By Oseloka H. Obaze
Most Nigerians contend that Nigeria is not working as it ought to. There are several reasons for this, aside from the core governance challenges. Nigeria is dysfunctional because Nigerian leaders continue to overlook soft power and intangible assets that make nations function optimally. Furthermore, Nigerian leaders no longer prioritize national interest demands and needs. This may be because our leaders think national interest pertains only to foreign policy. If so, such thinking is counterintuitive.
Putting Nigeria’s governance challenges in perspective requires acknowledging some political and systemic realities. As John F. Kennedy postulated, “life of freedom is not easy and democracy is not perfect.” Grappling with the imperfections of democracy requires consensus building, but above all, deferring to common cause and national interest priorities. Perhaps, Nigeria is dysfunctional because her leaders don’t fit well into the holistic framework of a truly democratic state. This assertion may be arguable, since our democratic bona-fides are still tainted by military anti-politics.
There may yet be other rationalizations. According to Aristotle, “democracy is when the indigent and not men of properties are the rulers.” The opposite is the case in Nigeria. The ‘indigent’ in Nigeria are not rulers; rather they are stridently cutting corners in order to become ‘men of properties’ and join the ruling ranks. Meanwhile, those within the power-wielding circuit are most unwilling to cede any leadership space.
Responsible statecraft demands prioritization of national interest needs. National interests consist of a country’s domestic drivers and actions that extrapolate national goals and priorities into the foreign realm. National interests are doctrinal and stand on four vital pillars: security, economic, social wellbeing and rule of law. The ability to outsource or gain access to vital resources that drive the economy is also a key component. One factor that underpins the overall national interest mosaic is national stability. Realizing targeted national interest priorities also undergird our independence and sovereignty.
As experts in progressive governance argue, “stability and cohesion do not require every individual to think alike, have the same interests, same religion or same traditions….stability and cohesion do, however, require understanding and support of certain fundamental values expressed in legislation.” More broadly, advancing national interest in a multi-ethnic and secular state like Nigeria requires protecting values of democracy; values anchored on the rule of law.
National interest recedes when government, her policies and projects are ethnified. That situation is counterproductive in all ramifications. Sadly, that’s our status quo. This largely explains why we can’t tackle banditry, terrorism and sectarian conflicts. A question that may never have been publicly asked is: Which Nigerian security agency is in the lead on counter-terrorism? Any answer will be pure conjecture. So we can understand why we continue to perform poorly in tackling domestic terrorism and banditry. By civilizing the military to undertake purely civilian police duties, we also undermined national interest.
These days, national interest is hardly a phrase one hears from Nigerian leaders. It is virtually absent in the consideration of our domestic and foreign policies. Regrettably, national interest is not an abstract. If it’s continually overlooked, it’s because Nigerian leaders have instinctively changed the political premises and political debate that ought to guide robust good governance. They have also changed the requisite narratives and attendant heady governance questions.
Just as “common good” has been redacted from Nigeria’s political lexicon, advocacy for the “common man” has equally been redacted from our national discourse. This explains why Senator Godswill Akpabio’s 2023 public appeal to “let the poor breathe” would resonate with Nigerians, notwithstanding its facetiousness.
Politics is about plurality. Nigeria’s rich diversity speaks to her plurality. But how do we coexist? How can we have frank and honest conversation without resorting to a play on presumed ignorance? How do we obviate the mindset suggesting that the national population is gullible and ignorant? How do we get along, trust and feel secure with each other? How does the interest of one ethnicity not supplant or threaten the rights of others? How do we retrace our strides away from prevalent cancel culture, nepotism and bigotry? How do we circumscribe the default to political idiocy? These are not academic or rhetorical questions. They are critical questions about core issues that drive wedges into our diversity, the coalescing of divergent interests and compel those in different political and ethnic silos from rallying to a common cause for the sake of national interest.
How political positions, projects and institutions are allocated and funded, determine if they promote and prioritize national interest, harmony and unity. Needs and political means are quite often fungible. Where they are perceptibly unlinked, there is dissonance, discord and a sense of marginalization. Persons or groups, who feel marginalized or disenfranchised, hardly ever speak to national interests. Neither do those who perceive political gains, the accruing perks and perquisites of office or the dividends of democracy, as their birthrights or yields of their zero sum game, ever speak up.
