By Pat Utomi
Nigeria is a mess right now. A huge mess. Even the blind can see it. And the deaf can hear the cry of anguish of Nigeria’s children. Can the country be rescued? Possibly. But the myths, years of delusions of grandeur and criminal capture of the Nigerian state threaten the possibility.
*Utomi
Last week one of the great TV interviewers in
Nigeria, Charles Aniagolu, asked me the big question. How did we get here?
I resisted the temptation of the immodest but frank answer: go and read just about everything I have written in the last 40 years.
So I talked about a flawed political class constrained by the false consciousness of the collapsed morality of civic culture captured in the seminal essay on Colonialism and the two Publics written by Peter Ekeh in 1975 and the idea of the tragedy of the commons where that which belongs to all belongs to none.
Theoretical truths as they may be Nigeria’s descent to failing state status,
poverty capital of the world, and theatre of violent crime and impunity has
been a long time coming and has been framed by many illusions left unattended
by an anti-intellectual culture fostered by post-1999 political elite, ego
journalism which has left the big issues as a columnist celebrate self and
promote partisan passions, and a rent focused business elite tied to the aprons
of the politicians became complicit in their indulgence while pretending to be
neutral. The chicken has come home to roost, the gate to the road to Somalia
opens even as leadership selection traditions have left at the watch those
unable to shut the gates of brass and the bars of iron.
To be sure, Nigeria was a great
potential in 1960. But much of what created illusions of progress in the late
1970s and 1980s for a few thriving on crude oil rents, and the entitlement
mentality that has since followed, and sustained an appetite for consumption
and a consumerist economy has been in the way of shifting to production. These
derive from less than thoughtful nation building policy making choices even as
we went on giant of Africa hallucinations without the work that make giants. I
warned back then, chided and prompted in directions that could help claim the
promise of greatness. I was told I was talking to the deaf. Now all I hear is:
you forewarned us of this catastrophe.
The projected greatness of
Nigeria in 1960 was rooted not in potential oil revenues but in a
calculus of its factor endowments and character, vision and conduct of its
politicians between 1956 and 1960.
So when Prime Minister Tafawa
Balewa was welcomed in Washington shortly after Independence with such pomp in
international relations arena marked by power, maximizing it was because the
world saw an emerging black power. That potential consolidated for a period
under the military was squandered progressively by corrupt, poorly governing
narcissistic politicians.
But how did these leaders go so
spectacularly wrong? They neglected some simple rules any head of family pays
attention to in a time of windfall. Save for a rainy day, invest in the
education of the offspring and construct now you have cash that which will
enable them to produce and prosper in the days when that windfall may not be
there. Our elite seemed quite challenged compared to Botswana in Africa, Norway
in Europe and several of the countries in the Arab Middle East.
So we sauntered into Dutch
Disease which occurs when a combination of spending patterns and exchange rates
cause labour skills to move to the non-tradable goods sectors like construction
as traditionally dominant sectors like agriculture became uncompetitive. The
putative manufacturing sector which experienced great surge from 1956 under
self-government suffered shocks in this season and as Irene Sun shows in her
book on Chinese investments and Africa as the world’s next great factory became
victim of poor trade policy.
For me the biggest damage oil boom did to Nigeria
was the ‘confidence’ it gave decision makers to abandon rigor in decision
making and turn their back on planning. The failure of the electricity sector
so critical for production and civilization is the most revealing example of
this. How on God’s earth did we manage to let that happen?
When I go back and read things I
wrote 40 years ago, 30 years back and 15 years before now I wonder that if care
is not taken some will capture me and pronounce me a prophet. But I do not need
the religious charlatan powers to know those views were available to
anyone that paused to think.
Twenty three years ago I was
hosting the LBS executive briefing breakfast at which the IMF Country Manager
was guest. In my opening remarks, I reiterated my call for mineral and oil
revenues to flow into three accounts: a Distributable Pool Fund(FAAC), a
Stabilisation Fund and a Future Fund(Sovereign Wealth Fund). The IMF official
nicely editorialised that with thinking of that nature foreign experts would
have no place offering counsel. It was not rocket science. Botswana was ahead
of me on that curve.
In columns, I pressured the
government in Abuja to start saving oil windfalls. When they did, some of my
friends in a government I was friendly with in Lagos wondered why I would
encourage the Federal Government to take money rightly belonging to the states.
When I told one of them that he knew enough to understand the concept of mutual
funds he kept quiet. Today he has the responsibility for what I tried to
encourage then.
Had a marketplace of ideas
encouraged rational public conversation on my crusade of that season perhaps we
may not be where we are today in the management of the economy. But our
politics stifles rational conversation and the pool of good thinking shrunk.
Those who could point us to the
plight of the more vulnerable, the poor, the physically-challenged and minor minorities,
from academia and journalism retreated from the arena as bullies and
semi-literates got bolder. The voiceless angry began gradually to drop into the
catchment of the entrepreneurs of violence or violent crime. Most of what we
now project as violent irredentist movements happen to be organised crime as
Italy and some Latin American countries have experienced. But they have
compounded bad economic policies with insecurity that has hurt the agriculture
value chain.
The results have come in. Is
Nigeria a lost cause?
The tendency to glamorise the
era of crude oil oiled easy life for a portion of the population is attractive.
But it was an illusion of prosperity. Nigeria was never. It could have gone
that way but a short sighted elite chose to live in the present and not in the
future as their counterparts in Spain did three centuries ago.
The model from which we can
reconstruct a new Nigeria has to be found in a digital version of that of the
independence fathers who remarkably transformed the economy from 1957 to 1964
before the political order began to crack. We will then need to devise a new
political order seeing the present one has failed almost all stakeholders.
What political structure can
sustain a developmental state idea and grant the great escape to millions of
the desperately poor in Nigeria.
That new way has to overcome the
diseased morality of the civic culture of the extant ‘’democracy’ that let the
Barbarians past the gate into the city halls and boardrooms. The ‘Band A’
bandits of the disconnected state who have moved state capture up a
few notches have now so little sensitivity that like the wife of Louis XVI in
France they may ask why do those chanting ebi
mpawa and rioting for food because there was no Garri now eat Ofada rice
instead.
*Utomi is a Professor of
Political Economy at the Lagos
Business School and founder of the
Centre for Values in Leadership
No comments:
Post a Comment