Nigeria @ 60: Our Leaders Have Failed The Founding Fathers

 By Ayo Oyoze Baje

To fight against untruth and falsehood,

…to fight for our memory;

for our memory of what things were like –

that is the task of the artist.

A people who no longer remembers

has lost its history and its soul.

–     Alekzander Solzhentsyn 

With trillions of revenue in Naira, mostly from crude oil sales, agricultural exports, solid minerals, sundry taxes including Value Added Tax (VAT), from the ‘60s till date, it is a crying shame that Nigeria is currently the world capital of extreme poverty! And that it still parades some of the most disturbing and dismal figures in the Human Development Index (HDI) across the globe. 

*Awolowo, Azikiwe, Balewa 

According to Oxfam Report, between 1960 and 2005, about $20 trillion was stolen from the treasury by public office holders. This amount is larger than the GDP of United States in 2012 (about $18 trillion).The Report goes further to state in categorical terms that the combined wealth of Nigeria’s five richest men, put at $29.9 billion could end extreme poverty at a national level. Yet, more than 112 million people are living in poverty in Nigeria, while the country’s richest man would have to spend $1 million (N386 Million) every day for 42 years to exhaust his fortune! So, what does this mean to you and yours truly? 

Poverty and socio-economic inequality in Nigeria are therefore, not due to lack of natural and human resources, as God has blessed us abundantly. But it is all due to what one has always referred to as the restless run of avaricious locusts. They climb the pedestal of political power, garbed in the gabardines of glowing graft, feeding fat on our common till. O, yes, there is overt misallocation and misappropriation of our national resources, helped by an obscenely fat pay structure skewed in their favour. And so, we are where we find ourselves today. As well stated, “at the root is a culture of corruption combined with a political elite out of touch with the daily struggles of average Nigerians”.

For instance, poverty rate rose from 15 % as at independence in 1960, scaling to 67.1% in 1999 and 72.2% in 2014. The then World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, stated in April 2014 at the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings that Nigeria, with 7% of the world’s poor ranked third in the world while India was placed at number one with 33 per cent of the world poor. 

But by 2018 OXFAM Report ranked Nigeria as the world capital of extreme poverty ahead of India.

Indeed, the socio-economic picture is parlous. What with high food insecurity, huge youth unemployment to job losses, high maternal mortality? In fact, Nigeria currently boasts of the world’s highest number of deaths of under-5 children and the highest number of school-aged children that are out of school, put at 13.2 million. This certainly is a criminal betrayal of what God has richly endowed us with. This debilitating situation was certainly not the beautiful dream of our founding fathers and mothers. 

Lest we forget, once upon a time, precisely on August 13, 1947, a group of Nigerian patriots was at the London Office of the British Colonial Secretary, Arthur Creech-Jones to demand for the country’s political independence. They also used the opportunity to openly criticize the anti-people’s Richards Constitution. These worthy Nigerians included Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nyong Essien, P.M. Kale (from the Eastern Region).Others were Abubakar Dipcharima (Northern Region), Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Dr. Olorun-Nimbe and Adeleke Adedoyin (Western Region). They were delegates of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) political party. 

But what was the colonialist’s response? “Go home and cooperate with the Nigerian Government,” he said. Yet, they were not deterred. Instead, they held several meetings in places such as London, Oxford, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin to convince the British public that they meant serious business-that Nigeria was ripe enough for independence. Interestingly, they had tacit support from the West African Students Union, the Pan African Federation and the League of Coloured People. 

So, how would these noble Nigerians feel, if they were alive today to witness a country traumatized by persisting insecurity, quite at variance with the billions of Naira surreptitiously spent to quell it? How would Mike Enahoro (of blessed memory) feel, to see that the country, whose political independence he called for in 1953 is currently bifurcated by nepotism in appointments and promotions? How would the sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Nigeria's foremost federalist, who in his book, ‘Path to Nigerian Freedom’ (1947) presented the first systematic federalist manifesto feel about the country balkanized by ethnic chauvinism, with some Igbos clamouring for their Biafra Republic, and some Yorubas their Oduduwa Nation? 

Similarly, how would Professor Eyo Ita, the philosopher and educationist, who returned to Nigeria from the United States of America in 1933 to form the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM) in 1934, feel about today’s young ones? That is, especially those still clapping for greedy politicians in their ‘70s and ‘80s, who were decision-makers in their ‘30s, to keep hanging on to power and denying them of their moments to excel in governance? 

How would his Lagos counterparts such as Dr. J.C. Vaughan, Ernest Ikoli, Samuel Akinsanya and H.O.Davis feel, knowing that some youths of today have become cheap pawns in political chess games? That they pander to perverts and used as gun-runners, political thugs who snatch ballot boxes, kill perceived foes and manipulate the people’s choices during elections? 

And just how would the great Michael Imuodu feel, to watch the obnoxious scenario of members of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) being cowed to submission by force and intimidation, kowtowing to the powers that be? How would he feel about Nigeria’s current debt trap? He would feel a sense of revulsion that Nigerians are being hoodwinked to pay through their noses for petrol, while our country boasts of large deposits of crude oil. Or that the electricity tariff is hiked in a land that boasts of abundant sunshine, wind and water, as viable resources to generate power. 

In all honesty, the then youths who gathered in Kano back in 1947 to form the Northern Elements Progressive Association(NEPA) on the inspiration of the Zikists Movement, chanting: “ Self-government in our lifetime’’ would be hugely disappointed at their counterparts of today. They would be outraged by those who have turned the Northern states into the killing fields of Nigeria; those asking for the passage of the infuriating Water Resources Bill into law. And of course, those still hoodwinked by the insulting and iniquitous born-to-rule mentality. 

Were they alive, they would have seen the wisdom in a holistic restructuring of the country, for the geo-political zones to control their resources, meet the different needs of their people and pay an agreed tax to the federal centre. 

They would have appreciated the modest achievements made in the areas of infrastructural development, education and agriculture. But they would have questioned such in the absence of the respect for the sanctity of human life. 

So, having failed to meet the beautiful dreams of our founding fathers, the time to renegotiate our terms of peaceful existence; to engender harmony amongst the ethnic nationalities is now, not tomorrow.

Happy Independence Anniversary, Nigeria.

*Baje, a public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos. He is also the National President of Guild of Public Affairs Analysts of Nigeria (GPAAN)