Those in power and those out of power, is a constant refrain in Nigerian politics. That disposition gives rise to conflicting interests. It also erodes the efficacy of the political opposition. None of these augurs well for the propagation and advancement of national interest. If we consider or accept national interest as “the signpost that drives political realism to finds its way through the landscape on international politics,” it means that arriving at that critical juncture, must be premised on a simple cliché: “charity begins at home.” There must be synergy between national development and the prioritization of national interest concerns.
Domestic stability, peace and security, equity and fairness are all pertinent variables. What this calls for, are governance modalities that are introspective as well as retrospective. Fundamentally, in a stable society, advancing national interests includes “affirming and promoting citizen’s values, belief and culture,” while those in power or government, ensure personal safety of the citizens. A case in point. If it was in Nigeria’s national interest to remove the oil subsidy; it meant that the accruing benefits of that policy should have been beneficial to all Nigerians. That was not the case.
Despite extant laws, Nigeria’s looted funds and wealth are domiciled in foreign bank accounts. Succeeding administrations made it seem like such funds were stolen only during the Abacha regime. That is not true. Whereas it is in the national interest to recovers such looted funds, most of the recovered funds are again systematically looted due to the opacity in handling recovered funds. It would amount to prioritizing national interest by jailing some of those who looted the fund, as deterrence. This has not happened. It’s also in the national interest to account transparently for recovered funds. That too, has not happened.
Indeed, it’s ironical, that in a country where Prof. Tam David-West, a former Petroluem Minister went to jail for accepting gratification amounting a wristwatch and a cup of tea; many Nigerians who have well-publicized grand larceny cases to answer for, have succeeded in having their prosecution files buried in the tomb of officialdom and “your sins are forgiven” dogma. Most walk about freely.
Whereas the principles of pursuing national interest are overarching, the impetus required to make them concrete have become perceptibly malleable. Hence, not prioritizing national interest today translates to our mothballed and largely unutilized Ajaokuta Steel Mill; our four moribund national refineries, and our stealthy national carrier- Air Nigeria. It was the dearth of proactive national interest consideration that killed off the sovereign wealth fund, which held out hope of infinite positive possibilities for Nigeria.
The resultant effects of our non-prioritization of our national interest include our inability to generate up to 10,000 megawatts of electricity for a population of over 220 million, despite spending trillions on naira on energy. Even as a top oil producing country, we continue to import refined petroleum because of our ill-defined priorities. Recently, Nigerians became aware via BudgiT of the jaw-breaking revelation that components of the 2025 national budget pertaining to the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation was padded up from proposed N24 billion to N291 billion. That of Ministry of Agriculture, bloated from N242 billion to a whopping N1.7 trillion. Overall, the FY 2025 Budget was illegally padded with over N7 trillion. In a country, where national development benchmarks are clearly defined in terms of the national interest, such nefarious acts would be utterly impossible.
Because we don’t prioritize our national interest, we allowed foreign non-state actors to gain ascendancy in the northern parts of the country; rather than close our borders to keep them out even if we had to suspend the extant ECOWAS protocol temporarily. In that same vein, we allowed small and light weapons from collapsed Libya to flood our country. We are still paying for that singular mistake. Furthermore, FDIs (foreign direct investments) become remote when national interests are ill-defined.
Just as we have not prioritized hard power capital projects that underpin growth and national development, we have also not prioritized soft power policies like STEM education, in the national interest. It was national interest considerations that led to devising the TETfund to fund qualitative tertiary education. Whereas the Fund is structured to garner sufficient resources annually to keep all public and private tertiary institutions fully-funded, its resources are presently being frittered away for pork barrel contracts and projects unrelated to higher education.
There is a clear linkage between our abandoning our erstwhile models of national development plan during the military era in favour of political campaign-driven visions and modalities. That decision has had vast implications for the pursuit of our national interest. Our Democracy is not perfect. It will not achieve near perfection until we resolve to have within the governing circles, those who grasp the inextricable links between national interest, good governance and development and therefore, prioritize national interest concerns. Until then, Nigeria will continue to wallow in the morass of political idiocy and Malgovernance.
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Obaze is MD/CEO, Selonnes Consult – a policy, governance and management consulting firm in Awka.
