Election 2023 - The Choice Before Nigerians: Reform Or Revolution - Part 1 of 4
Looking back so we can move forward.
In today’s Nigeria, everything that can go wrong has gone wrong, thanks to the Buhari regime. The economy is not growing, in fact the growth rate of the GDP has slowed considerably due to poor economic management, The Naira has lost its value, interest rate is so high that it does not encourage either savings or investment, without these, the economy cannot grow.
Foreign investment cannot flow in because of insecurity of life, limb and capital assets, not to talk of unpredictable exchange rate, without foreign capital inflow, we cannot get the technology that usually accompany them. Indigenous scientific research has for long been stultified because those in power do not value education. The physical infrastructure that support growth of businesses – energy, road, transport system etc, have since dilapidated. The general business climate is harsh and uninviting; those foreign businesses already here are taking their flight out of the country. AND then the big elephant in the china shop, security. There can be no civilization in a country living in the “state of nature”.
On the other hand , the population is growing faster than we can feed, house or educate the young. As a result we have over 20 million children who have never been enrolled in school, and many more who dropped out without completing the primary school education join the growing number of youth unemployment. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says 45.6% of youths (aged 18 – 35) are unemployed. Those of them who managed to go through primary and secondary level of education have no employable skills. Some of them who managed to finish their tertiary education eke out their living on the periphery of the formal economy , thanks to the internet and IT revolution. They are starting families and soon have other mouths to feed! The result is poverty of body and mind. Any wonder the World Bank says Nigeria is now the Poverty capital of the world with over 30 million suffering from multidimensional poverty.
The reason people set up government is to protect life and property from
external or internal marauders; to protect their freedom to go about their lawful businesses unmolested. The US Constitution summarized it in the famous phrase “life ,liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The makers of the 1999 Constitution, copying from the 1979 Nigerian constitution. ,reiterated categorically that the 1999 constitution is adopted
“ …… for the purpose of promoting the good government and welfare of all peoples in our country on the principles of Freedom, Equity and Justice, and for the purpose of consolidating the unity of our people..” (see preamble to the 1999 constitution)
Yet, in Nigeria today that is not happening. Nobody can sleep with two eyes closed. There is banditry and kidnapping for ransom, murder of innocents by known and unknown gunmen, highway robbery, rape , murder and arson, especially on Government facilities built with colossal amounts of public funds; There is blatant looting of public funds by the people who were elected or appointed to use it for the welfare of the people. Our elected leaders appear to be “fiddling while Rome burns”.. Debates in the National Assembly, and even state assemblies sound so bland, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. They do not show that our leaders understand the people’s problems except when the problem touches their pockets. At the end of the day, they take their loot and retire to their homes abroad only to be replaced by another batch of treasury looters protected from prosecution by immunity clauses in the constitution. The national Assembly has thus become a safe haven for the people looting this country dry. Do they understand their role as elected representatives of the people? Doubtful.
When the Buhari regime was waiting on the wings-(2014/15,) it promised CHANGE to Nigerians. Naira would exchange 1 to 1 with the dollar; Boko- haram will be defeated; corruption will be wiped out etc. Eight years down the line, Naira now exchanges at 740+ to one US Dollar. The naira is so scarce that the looters have now made the dollar the currency of choice in political deals. Boko Haram has gone from being ‘technically defeated’ to controlling nearly the whole of North East and parts of the North Central zones of the country. We are told so many BH surrendered, rinsed of their ideological sickness and injected into the regular army to sabotage the efforts of the army from within. Who’s fooling who?
Corruption has reached high heavens as do make the angels weep. Add to this the impunity with which public officials deal with the down trodden, the wretched of the earth of Nigeria; There is much extrajudicial killing of innocent citizens, the youths are hounded into prisons for having an earphone; young people are arrested and detained without trial for having a computer. A panel beater was sentenced to death for stealing 57,000 Naira (UNPROVEN),while an Accountant General was fined 750,000 naira for stealing N109 billion naira, If that is not a travesty of justice, then I don’t know what justice is.
