BEYOND CHIBOK: HUMANIZING THE NIGERIAN STATE
Ayo Olukotun
"If we don't find the girls then for me it will be better we sit down and decide that Nigeria is too much to manage. That it is easier for instance to manage a crisis of this kind or to prevent it if we were a smaller nation" Prof. Wole Soyinka on BBC 9th May 2014.
Suddenly, an in tragic circumstances, Nigeria has been thrust on to the world stage receiving in the last fortnight, unprecedented global attention. Chibok, a rustic backwater in north east Nigeria where over 250 girls were seized by Boko Haram insurgents almost a month ago has entered the world map but of course in circumstances not of its own choosing. The global spotlight has all the makings of a humanitarian disaster in which the conscience of the world is roused to shore up a collapsing state which can neither protect its own beleaguered citizens nor defend its own borders.
There will be time to analyse the ambiguities of the global especially western focus on Nigeria but for now is it not all too clear that the Johnathan government's dithering and initial side tracking of the crisis until its hands were forced by national and international outrage are samplers of the hard lot of Nigerian citizens who like the Chibok girls are stranded and too often left in the cold?. Part of the problem as Soyinka makes clear in the remark quoted in the opening section is the nation's unwieldy geography in which tribes and tongues not only differ but violently clash. In the absence of a Nelson Mandela who by the force of sheer vision and greatness can forge a coalition in the unlikely circumstances of a nation at war against itself, Nigeria has succumbed to rule by the lowest common denominator. That is it to say incompetence is enthroned by the logic of federal character interpreted as federal mediocrity in which the nation is presumably held together by the avoidance of hard choices and indeed of great men.
Hilary Clinton, former US secretary of state put it this way last week "They have squandered their oil wealth, they have allowed corruption to fester and now they are losing control of parts of their territory because they won't make hard choices". By contrasting faster paced developments in some of the better governed states in Nigeria with the staggering ineptitude of the central government, not to talk of the massive looting of resources that is going on there, one gets a feeling of how much time is passing this structurally defective nation by.
Take for example how much of a raw deal citizens get under the current Nigerian contraption;_ raw deals for which Chibok is a tragic metaphor. Only last week electricity firms were touting a plan to yet again increase service charges for their infamous disservice to unlucky consumers. It will be recalled for example that service charges had been raised in December without corresponding increase in the quality of service; indeed what is palpable is the downturn in the power that is made intermittently available. This kind of cynicism in which citizens pay bills without getting service in return can only happen in the jungle which Nigeria has through the lack of leadership retreated to .On top of that your heart misses a beat when you hear that the World Bank is mobilizing N2.5 trillion for power generation in Nigeria. Don't you immediately connect this to the enormous amounts that have gone down the bottomless pit in the search for stable power supply in the country?. Obviously more than the injection of resources will be needed to reorder a state as rotten as this one is.
Only a few days ago the widows of police officers who lost their lives in the course of putting down a revolt by the Ombatse cult in Nassarawa state staged a peaceful protest on the Lafia-Akwanga-Abuja Express way. Their grouse? 12 months after their husbands were killed in the course of duty the federal government and police authority have not redeemed pledges made towards alleviating their plights. In the words of the widows; "The Inspector General of police has not shown any concern to our plights. Despite repeated pleas we are yet to hear anything on the benefits of our husbands" Contrast this report with the story told by a young colleague who returned from the UK last year, where he had gone to obtain a doctorate degree. While studying in the UK he had taken up a job in order to finance his studies. Only two months ago he got a refund for over paid tax from the British Revenue and Customs department under the country's pay as you earn system. The refunds which he was not aware was entitled to were made as part of a routine process in which monies are refunded to those who paid more than they were supposed to while those who pay less receive a bill for underpaid tax. For my young colleague the happy story is that when he changed his tax refund to its naira equivalent it was enough for him to buy a car which he badly needed to settle down.
The British state is of course not without its own problems, but it has built institutions which are broadly speaking responsive to the rights and obligations of those who live under its authority, citizens and non-citizens alike. That is why its Customs and Revenue department could on its own pursue my younger colleague who had left the country for refunds of tax overpaid by him while working in Britain. Were this sort of civility and efficiency of a system with a human face available in Nigeria, the widows of the murdered police officers in Nassarawa state would not have faced such astonishing insensitivity from the authorities with no one saying a word to them. So dysfunctional and productive of confusion and human tragedy are our institutions that even the war against terror has been caught in the lurch and the corruption miasma. As the London Economist revealed a few days ago "Nigerian Soldiers say the commanders pocket the bulk of their salaries leaving them with little incentive to fight the well-equipped guerrillas that know the rugged terrain of forests. Why risk death in the hand of Boko Haram for no reward?" In other words, the enemy is too often within in the sense of a system so corrupt and dehumanizing it scores own goals against itself.
Radical reform either in the shape of the structural overhaul of the current unviable Lugardan state as Soyinka envisaged, or the liberation of the state by a political party supported by a movement are the only ways to re-humanize the current system. But as Chibok shows, those in power would not attempt any changes unless their hands are forced by international indignation as well as domestic protests pouring out on the streets. Change or "hard choices" to employ Hilary Clinton's words may be difficult to carry through. But inertia and inattention in the current circumstances of man's inhumanity to man and to womanhood are nothing but time bombs waiting to explode.
Olukotun is Professor of Political Science and Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences at Lead City University, Ibadan.