Four decades and 13 years ago, Nigeria
obtained paper independence from the
United Kingdom. Even though the
independence was some sort of fluke,
men of goodwill still had great
expectations. Generous observers
compared the prospects of Nigeria to
nations such as Australia and New
Zealand. They thought Nigeria would likely
surpass then work-in-progress nations
such as India, Malaysia, Singapore, and
other Asian Tigers. With a liberal
inventory of primary goods such as cocoa,
palm oil, groundnut and hide and skin,
which were in high demand by the
industrial nations on both the East and
West blocs of the Cold War, Nigeria
looked well on its way to taking its rightful
place in the comity of developed nations.
The brimming enthusiasm of the white-
men-in-black-skin who replaced the
retreating colonial bureaucrats was
palpable.
While receiving visiting Prime Minister
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to Washington,
D.C., in July 1961, the American Vice-
President, Lyndon B. Johnson, observed,
“Mr. Prime Minister… you will find, as you
travel through this country, a very deep
and genuine interest in the exciting
development taking place in your country
and Africa today.” In an address to the
American House of Representatives,
Balewa said, with a bit of swagger, “the
flame of freedom once alight (on the
African continent) shall not go out again.”
He got a standing ovation. The blurb
behind “Which Way Africa?’, a book by
Basil Davidson, reads in part, “Events in
almost every corner of the (African)
continent have shown the world an Africa
poised on the threshold of new ventures.”
Famous first words. The optimism was
misplaced. Nowadays, Nigeria, a major
beneficiary of this optimism, is sometimes
regarded as a failed nation in American
Central Intelligence Agency circles.
Nigeria started out as the second largest
producer of cocoa in the world, after
Ghana. On account of its oil palm
produce, the southeastern corridor of
Nigeria was known as the area of the Oil
River. It was no surprise that the Nigerian
Institute for Oil Palm Research famously
exported ideas and seedlings to enhance
the agri-business of nations like Malaysia.
Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product
surpassed those of many southern
European nations. The industrial parks of
Apapa, Ikeja, Kano, Kaduna and Enugu,
compared favourably with those of
Europe and North America. Just after
Independence Day, many factories
displayed their products at an exhibition
held along the Bar Beach on Victoria
Island, Lagos. Wall Street plotted positive
prosperity graphs for Nigeria, as the
Nigerian pound was one of the strongest
currencies in the world. As for the oil
industry, you could literally say the petro-
dollar was in the pipeline.
Nigerian personnel were respected
throughout the world: Nigerian jurists
became justices in other countries. One
became a Chief Justice of the International
Court of Justice at The Hague. Nigerian
doctors and academics were considered
among the best. Same for the civil
servants, especially those in the Foreign
Service. A former British Prime Minister,
Harold Wilson, once offered the opinion
that Chief Obafemi Awolowo would have
had a successful tenure as British Prime
Minister. This was the man described by
compatriot Dim Emeka Odumegwu-
Ojukwu as the best president Nigeria
never had. Sometimes, you wonder where
the statesmen migrated to.
But despite these positive indicators, the
system collapsed. The politicians, who
initially looked like Olympians, began to
exhibit extreme traits of corruption and
intolerance. They subverted the
democratic structures; jailed, maimed or
killed key opposition figures; rigged
elections; concocted false census figures;
derailed development programmes;
neglected infrastructure; and diverted
public funds to private purposes. Merit
was closeted. Tribalism and other forms
of cave instincts, hallmarks of mediocrity,
were brazenly promoted. The canons of
good governance and best practices were
held in breach. The polity was
overheating, and something had to give.
It gave. A group of army Majors moved
against the state, killed Prime Minister
Balewa, the Western Regional Premier,
Ladoke Akintola, and the Northern
Regional Premier, Ahmadu Bello, and
some senior military officers. These
wannabe heroes further compounded the
situation. Either as good students of the
parochial school or lacking professional
competence (both unacceptable
explanations), they spared politicians
from their own ethnic group and killed
those of other groups.
They lost the initiative to their senior
colleagues, in a hurried handing over
ceremony supervised by then British High
Commissioner to Nigeria. But the
beneficiaries of the power appeared to be
out of their depth. After a series of
snafus, coups and counter-coups, the
nation ended up with a grave
constitutional crisis, a debilitating civil war
and a war-weary military exercising
political powers it was ill-prepared for. As
both the civilian and military leaders
failed woefully, Nigeria ended on
wounded knees. The civil war diverted
good money from development projects
to buying arms and ammunition.
Government fell into the bad habit of
spending money just to maintain the
status quo. It failed to repair, retrofit and
expand infrastructure. Time magazine’s
Fareed Zakari observes that crumbling
infrastructure are barriers to growth. It
gets even worse with a bludgeoning
population and pilfering of public funds,
including freebie oil money. This freezing
of hopes resulted in arrested
development or economic stagnation.
Now, Nigeria, a net exporter of crude oil,
is also a net importer of refined
petroleum products.
Never mind those sterile statistics that
Government agencies such as the Ministry
of Finance, Ministry of National Planning,
Central Bank of Nigeria, Federal Office of
Statistics release once in a while. They are
compiled to either impress the World
Bank and the International Monetary
Fund or just to make some politically
correct noise. You know, growth rate,
inflation, Gross Domestic Product, interest
rate, exchange rate, living index and
income per capita? Paper tigers that
excite numbers-crunchers, but don’t
reflect as jobs, food, accommodation,
social services and dividends of
democracy, for the people. The New
Peoples Democratic Party, the nemesis of
the ruling party of Nigeria, is emphatic
that unemployment rate is staggering 80
per cent. The Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation’s failure to remit enough
revenue has resulted in shortfall in
revenue allocation to states. There is little
money to pay staff salaries and pensions
or fund development projects. The
inadequate Internally Generated Revenue
that accrues to state governments is a
burden to marginally employed
individuals and more or less floundering
business entities.
Incidentally, the institutions that should
shift Nigeria’s economic frontiers forward
are stunted. Research institutions and
universities are down with crass anti-
intellectualism; the civil service, groaning
under parochialism, is bereft of
professionalism; industry is crippled by
collapsed infrastructure (though beer
brewers are making a bundle, because
Nigerians need to forget their problems
by staying inebriated); and the oil and gas
industry is bleeding from pipeline
vandalising and bunkering. The political
class? They are behaving badly. Just listen
to the discordant notes from the most
viable grouping of the lot. They are like a
troop of banshees; a herd of bulls in a
china shop.
On assuming public office, American
politicians quickly grow grey hair. But
Nigerian politicians grow jowls behind
their necks as their hair grow darker. They
never would take the admonition of the
US President John F. Kennedy to “Ask not
what your country can do for you. Ask
what you can do for your country.”
Verdict? The generation that succeeded
the Olympians, with feet of clay, are
Lilliputians long on talk, short on
performance. That explains the arrested
development of the nation. This, here, is
the niggardly state of the union on
Nigeria’s 53rd Independence Anniversary.
Whence cometh better days?
