.......UK would not exist anymore – David Cameron, UK Prime minister

How not to build a nation: Reflections on Nigeria @ 52 (1)

“Except in the eyes of the extremely naive and incurable swindlers in the corridors of power, this country has already collapsed; only that the horror of its probable disintegration would be difficult to face.”

 This fascinating quote by journalist and activist, Godwin Onyeacholem, truly captures the Nigerian reality today. It’s been 52 years in the making.

Today, October 1, 2012, the Nigerian State under the supervision of President Goodluck Jonathan will perform the ritual of celebrating the country’s independence. It is noteworthy that the Jonathan administration has decided not to go for the pomp and circumstance associated with such celebrations which really would have added more insult to our collective injury. But typical of our ruling elite, the planned sombre celebration is just another ruse, meant to pave the way for a more elaborate, yet misguided, multi-billion naira celebration in 2014 to mark the centennial anniversary of the creation of Nigeria in 1914.

By every standard one decides to judge Nigeria, it has failed woefully as a nation. It is worth repeating because there are those afflicted with eternal delusions about, to use the weasel words of our politicians, “moving it forward”, the way it is presently constituted. It is  mere wishful thinking. No amount of fancy talk or transformational balderdash can alter the fact that Nigeria is a full-blown “kleptocracy”, a state ruled by thieves, in the words of Prof. Niyi Osundare, on the way to imminent implosion.

It has been said that Nigeria is a country of great potential and promise. It remains just that after 52 years: a country of great potential and promise. The reality, to quote Prof. Chinua Achebe, is that “Nigeria is not a great country. It is one of the most disorderly nations in the world. It is one of the most corrupt, insensitive, inefficient places under the sun. It is one of the most expensive countries and one of those that give least value for money. It is dirty, callous, noisy, ostentatious, dishonest and vulgar. In short, it is among the most unpleasant places on earth.”

That was almost three decades ago. We have since raised the stakes. “Today, rogues, armed robbers are in the state Houses of Assembly and the National Assembly,’’ former President Olusegun Obasanjo – a man whose style of government, in saner climes, ought to be in question – said a few months ago. Obasanjo should know. He, more than anyone else, facilitated the emergence of these scoundrels who have taken over our democratic space. 

Very few countries in the world can take the unrepressed pillage, outrageous abuse and unmitigated violation which the self-acclaimed giant of Africa has received and remain standing. David Cameron, British Prime Minister, has been quoted as saying, “If the amount of money stolen out of Nigeria in the last 30 years was stolen in the UK, the UK would not exist again.” There are many figures in the public domain about how much our leaders have siphoned from the country since independence. From Nuhu Ribadu, former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, we learnt that the amount is “more than six times the total sum that went into rebuilding Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War via the famous European Recovery Programme, better known as the Marshall Plan”. The ERP programme was $13bn. Interestingly, Germany, the choice location for medical care for our leaders, was one of the beneficiaries of the Marshall Plan.

We can spend the next few weeks cataloguing the problems of Nigeria and we would not have scratched the surface. Where do we start? Is it something as basic as education where it has been revealed that “Nigerians commit about  N160bn ($1bn) to the education of their children and wards in Ghanaian universities every year”. A recent newspaper report quotes the Chairman, Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, Dr. Wale Babalakin, as saying, “the cost excludes huge amounts also spent on education of Nigerians in other countries such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada and Malaysia”. From Babalakin we also learnt that there are about 75,000 Nigerian students in Ghana, a country which, in the last decade, has been spending up to 35 per cent of its annual budget in education.

Let’s take a minor issue like polio eradication. Just recently, the Independent Monitoring Board of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative issued a report which noted that “of six global sanctuaries for the poliovirus (which stand against the anticipated eradication), Nigeria’s Kano and Bornu states are the most problematic”.

“Apart from Afghanistan, Nigeria’s northern region specifically constitutes major concern for global polio fighters, who now worry over the quality of local personnel and efforts. Although Kano, Bornu, and four other global (problematic) spots represent a relatively tiny proportion of the earth’s land surface area, the Monitoring Board had hinted that they ‘pose disproportionate risk to the likelihood of success for the entire globe’”, the report noted. “There are now just six countries with persistent polio transmission. Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan have never interrupted transmission. Angola, Chad and DR Congo have ‘re-established’ polio. Nigeria has slipped back in a quite alarming way. Afghanistan’s programme is consistently performing at a reasonable level.”

This is a snapshot of the sorry story of Nigeria. We are not just the poster child for corruption. Whether we are talking about education, maternal or infant mortality, security, justice and rule of law, we rank at the very bottom and are constantly in competition with the world’s most retrograde countries.

As is well known and documented, the failure of Nigeria is essentially the failure of leadership. For some strange reason, it appears, we have been cursed with bad leaders right from the moment the colonialists departed 52 years ago. Unlike in places like Ghana and Tanzania, our post-independence rulers, rather than building a new nation and an egalitarian society, were more eager to replace the departing colonisers and subsequently initiate a more malicious brand of internal colonialism from the contraption that was handed over to them.

Over the years, the quality of leadership has degenerated, breeding various vices and entrenching unparalleled corruption which has now become a directive principle of state policy. There are those who accuse “ordinary” Nigerians of complicity in this rot. A typical example would be to point to the policeman or woman at a “roadblock” and conveniently say corruption is a Nigerian and, therefore, there is nothing we can do about it. I disagree. If the man on the street is corrupt, it is simply because the country’s leadership has not led by example.

Where is the incentive for the policeman to be upright? Is it that his take-home pay can take him to and fro work in a month? That his children can get basic education or that his family can afford adequate medical care when they  need it? Never mind that he is more likely to buy his own uniform and other paraphernalia of policing. That’s after he must have paid around N200,000 ($1250) to middlemen to join the police. Meanwhile, his boss is the proud owner of numerous housing estates and companies that would rank him amongst the richest in the country.

•Onumah, Coordinator, African Centre for Media and Information Literacy, Abuja, wrote in via conumah@hotmail.com