since the transition to civil rule and naturally the character of the state remained unchanged. The crop of leaders we have are either military characters that metamorphosed to civilians, their civil collaborators or the criminal bystander who saw nothing good in people’s struggles, even when some of the struggles were in their backyards. Others are those who decided to leave the country for greener pasture, at the time they consider the country unsafe. They don’t seems to understand what it takes to struggle for democracy and therefore cannot understand how best to protect or sustain it.
While I am yet to finish reading Chido Onumah’s Time to Reclaim Nigeria, I am deeply in tune with the title. It is an excellent expression of the state of the nation and huge rallying cry for action. Reclaiming Nigeria is an important issue that Nigerians must take seriously. However, who are we reclaiming Nigeria from? To reclaim presupposes two things: First, it assumes that country has been taken away from the legitimate owners - that the current custodians are usurpers, illegitimately controlling the treasure. Second, it presupposes that we have a very beautiful thing or enjoyed a particular regime or system – values, development agenda or principles that have been lost or destroyed. Surely, this is not about lost principles or development agenda, but more about physical control and sovereign determination and power. Understanding this dynamics is very important in reclaiming Nigeria. From my Understanding of the Nigerian political economy, the country has been hijacked by five related tendencies and groups.
1. Corrupt and rapacious politicians – anything goes, as long as their greed is satisfied. They embark primitive accumulation and care less for the country. Their commitment is first to their family. They are the ethnic and religious jingoists - deeply driven by primordialism, playing politics with ethnicity and religion in desperate bid to hold on to power. This is happening even at the highest level of our polity. Some religious and traditional rulers are in service of these groups. This is ordinarily not a homogenous category – there are differences in party affiliation, regional locations, ethnicity, religion and even ideological background, but they share the same political and economic interest. Many of them are dual citizens – sharing Nigeria citizenship with other countries, mostly in the developed World. Their children are either working or schooling in those countries. Nigeria is simply a ground for primitive accumulation.
2. Imperial technocrats – technocracy is about placing technical people or experts in different fields to manage the affairs of the country. In recent times, it is deeply associated with neo-liberal ideologues – promoted by the World Bank and related multilateral organisations: It is more about bringing people who have been deeply brain-washed by neo-liberal financial institutions, their subsidiaries and the corporations/interest they serve to take over the affairs of the country. They have no sense of nationalism and not in synch with the realities of the country. Their interest is to technically justify the regime of plunder and sustain our attachment to the World capitalist system that has continued to keep us in perpetual poverty. Because of our years of failed leadership, incompetence and corruption, each time these characters are brought into the country they are celebrated, but what many Nigerians don’t understand is that they are not here for Nigeria or Nigerians per se, but their pay-masters. Sometimes their capacity is and competence is exaggerated, simply because they are coming from Diaspora or have worked for a certain international organisation. They don’t care what happen to the people and have no respect for other citizens – they are the experts, they know it all and nobody can advise them. The relationship with Nigeria is just is almost employer-employee - Nigeria is therefore simply a place of primary assignment, as soon as they finish they are out!
3. International financial institutions – particularly the IMF, the World Bank and the African Development Bank. These are institutions that have been deeply discredited by the current neo-liberal capitalist crisis. I called it a neo-liberal capitalist because the crisis only engulfed countries driven by market fundamentalism than those with relative state controlled and popular influenced systems like China, India, Brazil or even South Africa. These institutions have failed to manage their parent economies in Europe and America, but still cutting the shot in developing countries. They have completely occupied our micro-economic policy space with very lazy, straight jacketed and out outdated economic principles that continued to deepen our misery and poverty. With one of them as a Super Minister, life is even easier; they don’t even need to do anything. Six years ago, these characters forced the country to pay whooping 12.4 billion Dollars to the Paris club as part of their relief arrangement for an obviously odious debt. This was then the biggest resources to have left any developing country to the developed world in six months. We were told all the savings or gains of debt relief will be reinvested in the social sector, it is six years since the payment our situation has not improved. They are now talking about Sovereign Wealth Fund in preparation to make us contribute to financing the crisis ridden economies and banks in Europe and America as part of their recovery package.
