How Nigerians can restore Nigeria’s greatness in the face of frustrating and competing socio-economic, cultural, religious and political hurdles.
By Jide Ajani, General Editor
The distress is real, not imagined! Sixty-five years after independence, the vision of the country’s founding fathers have floundered exponentially. And Nigeria and Nigerians are the worst for it. Is it still possible to realise the vision of greatness that Nigerians once beheld? Can Nigeria be great again?The answer is yes and no. Yes, because a genuine rebirth and recourse to the basics of good governance on the part of the leaders, and engagement of civic responsibility can engender a regime of change and positivity.No, because – and this is based on contemporary realities confronting the nation – from what the eyes can see, the body language and actions of the elites do not suggest a trajectory that can lead to a destination of progress and prosperity.
Vision abandoned
This is so because the foundational ideals upon which the nation was built were quickly abandoned, occasioned by a dual mandate of conflicting world views and developmental paces, making a unified national vision challenging to forge – the North of Nigeria, a predominantly Muslim, feudal society built around the Sokoto Caliphate, with a conservative outlook and less exposure to Western education; the South, ethnically more diverse with higher levels of Christian missionary activity, Western education, and a growing class of professionals and civil servants.
The founding fathers, such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, and Ahmadu Bello, initially championed pan-Nigerian ideals. However, they quickly retreated into ethnic championing as the primary mode of politics. Appointments, contracts, and development projects were allocated based on ethnic and regional loyalties, rather than merit or national interest. This established nepotism and tribalism as the default operating system of the Nigerian state, crippling efficiency and trust.
Corruption, military rule and a prebendal state
The first generation of leaders became mired in corruption and blatant election rigging. The famous “Operation Wetie” in the Western Region, where political thugs were used to intimidate opponents, and the blatantly rigged 1964 federal election demonstrated that the democratic process was not a vehicle for achieving a national vision, but a violent scramble for the spoils of office. Then came the military coup of January 1966, perceived as ethnically Igbo-dominated, and the bloody counter-coup of July 1966, followed by the pogroms against Igbos in the North, which shattered any remaining illusion of a unified Nigerian identity. The Civil War that followed was the ultimate proof that the vision of a united, great Nigeria had failed. The war’s legacy of trauma and the “victor-vanquished” mentality further poisoned national politics.
The long period of military rule (1966-1979, 1983-1999) proved catastrophic for achieving any vision of greatness. The military, by its very nature, operated within a command structure. They systematically gutted the federal system, stripping states and local governments of autonomy and concentrating power and oil revenue in the hands of the federal government in Lagos (and later Abuja). This turned the struggle for the presidency into a do-or-die affair, the ultimate prize for controlling national wealth. This led to the entrenchment of corruption: Military rule, devoid of public accountability, took corruption to a kleptocratic level. The “Oil Boom” of the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s became a missed opportunity of historic proportions. Instead of investing petrodollars in infrastructure and diversification, the regimes presided over an era of massive graft and white elephant projects. This established a culture in which state resources were viewed as a personal treasury for the ruling clique. The consequence of this was the destruction of the civic fabric, leading to the triumph of the wrong values and preventing the organic development of an engaged citizenry that could hold leaders accountable to a national vision. The civilians who have taken over since 1999 have not fared any better.
Political scientist, Richard Joseph, once described Nigeria as a “prebendal state,” where public offices are treated as prebends (personal benefits) for the enrichment of the officeholder and their ethnic clientele. This explains why politics is so ferocious and devoid of ideology. The goal is not to implement a vision of greatness but to gain access to the “national cake” to distribute to one’s cronies.
Sloganeering on steroids
Every new administration since the civil war in 1970 has had one fantastic slogan or the other, from No victor/No vanquished, to Operation Feed The Nation (1976-1979); Austerity Measures and Green Revolution 1979-1983); Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, 1986; to Vision 2010, Vision 2020, Agenda 2050, discarding the previous ones. This demonstrates that these are not serious, nationally owned plans or visions, but rather public relations slogans. There is no long-term, consistent strategy pursued across political cycles.
