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Nigeria presents a complex development matrix.
Desperate efforts to address Nigeria’s development crisis continues to meet brick walls. Poverty remains entrenched in defiance to the ludicrous, wide mouthed efforts of the Nigerian establishment. For the umpteenth time, therefore, it is important that we re-examine the cause(s) of Nigeria’s retrogression.
Karl Popper’s “Open Society and Its Enemies” could be of relevance here. I’m excited about Karl’s attack on the ideology of “historicism” which seeks to convince us or rather confuse us, that change is impossible. The attitude of “social engineering” is a powerful contrast to pessimistic historicism.
In this piece, I would seek to attack the retrogressive tendencies in Nigeria with a social engineering attitude. My thesis is that Nigeria’s problem is caused mainly by a powerful cabal in powerful places, who masquerading in an open society garment are the real enemies of open society, and hence the real danger to Nigeria’s development.
In his “21 Irrefutable laws of leadership”, John Maxwell made a living statement: “Everything rises and falls on leadership” Nigeria is unlucky on the issue of political leadership. We have not been able to break the cycle of autocracy. During the locust years, we lost the sense of what democracy; open society means. As a people we suffered a psycho-emotional breakdown that has refused to heal.
In 1999, we went into the polls without adequate preparation. We rushed to a democratic poll without a democratic constitution. The 1999 constitution as we all know was imposed on the Nigerian people by an autocratic regime that was consumed with a passion to perpetuate itself in power. The independent Electoral Commission (INEC) that was conceived by this constitution was in fact contrived to be an appendage of the executive. The notion of federalism which thrives in decentralization of power was carefully distorted to pave way for totalitarianism.
But we rushed to polls in a frantic hurry to end that terrible period of military autocracy and Obasanjo emerged as a “messiah”. It was not long before it began to dawn on us all that the road to the “Promised Land” was still afar and that the long sought messiah was not yet on sight. But we failed to do much beyond rhetoric and soap box oratory. It is important however to applaud the efforts of people like, Chief Gani Fawehnmi, who saw the warning signals earlier and went to court to challenge the flawed logic of democratic conscription. The case was Musa Vs INEC. Gani’s unassailable argument in that case led to the registration of 22 new political parties.
In 2003 presidential election, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the most powerful party in Africa was on song again. The PDP swept the polls like a mad hurricane. It looked as if there was no other party in Nigeria. The new parties seemed destined to be weak. It is interesting to note, however, that the last elections have been widely adjudged to be the worst in the history of Nigeria. An analyst, talking specifically about the recent local government elections stated that in the election, “the devil came to the polls”. In several polling stations, there were no elections, yet results emerged. In my local community, villagers still tell shocking stories of how guns were freely used to scare them from coming out to vote in the election
What has happened therefore, is that we have in governance, several people that cannot in the real sense of democratic assessment, trace their mandate to the people. The critical connection between the people and their leaders has been severely broken by electoral fraud.
John Maxwell’s law of magnetism, which requires the leader to connect to the people, has been broken with impunity. Hence, when we say we are hungry, our leaders fail to understand our language. When we complain of our increasing difficulties in accessing social amenities, like electricity, water, good roads, etc, our leaders laugh to scorn and point out to us their giant achievements in those regards.
It is not surprising therefore, that a majority of Nigerians are suffering and dying in the silence of their bedrooms. They are afraid to come out to the cities to confront the shocking contrast of opulence. People are still building sky scrappers and changing exotic cars like articles of clothing in a country that has become notorious as a poverty stricken one, where human development index remains at the lowest ebb. For some, this is a mystery. For others it is not and can be explained like this: a few persons are using their positions to pauperize others by milking dry the financial cow of the nation.
We should not be surprised therefore, that our leaders are keen to increase the pump price of fuel in a continuous basis. The simple reason for their action is because they do not understand why we cannot spare few notes in buying fuel. They are so consumed by the gospel of “deregulation” hence they have failed to appreciate what we are saying about “our take-home pay being unable to take us home” They do not care about the widespread unemployment that has made life unbearable for Nigerians, especially the youths. There is nobody keeping the statistics of the number of Nigerian graduates that are unemployed and unemployable. No one is taking note of how many retired workers, who spent their whole lives, working for government have died as a result of frustration, hunger and anger.
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Wilfred Mamah
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