4. Multinational Corporation - deeply related to the technocrat and international financial institutions with a long history of social and economic exploitation, repatriation of profit and underdevelopment of the country. Despite the recent growth in the local capitalist class, they still control the commanding height of Nigerian economy and therefore very influential in the polity. They plant their agents in strategic government positions, bribe policy makers and drive government policies in their favour.
5. Parasitic business class: They used to be called compradors in the classical literature, but have increasingly developed a level of autonomy since the structural adjustment and Obasanjo’s deliberate policy of developing an autonomous local capitalist class. Although still a junior player in the world capitalist system. They are parasitically attached to the state and have no capacity for independent action or investment initiative. They have deliberately killed state corporations to justify privatisation. Even when they buy these corporations at give-away prices, they have no capacity to manage them without state subsidy and support, yet, it is criminal to subsidise the poor! They finance dubious politicians who will do their biddings. They have no commitment to the country.
It is the unholy alliance of these tendencies and groups that has kept the country down. They have hijacked the country, looting and mismanaging it.
As I speak today, academics in public universities are on strike and universities remained closed for over a week now, and may remain so, for several other weeks or months. Our public hospitals are death traps, only less than 10% of our roads are motorable – most of them in Abuja. Hundreds of people are dying every month on our highways. Over 70% of our people are living below poverty line, while school enrolment continues to drop in different parts of the country. Officially, unemployment is 19.7%; unofficially it is more 30%. Violence has increased in different parts of the country. Our perilous security situation has been compounded by the activities of militant groups who have effectively partitioned the country, with each group taking control of different parts, with Boko Haram dictating the pace. The current situation is the worst we have seen since the civil war. We are therefore faced with all the indices of state failure. Yet these characters are insisting on pushing more hardship on the country – they cannot pay a minimum wage of 18,000 Naira, but have surreptitiously increased electricity tariff, returning toll gates, removing oil subsidies, retrenching workers – all in the interest of the poor!
Although statistics are being rolled out on how well the economy is doing – growing by over 7%, any disenable reader or viewer of Nigeria economy knows that things are really bad. As important as it is to development, growth doesn’t necessarily guarantee sustainable and just economic environment. Poverty is on the increase, inequality is at its highest level and Nigeria is today one of the poorest countries of the World.
Because these characters are grossly incompetent and lack any sense of nationalism, they have pushed the country to an unprecedented crisis of leadership at all levels. Personal rule has been elevated to statecraft – governance is now all about the “big man” dispensing favour and patronage. This is significantly impacting on our development. The country is experiencing an increasing regression to dictatorship. State Governors are Lord of the manor, having an authoritarian hold on the people. The political leadership has a pathological phobia for debate and public engagement and continues to hold the citizens in contempt.
Chido’s book reminds us of these maladies. No nation should continue in this state. We have a responsibility to contain the drift. Twelve years into civil rule, we are still showing strong signs of a falling state, if not failed state, worst than we took it from the Military. The level of incivility in this so called democracy is worse than what we had in the military. Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah recently reminded us that Institutions alone do not define democracy, neither do infrastructure – democracy is about people’s space, participation and rights. When you impose obnoxious policies on the people despite resistance you are not building democracy, no matter the good intention.
It is in this context that I find the removal of subsidy on petroleum products unacceptable. This is not to accept the current regime, where the NNPC in alliance with the rapacious business class are sharing the national resources in the name of subsidy, yet the alternative being proffered by the government will amount to an over kill. It is more like transferring the burden of payment to the over stretched poor consumers. I don’t know where the government got the idea that it will not affect the poor. As if the poor is not part of the generator economy – running the informal sector that is grossly dependent on petroleum products. We are once again being told that the savings will be reinvested in the social sector – is been the same story since 1986. These people need to be told, if they don’t already know, that it was the same argument that led to establishment of DFFR, NDE, NAPEP, PTF, etc. Unfortunately and retrospect, I will rather trust the government that established these agencies, despite their dismal performance than trust these crops of leaders who have democratised corruption. They have not told us what they have done with the debt relief gains, excess crude savings or the huge foreign reserve that has since been depleted.
Nigerians therefore need to start responding to the classical question - What should be done? The World is in its revolutionary ferment, going by developments in the Arab world, Europe or even in America. Everybody must brace up to the challenge of reclaiming the country. We have a responsibility to take our destiny into our own hands. It is Time to Reclaim Nigeria!
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