It is hard to define what Nigeria is apart from being
a land mass with some 200 million people trapped between some longitudes and
latitudes. That Nigeria is not a nation-state is obvious from the way it was
created in 1914. It was a created as a geopolitical convenience by the British
for administrative ease and economic plundering to the discomfort of those
trapped behind its borders. Not bothered about history, the inheritors have
kept the legacy sacrosanct weaving constitutional barriers to prevent jailbreak
and seeking to obliterate history from the mind of the citizens. Just like
their predecessors, they want us to believe that we had no history before they
came.
Nigeria bears the tag of a “Republic” but functions
like a primitive monarchy where politicians and government officials and anyone
in position of responsibility plays an “executive” king. The Nigerian press,
either for carelessness or for their access to more information than the rest
of us often refers to an administration as a period of “reign”. And the elected
politicians act this out too: it is easier to meet and speak with Donald Trump
than to see a local “Executive Governor”. The Nigerian President plays the
ultimate King where the Presidency is like a Royal Court. He cannot be seen, he
doesn’t write letters, he doesn’t pick his calls and he doesn’t speak with his “subjects”.
In this country, it is normal that even when a governor or the president doesn’t
want to play a king, the attending Royal Court (ministers and commissioners,
advisors and their advisors and multiple layers of security) insists that a
king is a king and the visitor must play a compliant subject. It is unimaginable
that a subject or a group of subjects will have an opposing view on any subject
with the President. Such a sacrilege will be decisively met with the fury of members
of the Royal Court even without the knowledge of the President.
Nigeria is called “Federal” but functions like a
dictatorship where the Presidency calls the shot with monthly “sharing” of our
commonwealth to States, making friends of some and ostracizing the others. Acquiescence
is purchased or forcefully extracted. The oppressive organs of the State like the
Police, the Army, the Secret Services, the judiciary which do not pretend to be
independent are at the beck and call of the President, who can deploy them
against anyone or any group without consultation. And the milk cows like NNPC
and the Central Bank are also part of the holdings of the Presidency.
Nigeria is not a PLC as the citizens who are supposed
to be the shareholders are discounted in the process of running the Nigerian
Enterprise. The Nigerian stocks are in the hands of a few elites who have no
interest in profits but are bent on swallowing up the capital. Like many of its
defunct businesses (NEPA, Nitel, Steel Rolling Mills, Nigeria Airways etc.)
Nigeria is being run aground by its political class and its bureaucrats. Their modus
operandi as managers is diseconomies of scale, characterized by bogus presidency
and state houses, bloated parliament both at national and state levels with disregard
and disdain for any form of accountability. Babangida once publicly expressed
surprise at the resilience of Nigerian economy which in his view was still “standing”
despite being battered to unconsciousness by looters.
That Nigeria is in no way a modern state is glaring
from the lack of vision of its leaders and its consequent failures on all
scales that define state responsibility and accountability like infant-, under-five-,
maternal mortalities, accountability, provision of basic infrastructure etc. It
fails all government-business transparency tests and scores high on corruption,
insecurity and political absurdities. It claims to be a giant, but it is a
dwarf among modern states in all aspects.
If Nigeria were a human being, it would need many
specialist doctors to save its life. Brain surgeons to remove its many cancers
and their metastasis. And a psychiatrist to train it back on responsible social
behavior.
If Nigeria had been a private company the
shareholders would long have demanded that its way of doing business be restructured.
Many managers (in uniforms and babanriga and all) would have been sacked in the
process, particularly those who have grown to think of the Nigerian Enterprise
as their birthright. And many others would have been committed to jail.
But we Nigerians are a special lot. Many rules of
common sense do not apply to us. We have been like this since 1914. The phrase,
“once bitten twice shy” does not exist in our collective lexicon. For us, it is,
once bitten, come back for more. We will again be back for more in 2019.
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