State Of The Nation: TERRIBLE! TERRIBLE!! TERRIBLE!!!

From page 14 of Francis Fukuyama’s book, THE ORIGINS OF POLITICAL ORDER comes this: “Everyone would like to figure out how to transform Somalia, Haiti, Nigeria, Iraq, or Afghanistan into “Denmark”, and the international development community has a long list of presumed Denmark-like attributes they are trying to have failed states achieve”. 

Oh, the shame! Published in 2011, this book about political order rated Nigeria a failed state – with Somalia, Haiti, Iraq and Afghanistan. And since then, Nigeria has been declining impulsively. 

In 2011 Nigeria was a better, richer, gentler and a much kinder country. A decade ago, Nigeria was by far much closer to Denmark than today. “Getting To Denmark”, was the title of a paper co-written by two World Bank social scientists – Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock. That “Denmark” stands for anywhere that is blessed with stout and effective political and economic institutions. Fukuyama listed some attributes of such a place: “stable, democratic, peaceful, prosperous, inclusive and has extremely low levels of corruption”. 

Last Sunday, I titled my column REQUIEM FOR NIGERIA and some persons have reacted, mostly to say that I was unduly pessimistic. Pessimism or optimism has no place here, only cold facts do. There are already acceptable ways of gauging a country’s viability or to put it starkly, how alive they are – to their reasons for being. If the well-being of a state depends on the optimism of its citizens, then all we need do is to reprint the dedication page of Morris West’s, 1976 novel, THE NAVIGATOR – “To Those Of Us, Children Still, Who, Even At The Gates of Midnight, Dream of Sunrise, and share among Nigerian so that people would remain ever optimistic about their fatherland. But the realities of life and death in contemporary Nigeria would remain unchanged. 

Here, I have to make it plain that this is not so much a critique of the Buhari administration as it is a cry from the heart. My heart screamed all it could during the Obasanjo administration, when we had the very first opportunities to redirect the affairs of government from the narrow interests of a few to the wholesome interests of the entire nation, with an eye for Nigeria’s responsibility to serve as Big Brother in African and give the black race a sense of pride – by improving the quality of lives of its citizens. I did the same when Goodluck Jonathan was the President. The decay began long ago; the sense of African Risorgimento (Africa rising again) did not go beyond the personality of Zik of Africa. The idea of Nigeria’s ceasing to be a big for nothing country ended with the 1975-79 Murtala-Obasanjo administration. 

As a State House Correspondent when Gen Olusegun Obasanjo was President, I criticised him often, pointing out that all the four aspects of miss-governance (as defined by the late Harvard Historian, Barbara Tuchman, in her book, THE MARCH OF FOLLY) plagued his administration. They are tyranny or oppression, excessive ambition (especially when Nigeria was wracked by the Third Term debacle), incompetence or decadence and folly and perversity. I bewailed the fact that Nigeria needed unification efforts because its components were drifting apart alarmingly. 

In as much as I have to deviate from my original route, to look at the health of the nation, I must try to etch into our collective memory Tuchman’s standard for admitting an error as folly. One, “it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight” and its injury to self-interest must have been recognised by contemporaries. 

Secondly, “a feasible course of action must have been available”. A case in point is that of the Cattle Routes, Cattle Ranches, RUGA, free grazing, night grazing, that has heightened over the decades, but has now made the Nigerian political space combustible. Yet, another option, a most natural one, was there all the time but it was disdained; to legalise all cattle and livestock to be confined in ranches. Finish! Think what would have happened if this was done in 1960; an economically beneficial Cattle Economy – beef production, tannery, bone processing, modern milk processing and other ancillary industries would have since resulted. And with the necessity of walking the poor animals from Sokoto to Calabar and from Warri to Maiduguri removed, the children of the Fulani herdsmen would have been attending the normal primary and secondary schools. If such had been happening from 1960, we would not have real and bonafide Nigerian children, in their millions, attending Almajiri schools ONLY, internalising worthwhile moral lessons but learning nothing academic or vocational that would help them earn a living in the world. This is because; even those parents who think the world about Almajiri schools would have been forced to have a rethink when they see educated children of the Cattle Fulanis. Or the states should have legislated such schools out of existence. Just think the wonders that would have come from the inter-mingling of the Cattle Fulani with the others! 

