By Dr Usman Bugaje
In the last quarter century, Nigeria has only been going down the drain, inevitably and irredeemably: the 2022 UNESCO report puts the number of out-of-school-children in Nigeria at 20m, and the World Education Blog reports that Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school-children in the world. Another recent report from an African blog reports that Nigeria has the largest population without electricity, in Africa. The recent COP28 shows that Nigeria has the largest per capita delegation.
While our leaders were enjoying themselves at the COP28, the Nigerian armed forces were killing innocent citizens, leaving the bandits to freely move about unleashing terror, trepidation and trauma. I am not sure of what happened to the typographical errors in the Judiciary, while waiting, another unthinkable event stole the show of shame, the empty budget box in the NASS. I asked an old Senator for an interpretation and he said, it means the budget has already been approved even before presentation (ala presidential Yacht), which now obviates the need for any paperwork. Apparently this had been paid for by the Executive, by installments, and the new anthem stands as evidence of the total submission of the legislative arm to the mighty Executive. May God save us the ordinary folks. Our country is becoming a joke! And the world may not take us seriously anymore. And this cannot be allowed to continue!
One could go on, but the point has been sufficiently made, that our democracy is not working, that our rogue political culture is inimical to development and our ‘cash and carry’ political paradigm has set us up on a dangerous trajectory that is stampeding us to implosion and possible extinction. This political paradigm with its rouge political culture and empty political rhetoric, has calibrated our political parties and processes to favour crooks and clowns. We now have to ask ourselves some existential questions: with this mediocrity and reckless irresponsibility, how can we survive as a modern nation state, much less thrive in the competitive environment of the 21st century? Is this the kind of future we want for ourselves and our posterity? To be sure, what future is there for a nation where the youth make up 65% of our population and where our political leaders have neither the idea nor the disposition, much less the competence to provide jobs? Indeed what hope is there for a country whose political parties have become cartels for looting the public treasury? With the political parties calibrated to produce the worst of us as leaders, what hope is there that we can find leaders who will have the conscience, the competence and the courage to get us out of here?
So what to do? The current trajectory means that we have no future as a nation and we don’t need a soothsayer or some sophisticated analysis to see that we are heading to some implosion and eventual extinction. We must find a way of changing this trajectory and making sure that the new trajectory salvages the nation. In deciding what to do and how to do it, we must tarry a little, reflect and examine the issues carefully, establish a correct etiology, diagnosis and prognosis before prescribing a way out. It is tempting to pour out dozen things that are wrong with our democracy and that need to be corrected. Based on this partial diagnosis, we have seen how many electoral reforms have been carried out and how these reforms have been rendered impotent.
One clear lesson is that the potency of reforms is not so much in the reforms themselves as in the leadership to implement them. If we look back from Greek antiquity, the ancient Asian kingdoms, through the Roman period to our contemporary times, countries that recovered from catastrophes, survived and thrived have done so primarily because of leadership. The stories of Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, China itself and Rwanda, all prove the point that, what really matters for countries to change their trajectory, survive and thrive, is leadership. In these examples, some of the leadership that did the magic emerged out of gradual incremental process of reform and some came through a revolution. Lest we get caught in the chicken and egg quandary, the point here is to stop ‘beating about the bush’ and focus on leadership recruitment process.
In other words, we are where we are in Nigeria and will remain so because our leadership recruitment mechanism is not only flawed but it has been gradually, if imperceptibly, calibrated to bring forth as leaders our worst, not our best. Our leadership recruitment process does not appear to have any criteria at all, opening the flood gate for all manners of people to contest. What appears to be a criterion in the constitution in terms of age and educational qualification is actually a criterion for eligibility. What is still missing is a criterion for suitability. It is important that we distinguish eligibility from suitability. Our political culture promotes only money and violence, not competence and character.
Today you can only make the list of candidates for election either because you have money to throw around or you have a connection to those who own the party. Parties are known by the moneybags that fund them and own them and not by their contents. Indeed, our political parties today have no content, no conscience and no courage. Primary elections and general elections are openly purchased with money, such kinds of money as only the criminal elements can possess and spend. In other words, we have to fix the broken leadership recruitment mechanism in the political parties such that the more knowledgeable, the more competent and the more conscientious emerge as leaders. Thus, replace the current expediency with some form of meritocracy. Contemporary China today is a product of meritocracy, so is Singapore and the Nordic countries with their consensual style of politics. In the 21st century, knowledge is the greatest capital; there is no way to make any positive progress without prioritising knowledge. The next question is how to go about doing this? For me, there are three clear inextricably linked processes.
It is my considered opinion that absence of a national consensus among Nigerian elite, as to which country they want to build and where they want their country to be in the next few decades is what created the vacuum which has now been occupied by pedestrians and people of easy virtue who have taken over and predictably made a mess of the country. The elite have focused more on our differences than our common corporate interest and the future of our only country. Elite spend time and energy on what divides us, each claiming to be marginalised, unable to see the futility of this infatuation. Admittedly we came together by British imperial fiat and come from different cultures and perspectives, but so are many countries, indeed the world itself is full of such diversities. We have continued to emotionalise and weaponise these differences in national discourse. We have detained the whole country at some cross road, unable to move in any direction for we don’t seem to agree in which direction to go. And as the old line goes, ‘no winds are favourable until one knows to which port one is sailing.’
Rwanda is one evidence, if evidence is needed, that no matter the challenge, once there is elite consensus and a commensurate leadership, recovery can be soonest. In spite of going through the horror of the worst genocide in Africa and the poor resources available, within barely two decades, Rwanda is not just able to survive but it is one of the most thriving African countries today. Diversity cannot be the problem, for Somalia, the most homogenous of any country on earth, would not be in the turmoil it is today. If religious harmony was essential to progress, the Southern Sudan would not be in the turmoil it is today. We need to remember that today our country is already over 200m and by UN projection, we shall be 300m in 2030 and well over 400m in 2050, which will make us the third most populated country in the world after India and China.
