At the heart of my recent visit to Eritrea, was the interview session that I had with Isaias Afewerki, the president of that country. The 74-minute interview was broadcast on Eritrean television, and it allowed me an aperture into his mind; his world view as well as the platforms which form the basis of governance in the small country. The background of thirty years of warfare has moulded the people and the leadership. At a point, we took a break, because it was drizzling, and since the interview was being conducted in the forecourt of the presidential building, we withdrew from the elements. It was the moment that we used to discuss even more frankly about African leadership; the crises of African development and of course Nigeria!
I was impressed about the depth of knowledge that the Eritrean president has about Nigeria. Afewerki said it pains him all the time that Nigerians don’t seem to realise the incredible potentials of their country and the need to get things done in the right manner. He reminded me that a well-run Nigeria which finds the path of its true potentials will positively influence West Africa in particular and the African continent in general. Of course all of us know and never tire in re-stating the same fact. However, our political system; the patterns of leadership recruitment; the contestation of the real meaning of its nationhood between reactionary elite groups not to forget the institution of corruption at the heart of governance, have ensured that these potentials remain just that: unattained!
The realities of Nigeria’s deep crises steer us in the face in so many ways and they are always scary, because our ruling elite just does not seem able or really willing to move on tracks of restitution which might even enhance the legitimacy of their own class hegemony. This week, for example, the chairperson of the EFCC, Mrs. Farida Waziri told the press that 49 unnamed Nigerians looted the nation’s treasury to the tune of N143.6billion. Imagine just what that amount can add in terms of value to the country! And each day, the media reports one case of theft after the other, underlining the fact that the main reason for political power is to have the access to steal resources that should be going into the development process. Our ruling class shoots itself in the feet by its irresponsible conduct, especially with the institution of an ethos of corruption that saps the nation, alienates the people and weakens the state.
In the meantime, processes are unfolding all around us which point to the subtle breakdown of the fabric of our society. Early this week, the media also reported the chairman of Apapa local government in Lagos state, lamenting the level of childhood prostitution in the primary school system as well as the use of drugs and cultism. This problem is not a phenomenon in the Lagos area alone, because in other parts of the country, the sureties of family life are collapsing as a result of serious economic conditions. Whichever sector of our national life that we care to analyze, these frightening processes of collapse come to the fore. In response, we see badly thought out solutions that betray the incompetence of the officials of state given the tasks to help plug the leakages of the system. Nigeria’s ruling class seems to be lost in a vicious cycle of incompetence and an ever deepening inability to break from mediocrity. An example of this is the hare-brained argument by the Executive Secretary of the NUC, whose duty is to give health to the public university system but regularly argues that private education is the route of development; this is despite the fact that no nation has developed which neglects its public school system (where they get such backward types from to head public institutions always beats the imagination!).
One of the more galling aspects of these problems is the inability to build ruling class consensus about some of the main issues that should be defining our nationhood. A typical example of this is the cacophony of responses to the low-intensity warfare in the Niger Delta. Sections of the political/media elite in the South seemed to have indulged the criminal elements in the Niger Delta who are called ‘militants’; but even those who know that these are just lumpen cut throats who used to be foot soldiers of the politics of the last ten years, still see them as being involved in some altruistic or idealistic fight. The main problem here in my view, is the support given tacitly by these sections of the elite, to the delusion that oil resources belong to ‘them’ and not to the Nigerian people as whole. There is therefore an underlining difference in the perceptions of different factions of the elite in respect of national resources and their ownership. The gulf makes it very difficult to build consensus and that adds extra difficulty to any effort to build an inclusive nation.
It is clear that Nigeria’s ruling elite has to make very clear choices; it will either continue to carry the baggage of presiding over a nation unable to live up to its potentials, while the world hurtles along on the tracks of development or begin to shed the toga of a ruling class of corruption and barefaced theft. It will also have to find avenues to build the consensus which can help to define the country’s paths of development. In trying to do these things, the political process has to undergo a fundamental overhaul. It is deception to believe that what is on the ground now can somehow offer the path of restitution; similarly, leadership recruitment has to be overturned in a radical manner to checkmate the process which allows a handful of individuals to steal our country blind and thus deprive our people those resources that can help to build a decent livelihood. If there is no movement on these tracks, Nigeria’s ruling class project will run into a serious crisis, sooner than later, and it will become difficult to dam the surge towards a frighteningly anarchic upheaval. This is no prophecy of doom!
THE MUCH-VAUNTED MILITANTS’ SPONSORS’ LIST
A lot has been written in recent days about the so-called militants’ sponsors’ list that was captured from the criminal called Tom Polo. If Yar’adua has been reluctant to release it, it might be because it indicts the PDP elements that have been using the criminals to steal elections since 1999. The political elite has been in bed with criminals for over ten years; each side terrorizing the Nigerian people in a unique manner: the Tom Polos using brigandage while the elite steals the commonweal! That is why the list is hot potato in Yar’adua’s hands!
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