Who remembers “Bauchi Meat”? It was a company that sold beef, refrigerated and in clean conditions, in some cities. Who remembers that the late Bendel state Governor, Samuel Ogbemudia, started Agbede Farms, that had Cattle and even Buffalo for consumable meat? Hey, Obudu Cattle Ranch was actually a ranch the late Eastern Regional Premier, Michael Okpara established. Western Region had its own. So, Nigeria must ask itself how much of what holds the North down and causes trouble in Nigeria, belongs to culture or religion. For instance, against the background of Boko Haram which actually opposes schooling and has been destroying schools and taking students hostage, have we asked about education in, say, Saudi Arabia? From the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, USA, website, (https://www.saudiembassy.net/education) comes this: 

Education is a requirement for every Muslim, both male and female. The Saudi educational system aims to ensure that students are prepared for life and work in the modern world, while meeting the country’s religious, social and economic needs. Eliminating adult illiteracy is another major goal. 

General education in the Kingdom consists of kindergarten, six years of primary school and three years each of intermediate and high school. 

After elementary and intermediate school, students can choose whether to attend a high school with programmes in commerce, the arts and sciences, or a vocational school. The educational curriculums at Saudi schools are diverse. They include a variety of subjects such as math, science, literature, history, Arabic and Islam. The Ministry of Education sets overall standards and oversees special education for the handicapped”. 

Yet, what is the situation in some parts of Nigeria? Some insurgents have rejected modern educational system as satanic. Recently, some state governors agreed to ban Almajiri schools, educate the Almajiri children in modern schools and teach them subjects needed to thrive in a modern country. But some highly placed persons opposed them. So, compulsory education is still on hold. Handicapped children are turned into beggars in Nigeria. Even our Attorney-General and Justice Minister was, just weeks ago, advocating for Nomadic Education; not compulsory schooling for every Nigerian child. The administration in which he is serving has been in office for six years. It did not come in incensed that “Education is both a Human Right in itself and indispensable means of realizing other Human Rights. As an empowerment right, education is the primary vehicle by which economically and socially marginalised adults and children can lift themselves out of poverty and obtain the means to participate fully in their communities”, according to Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (UNESCO). 

Actually, Nigeria had already failed on the education front by 2015 because the second “International Development Goal” had demanded that Universal Primary Education be achieved in all countries by 2015. And in 2021, the Minister was not incensed that Nigeria had not achieved that, instead he was summing up points in support of provision at government expense, modern ranches for herders. The right thing to do is that all persons involved in animal husbandry should bear the cost of their personal business implements and spaces. That is called private enterprise and private ownership and helps development. 

We are now held down by issues involving what some people claim to be the age-old ways of the Fulani ethnic group. Yet, it is common knowledge that human societies were affiliated as families, villages, towns, kingdoms and tribes before modern countries came to be. That is the basic history of the world. Countries resulted when tribal societies developed political institutions, and modified their cultures to fit into given spaces with others, especially centralising the authority that holds the monopoly of military power in a clearly defined territory. The Army and the Police now began to keep the peace, and the legal system administered justice and punished deviants. The result is the rule of law. But does this actually exist in Nigeria? We even hear about the Seriki in Lagos and everywhere! 

Did the rule of law exist for the school boy killed as bandits abducted students of Government Science Secondary School, Kagara? What about all students that had been kidnapped and released or killed? What about Leah Sharibu? Has there been rule of law for the over 33,000 casualties from insurgency since 2011, according to the Nigeria Security Tracker? (The Council on Foreign Relations’ Nigeria Security Tracker is an effort to catalog and map political violence based on a weekly survey of Nigerian and international press. The data presented includes violent incidents related to political, economic, and social grievances directed at the state or other affiliated groups (or, conversely, the state employing violence to respond to those incidents.) Is there real rule of law when we do not enjoy freedom from fear? Any redress for them? 

If not, then that is evidence of political decay; the reverse side of political growth. An egg cannot go on being good. It must either hatch or go bad. Nigeria has gone bad! 

The late Prof Samuel Huntington wrote in the book, POLITICAL ORDER IN CHANGING SOCIETIES, that “Political Order emerges as a result of achieving equilibrium among the contending forces within a society. But as time goes on, change occurs internally as well as externally. New actors appear, economic and social conditions shift. As a result, the preceding equilibrium no longer holds, and political decay results until the existing actors come up with a new set of rules and institutions to restore order”. President Buhari and the APC, here is your chance to bring about a new equilibrium and raise Nigeria from its failed-statedom. Turn this dirge into jubilation. Let Nigeria live and thrive again. Let there be a political discourse and let a consensus emerge.