Security officials act with such impunity that many youths are afraid to ply their legitimate IT trade. Even as I am writing, a young female lawyer has been gunned down by an Assistant Superintendent of Police. – a very senior police officer who should know the rules and boundaries of policing and law enforcement ! ! As at the time of this writing, I have not heard that at least that he has been taken into custody for questioning, let alone trial. What a country? Over 2 million Nigerians now live in IDPs in their own country, and none of the candidates for president (except one )has said anything about how to get them back to “normal” life in villages.
IT HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN THIS BAD
How did Nigeria descend to such a level? Our children are now asking questions. How do we get out of the mess the country is in and join the rest of the world. That is the challenge the OBI-DATTI Movement (I call it a tsunami) poses for us of an earlier generation as we approach this 2023 elections. The Obi/Datti movement by the youths is being brushed aside as people without “political structure”. And yet our future lies in the education and encouragement of this growing resilient, adaptable, tech-savvy generation of youths, our greatest resource for development. I think the old time politicians are not making any effort to listen to the new voices in the political firmament of Nigeria. This is perhaps because they want to protect their turf with politics as usual. What am I hearing? A demand for a new way of doing things. If we say we are a democratic country, then we must play the game of politics democratically. If we have a Constitution we must obey the constitution. If we say we have rule of law then the law must be applied uniformly to all citizens. Right now, they are not seeing it. What is being dished out is the old nzogbu -nzogbu; operation wetie; and mafia cultures of pre-civil war years; a culture of zero-sum game, winner takes all. This is not suitable for our country with so much diversity , culturally, ethnically, geographically and so on.
The Obi/Datti movement is saying that the old ways are not taking us anywhere in this internet age. They are calling us to take note of the external changes that are affecting our country’s development . Modernization and the impact of the internet age on the population, the revolution of rising expectations, demographic shifts, migration and impact on geopolitics; Urbanization and revolution in transport; External Security in an age of drones and intercontinental missiles; Internal security and policing in an age of social media and so on. This calls for a new mind-set in how we do politics. They have taken the route of quiet revolution through the ballot box. This is Democracy resetting itself.
After all, that was how an earlier generation of youths that challenged the British colonial regime successfully fought for our independence. (Nnamdi Azikiwe was 37 when he returned from America to found his chain of newspapers that was the voice of the masses. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was only 38 when he published his Path to Nigerian Freedom (1944) in London., he later returned to lead the Action Group party, the Sardauna of Sokoto was in his early 40s when he became the Premier of the whole of Northern Region. Chief Anthony Enahoro was only 27 when he moved the motion for Independence of Nigeria, in the House of Representatives in 1953. These were young men who wanted change from the throes of colonialism. They used the language of the spirit of the post WW2 world -freedom and democracy; independence and human rights with dignity,—and they succeeded.
Contrast this with the Obi-Dient generation. Most of them were born after the Nigerian civil war, which means that the oldest ones are in their early fifties. And yet they have known nothing but military and pseudo military rule. Their parents will tell them stories, that once upon a time, there were Nigerian Airways, Nigerian Railways, Nigerian National Shipping line, Nigerian Post and Telegraphs, Public Works Department; Mission schools that produced those earlier leaders etc. and they wonder what happened to the men and women who manned these institutions. They were Nigerians trained by the colonial power partly in Nigeria and partly overseas. . Nigerian Engineers could design and build roads and bridges then. Now we rely on Chinese coolies who come with contracts written in a language we cannot understand. All our infrastructures have decayed and those who worked in them are all dead or languishing somewhere in the country side waiting for pensions that will never come.
All that this younger generation has seen, as far as governance is concerned are military rulers, retired military rulers recycling themselves . They hear about the wealth from petro-dollars , billion and trillions of naira budgeted, and yet the country is now ranked among the poorest of the poor; they see poverty in the midst of plenty. They see a relationship between this groveling poverty and the insecurity, terrorism, insurgency, banditry and lawlessness ravaging the country.?
WHY?
Short answer: poverty of leadership and poverty of the mind.