Nigeria: Epitaph To A Dying Republic

 By Mike Ikhariale

Judging by the way things are going presently, it is only those who take pleasure in deceiving themselves that would ignore all the tell-tale signs of the imminent morbidity awaiting the Repub­lic. It is quite sad that Nigeria has rapidly be­come a theatre of unbridled anarchy, a society that is seemingly jinxed to stumble and fall, where government, through defective actions and policies, is actually at the forefront in the ignoble march to national ruination.

*Buhari 

The traditional constitutional schema for separating government powers and functions for the purposes of achieving stability and effectiveness in society, namely the Legisla­ture, the Executive and Judiciary as well as safeguarding us from an overbearingly tyran­nical government in the classic Montesqui­uean sense, ie, checks and balances has been corrupted in Nigeria.

It is, however, worth noting that the doc­trine of Separation of Powers is also a key el­ement in Nigeria’s constitutional architecture which was structurally designed to serve as a ‘feedback stabilization mechanism’ whereby the various organs of government routinely interact with a view to reinforcing their in­dividual and collective stability in moments of crisis and general constitutional/political turbulence.

The current Nigerian predicament is com­pounded by the sad reality that, instead of these organs checking and balancing each other and also reinforcing each other, they have indeed enlisted in an apparent nefarious conspiracy to destroy Nigeria, the same State entity which they were originally established to serve, protect and prosper.

The only rational explanation for these seemingly institutional betrayals and oper­ational contradictions that are now bedevil­ing Nigeria’s governance is that they have all fallen victims of a subtle takeover by vicious “state capturing” entrepreneurs who have un­wittingly turned these hallowed institutions into enemies of the Nigerian State instead of being its protectors, enforcers and alter ego. That is why the Executive has become functionally clueless, the Legislature basically irrelevant and the Judiciary a willing facilita­tor of the perversion of the nation’s juristic palladiums through politically tendentious pronouncements

It is quite a daunting emotional task to be placed at an intellectual platform wherefrom one can clearly see the onrushing dangers that are the inevitable consequences of certain so­cial, political and economic steps, processes and dispositions by government as if one is a Prophet of Doom; one cannot partake in the misguided optimism of the ensnared larger crowd.

I am a strong believer in the manifest des­tiny of Nigeria to be a great nation if patri­otically managed by leaders who sincerely subscribe to that aspiration and also desire its realization. But when a nation appears to always opt for the uncharted and slippery path to perdition through her poor leadership recruitment, it becomes admissible evidence of a fatalistic desire to commit what is, for all practical purposes, communal suicide be­cause we are obviously deceiving ourselves thinking that a miraculous cure is awaiting somewhere even when it is obvious that she is being actively mismanaged towards an in­evitable crash.

Nigeria is today over-burdened with a coun­terfeited democracy which is characterised by nepotism, corruption and monumental incompetence thus indicating a pitiable ab­sence of a credible roadmap to national de­velopment. The evidently misruled country is further weakened by the lack of a cohesive social order that is serviced by credible insti­tutional arbitrators and other traditionally built-in guardrails coupled with the obvious absence of national ideological cohesion or a shared collective vision of common destiny. That is why our politics is dominated by such mundane, divisive and debilitative issues like religion and ethnicity.

It is only a society that has no hope for the future that would allow her public schools and universities to be placed under lock and keys for months, heartlessly run down her key national infrastructures and unwittingly exacerbate disunity amongst the population without any reasonably noticeable efforts to ameliorate the embarrassments; it is also only in a country that has parted ways with the Rule of Law that you would find the kind of legal infamy associated with the reported vex­atious and anarchic suit by the ruling party (the APC) against INEC, trying to force the hands of the umpire over the incontestable ineligibility of Senator Lawan, the Senate president, who did not participate in the pri­maries intended to nominate a candidate for the senate seat in his constituency.

For Senator Lawan, a former presidential aspirant, to want to have his cake back after he has eaten it is the exact definition of impu­nity. No nation can survive with such brazen affronts to the Constitution in politically high places. I have long doubted the viability of Nigeria’s political system that is anchored on lawlessness and wholesale disregard of con­stitutionalism, due process and all the norms of decent governance thus:

“At independence in 1960, there was every reason to hope for a rapid development of Nigeria in view of the abundance of all that make all truly progressive countries great and, as a result, the world was eagerly expectant about the natural ‘Giant of Africa’ springing up to lead the continent: a large population, abundant natural resources complemented by an unusually clement weather supported this universal hope for the revival of the dwindling fortunes of the Black race worldwide.

“The only missing item in the checklist for national development is the critical element of leadership. The exceptionally success story of Singapore under Lee Kwan Yew with far less human and material resources, contrast­ed sharply with those of Nigeria where ‘mon­ey’ was once ‘not the problem but how to spend it!’ It summarizes the well-tested theory that places the element of ‘leadership’ at the very top of what every nation requires to develop.

“In the face of these massive failures, there has been the resulting trading of generational blames why ignoring the system that breeds the nonsense. I belong to the immediate post-military generation of Nigerians. When I graduated from university, the woeful lamen­tations over ‘austerity measures’ was already a part of our national anthem presenting a frightful trajectory of a nation fast deteriorat­ing with each passing day being rated worse than the previous one, a practical manifesta­tion of a nation in decline.”

Sadly, our ‘pioneer’ political class did not have the requisite moral and ethical energies required to lead the inchoate nation into great­ness because they were, ab initio, irredeem­ably corrupt, selfish, nepotistic, and sectarian in outlooks and dispositions. There are theo­ries suggesting that most of the so-called ‘first generation’ of educated Africans were not the best materials that were available at their time because suspicious African parents permitted only their households’ supposedly ‘never-do-wells’, the Achebe’s ‘efulefus’, to follow the Whiteman away to his school. Little wonder therefore that even with their education, they never rose beyond their inherent limitations.

Adding to the detriment of Africa, military coupists soon displaced those pioneers, a de­velopment which accelerated the continent’s descent into a prolonged period of ignoble misrules characterised by massive economic plundering and developmental wastes, brutal­ity, civil wars, ethnic and sectarian strives, all leading to a general deterioration in the social order as the ‘scums of Africa’ soon became the new elite.

The pathetic state of Nigeria today has amply confirmed the initial apprehension as to where she was headed – perdition. To be successfully pulled out of Nigeria’s current morbidity, something extremely fundamental must take place because no nation can sur­vive the ongoing leadership and followership failure.

It, therefore, remains to be seen if the forth­coming 2023 elections can somehow arrest this rapid descent and possibly give Nigeria anoth­er opportunity to pull back. With the unprec­edented incompetence and cluelessness of a leadership that has apparently surrendered in the nation’s existential wars against corrup­tion, insecurity and the comatose economy, you need no soothsayer to tell that the end is nigh.

*Ikhariale, a professor of law, is a commentator on public issues