Nigeria’s Tribes and Tongues Differ
According to late Professor Chinua Achebe, the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. But that was in 1983, when the late novelist wrote the minimalist book, The Trouble with Nigeria. Incidentally, it was on the 31 of December of that year that General Muhammed Buhari overthrew the democratic government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari for ‘wanton’ corruption and poor governance.
The biggest problem in today’s Nigeria is keeping the different nations, tribes and tongues together. Governance in Nigeria has become patrimonial with elected leadership throwing away equity and balance; and brazenly defending crass dictatorship, oppression and incivility. It is so bad that Nigerians from all walks of life are calling for the restructuring of the federation.
Nigeria has become a stationary state that has stopped growing; and is progressively becoming a failed state. It has been turned into a retrogressive entity where the greater number of the country’s population; the youths are unemployed, badly socialized and poorly educated. What happened? There was the rise of corrupt and monopolistic political power elite that kept on exploiting the system, including the economy, the politics and the laws to their own advantage. They’d put in place a system that was quick to punish the poor masses and equally imposed punitive taxes in all the ramifications of their lives. Nigerians are asked to make sacrifices which the ruling elites themselves are not ready to make. This they call ‘belt tightening.’ In essence, the idea of punishing the poor is to sustain the monopoly lifestyle of the rich.
This monopoly is nothing other than privileges. According to Charles Murray, Cognitive Elite,’ these people are educated at exclusive private schools and congregated in a few elite communities, with political loyalty to their group, and live like a caste, wealthy and powerful from resources stolen from the people.
A few decades back, in the period of Nigeria’s oil boom, the Second National Development Plan 1970–78 spelled out the country’s objectives including a united, strong, and self-reliant nation; a great and dynamic economy; a just and egalitarian society; a land of bright and full opportunities for all citizens; and a free and democratic society. But the legacies of British control in Nigeria have continued to affect institutions and governments. Identities have become calcified in ethnicities, cemented in religious-cum-regional loyalties. This is periodically enforced through violence and bloody conflicts.
Nigeria has been enmeshed in unending troubles of Boko Haram insurgency, kidnappings, herdsmen killings, assassinations and cattle rustlings, among others. The most recent disquiet, the #EndSARS Protest (a peaceful protest against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Nigerian Police) started as a peaceful protest against rogue officers whose culture of impunity, hostage taking, extra-judicial killings, illegal detentions, Mafia-like syndicates, and criminal extortion was just a euphemism for a need for good governance. From a nation of great promise, Nigeria has become a nation of pervasive greed, incompetence, unimaginable poverty and squalor. There is political polarization and intolerance — against the people and instruments of democracy: elections, the media, the courts and the civil society organizations.
This has been described as creeping authoritarianism. The rule book, according to the operatives of government is to demonize the opposition as unpatriotic, disobey the courts or out rightly control its judgments, attack the media, try to control the Internet — Social Media, subdue the civil society, throw the universities into disarray, and corner the anti-corruption, human rights groups.
The fallacy is that the unity of Nigeria is sacrosanct and that nobody should bother to question the injustices and inequalities in operating the federation. But this stands in the face of reason, especially given the lie of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (As Amended) that asserted “We the People,” as the people were never part of the constitution drafting process nor ratified it through a referendum. You cannot have freedom without democracy. Though Philosophers may sing praises of “benevolent” dictatorships, there is nothing benevolent about suppressing an individual’s right to speak, publish, think, pray, rally, satirize, read, and search the Internet. Apologists for authoritarianism insist that people have a right to order — but without the rule of law, only the ruled are constrained, not the rulers.
Nigeria is ruled by an authoritarian who assaults our democracy through the brazen disregard of all that Nigerians hold dear as members of the federation. What we now have is a self-serving political class, deficit in leadership structure and unaccountable in power. The assumption is that we should be grateful to them for ruling us. As Larry Diamond in Ill Winds puts it: “Democracies are not gifts or miracles; they are painstakingly built forms of government, and none of them are invincible if citizens succumb to cynicism and complacency in perilous times.”
Nigeria’s presidential system copied the American example without considering the cost and the cultural and historical context. So-called democratic freedom translates to the consolidation of religious and ethnic lines instead of creating cross-cutting national institutions and citizenship. The type of democracy practiced in Nigeria promotes prebendalism and mediocrity in power, further undermining the rights of the marginalized and the minorities.