The Total Failure of Security and Rule of Law: From the Niger Delta militancy to Boko Haram, farmer-herder conflicts, and nationwide kidnappings, the state has lost its monopoly on violence. You cannot build an excellent economy or society without basic security and a predictable rule of law. This failure is perhaps the most visible sign of a state that cannot achieve its basic functions, let alone a vision of greatness. Catchy phrases that lack granular, measurable, and realistic milestones almost always catch the fancy of hapless citizens who engage in condonation of vile acts by their leaders.
But a country’s vision of greatness becomes unachievable when the foundation is flawed and built on forced amalgamation without a unifying identity; the abandonment of principle for tribalism, when leaders establish a system where loyalty trumps merit; a prolonged period of authoritarian rule which systematically dismantles its institutions, centralising power, entrenching corruption, and destroying accountability. This is made worse when the political economy becomes a negative feedback loop, where the goal of politics is to capture state resources for private gain, making any policy that threatens this rent-seeking system (like proper diversification or anti-corruption) politically impossible to sustain.
Barbarians at the gate
This embarrassing scenario would make one shudder: The National Assembly, NASS, is populated by some former state governors, ministers and heads of parastatals. The Federal Executive Council, FEC, comprises the same set of individuals from different political hues, but now members of the same political party. The National Council of State, NCoS, a very powerful consultative assembly, made up of the President, who is the Chairman, the vice president, who is the Deputy Chairman, all former Presidents of the Federation and all former Heads of the Government of the Federation, all former Chief Justices of Nigeria, President of the Senate, Speaker of the House of Representatives, all state governors and minister of justice and attorney general of the federation, is meant to suggest pathways to greatness for the incumbent administration. Pray, virtually all these individuals in NASS, FEC, and NCoS have had one thing or another to do with the despoilation of the Nigerian state. Yet, they are the same set of individuals to whom the nation looks for redemption. What a joke!
Leaving Nigeria behind
World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN Population Division, and historical economic records show that Southeast Asian Tigers and contemporaries like South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and African countries like Ghana, Botswana, Rwanda, Cape Verde and South Africa, countries that were either at par with or slightly behind Nigeria at independence in 1960, have since become beacons of development with structured economies. This comparison highlights that Nigeria’s development challenges are not due to a lack of potential or resources, but rather to governance and economic (mis)management issues.
How Nigerians can restore Nigeria’s greatness
Is there any hope? Yes! With effective institutions built on a stronger rule of law and lower levels of corruption, as well as economic diversification, investment in human capital, and political stability, which envisions long-term development plans that survive changes in government, would be reasonable steps.
A situation where the levels of desensitisation and toxification in the political and economic spheres remain anaemic to the needed gravitas that can lead to the realisation of the nation-founders’ visions should be abhorrent.
Dan Wang, a research fellow at the Hoover History Lab at Stanford University, previously a fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Centre and a technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, explains in his latest seminal work, BREAKNECK: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, how vision works. Whereas the work essentially attempts to caution the Chinese leadership cadre of the dangers of oversimplification in adopting engineering modules as directive principles for human and political development, unlike Nigeria, China has something to build on – its massive engineering activities for nation-building, which have significantly transformed the nation. For any nation to have a fighting chance at development and progress, it must enter the ring to fight. Nigeria is still shouting from outside the ring, if truth be told.
Vanguard Board Of Editors’ Take
The Vanguard Board of Editors have codified what it considers the different aspects of the Nigerian nation that have made a vision of greatness very difficult, if not impossible. From the Challenge of Unity, to Failure of Leadership, Constitutional Aberrations, Ugly Spectre of Corruption, Electoral Infidelity, Failure of Institutions, Social Fragmentation, Ethnicisation of Politics, Sports Underdevelopment and the Challenge of Economic Development, the following articles take a look at why Nigeria’s vision of greatness may appear like a mirage. Mind you, this codification is by no means exhaustive. The articles also provide pathways to greatness.
To achieve that greatness, only Nigerians, not foreigners, would have to reassess the basis of their existence and ask: Is what we have now sustainable? It is not. Therefore, a sincere soul-searching, devoid of the channel noises of ethnicity, religious intolerance, greed, corruption, disregard for the rule of law and other vices would have to be eschewed for that vision of greatness to be achieved.
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