Nigeria remains a consumer society with very poor work ethics. The Western model of industrialization has failed due to poor governance, non-availability of electricity, endemic corruption and very expensive cost of doing business. The Nigerian government is not representing her people and not responsive to shifting popular preferences. This government continues to make horrendous mistakes authoritarian rulers often make. To a large extent, this partly explains the government’s clamor for the Beijing Model to proscribe the Social Media and thus shut down protest against corruption, cronyism, nepotism and bad governance.
The #EndSARS protest was a metaphor against bad leadership, resulting in impunity of state agents using extortion, excessive force and extra-judicial killings on hapless Nigerian youths. On the other side is the lawlessness of the elected politicians and people in power, thus, the notion that the political class is taking away the future of Nigerian youths. Poor governance and impunity has created the spiral effect throughout the society: insecurity, Fulani Herdsmen killings, Boko Haram insurgency, kidnappings, and armed robberies in highbrow areas, among others. The more the nation sinks into statelessness, the more the government continues to borrow money, with nothing to show for the huge debts.
In global rankings, Nigeria remains at the very bottom, lacking in transparency, accountability and good governance. Violence is endemic, with a seeming lack of ability to nip it in the bud. Bandits, opportunists and criminal-minded extremists dare the security agents with impunity.
Corruption has re-defined the nation-state. Those who are officially responsible to operate government machinery use the opportunity to exploit the state by cornering the resources. This is found in the media as missing funds, public corruption and abuse of power. This is not limited only to politicians, but also judges, police, civil servants, the army, customs and immigration, among others.
Nigeria operates a neo-patrimonial state, with politicians in politics for the gain of state money. According to Toyin Falola, Nigeria Political Modernity and Postcolonial Predicaments, a Senator in Nigeria takes home N354 million a year, over $2 million US dollars where the majorities earn less than a dollar a day.
Nigerians crave good governance sustained through the rule of law: protection from arbitrariness, the right to life and liberty, protection from punishment without law, freedom of thought, conscience, religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom from discrimination, protection of property and the right to education. According to Niall Ferguson, this sums up why government should not abuse its privileges and power — hence the need to constrain it.
Society needs to control the state so that it protects and promotes people’s liberty. Liberty needs a mobilized society that participates in politics, protest when it’s necessary, and votes the government out of power when it can. When the state and its elites are too powerful and society is meek, why would leaders grant people rights and liberty? Liberty almost always depends on society’s mobilization and ability to hold its own against the state and its elites. It is a requisite that the fundamental tenet of fulfilling decent life is non-dominance: freedom from dominance, fear, and extreme insecurity. It is unacceptable to live at the mercy of another, having to live in a manner that leaves you vulnerable that the other is in a position to arbitrarily impose their will on you.
People allow others to trample upon the things they most cherish and flatter things they had always most despised. They demonstrate their loyalty to the system by engaging in “virtuoso pandering and deceit.” Nigeria is a society divided against herself, unable to act collectively on good governance and the fight against insurgency, banditry, Fulani herdsmen killings, kidnappings, among others. The people are deeply suspicious of themselves and of the governing elites and the politicians, or any group attempting to influence politics. Although we claim to be a nation, our tribes and tongues really differ.
As Boko Haram continues to decimate the northern parts of Nigeria, the southern states are deluged with fleeing youths of northern extraction. Such factors as poverty, population explosion, social inequality and exclusion, dispossession and political grievance, oppression and human rights abuse are the incubators of Boko Haram insurgency. The nation is gripped in terror triggered by state failure, poor governance, military incompetence, sabotage, economic deprivations, illiteracy, religious intolerance and extremism, leading to destruction of lives and property, stagnation of democracy and underdevelopment of Nigeria. The activities of this dangerous sect have greatly had negative impact on the socio-economic and political lives of the nation.
Unless a new transparent and accountable system of governance is invented, where government is open and not the preserve of the privileged elites or their children, where the elites in power are responsive to the needs of the people and avenues for personal enrichment are greatly curtailed, violence, banditry and insurgencies will still be with the Nigerian nation. Response to Boko Haram needs to be integrated into a comprehensive political, economic, and security strategy that offers some promise of real improvement to northern populations and communities.
Nigerians misjudged Buhari’s philosophy and capacity which has exhibited parochialism in the military, nepotism in his appointments and such policies that has led to poverty, insecurity and terrorism. The buck stops on General Buhari’s table to either put an end to the nonsense of insurgencies, banditry and kidnappings or he should resign and let a more capable person take the reins so as to prevent Nigeria from breaking out into a Somali-like state of anarchy.