A nation trapped by illusions By Ayo Olukotun

“Economic inequality in Nigeria has reached extreme levels, and is playing out in the housing sector, with an estimated shortage of 22 million units (side by side) with luxury dwellings in cities, made possible by forced eviction of poor communities many of which do not fulfil any housing needs and remain vacant”

–The United Nations Rapporteur on Special Procedures, Ms Leilana Farha, cited in Nigerian Tribune, Tuesday, September 24, 2019.

Tuesday, October 1, 2019 is the 59th anniversary of Nigeria’s Independence. It is a season for retrospective glances as well as deployment of remote-sensing capabilities for predicting the future. Trapped by the illusion of affluence, evidenced by receipts for oil wealth, high rise buildings and exotic cars, lulling on decrepit roads, we continue to conduct ourselves as a nation of substantial worth, rather than one with a one-legged economy, highly indebted.


I will return to escalating debts, put at almost N25.4tn, (roughly $71bn) shortly, but let us take a look, firstly, at the snapshots of magnificent houses, occupied by no one, side by side decaying ghettoes, congested by a stranded humanity perpetually living in fear of ejection. Ms Leilana Farha, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, earlier this week, provided a gripping portrait of poor communities in our cities commonly ejected and forcibly displaced in order to make room for the construction of luxury apartments by the auspiciously rich, with connections to the political elite. The irony, Farha informs, is that these grandiose houses are used as vehicles for money laundering and stuff like that. So, what is going on is that the rich and the powerful have their way, while the poor bear the brunt of their insolence and man’s inhumanity to man. Consider the tone and harsh tenor, in which leaders of the 9th Senate dismissed criticisms of the purchase of N5.5bn SUV cars for senators. One of the Senate leaders, Yahaya Abdullahi, exploded, “Go and tell the people that the work we do is more than the work ministers that go about with a retinue of official cars do”. There was no hint in the Senate Leader’s outburst that the country is on economic tenterhooks, and by most informed accounts, not just overborrowed but is already paying through its nose, interest charges which consume almost 50% of its annual budgetary income.


Unfortunately, however, each time the matter of our galloping debt profile is raised, government replies intolerantly, that we have not yet reached our maximum capacity to borrow. Only a few days back, the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, explained that the country does not have a debt problem, but what she called a “revenue problem”. I am not an economist, but this sounds to me like drawing a distinction between corruption and stealing, as President Goodluck Jonathan tried to do some years back. For, when you take the position that the country has not borrowed enough, or in the language of some economists, “underborrowed”, then the floodgate is open to all manner of loans, including the proposed $2.4m to be sourced from the World Bank. In this case, under the illusion of being a highly resourced country, which has not borrowed enough, we become big spenders with Senate members driving the most expensive cars available, with nobody having the audacity to call them out. If the money dries up, in a manner of speech, simply take more loans, even if no one has a clear record of how the earlier loans were spent.


How can leaders expect followers to make sacrifice, when they themselves deny it in practice and continue to live ostentatiously? Today, there is much discussion of the impending anachronism of cars powered by fuel, and the onset of electric cars. Countries of the European Union, China, India and others are already setting target dates for a full adoption of non-oil powered cars. There is no hint that our political elite has given much thought to this development, and others connected with the obsolescence of our solitary cash cow. What prevails, as several have observed, is the politics of distribution or consumption, rather than the politics and wherewithal of economic development. This, of course, is not new; successive oil booms have been frittered away with little to show for them. What is amazing is that there has being no fundamental change in the ruinous habit in 60 years.


Take a look also, at the military institution, sometime ago the pride of the nation. Recent reports about the status of the technological capability of the force are dismal indeed. You can hardly read the Sunday Punch’s investigative narrative (September 22, 2019) without coming to tears. It detailed the outmoded nature of the weapons with which we are combating the Boko Haram Insurgency, with predictable heavy casualties. One of these weapons, Shilka, an artillery gun, quoting a top military officer, was acquired under Shagari’s government: ‘We have many of them, but they are outdated, so they were refurbished, even though a lot of their components were missing. However, they were deployed in the North-East for the anti-insurgency war, hence they fail during battles.” By contrast, the story referred to a recent statement by Babagana Zulu, Governor of Borno State, who revealed that “the capacity of the military has to be re-examined in terms of technological warfare. Otherwise, this thing (Boko Haram insurgency) will never end. Boko Haram now uses drones to monitor the operations of the military.” . Place this, side by side with the information that N3.77tn was allocated to the Ministry of Defence between 2010 and 2019, and a rather disturbing picture emerges.


Are other institutions doing better? I doubt it, which indicates that governmental reform cannot be a one-off, but an extended operation with several sites and sectors. Institutions, when they are efficient, orderly, and result-oriented are the delight of a nation, and there is no way Nigeria can make progress without returning to the agenda of institutional reform. The issue here is not just corruption, although that is a part of the problem, it has dysfunction and predatory values, which fuel corrupt behaviour. Another area of concern is human development standstill. By this, I am referring to the well-known lacuna in education, health, transport and other social infrastructure. This is the area of livelihood, access to lifesaving facilities and improvement in skills. In contrast to a season in our national life when this dimension was better organised, and more efficient, there has been a progressive decline over time, making life more miserable and nastier for the majority.


Despite these setbacks, it is not all a tale of woes. Each government, in the period since 1999, has brought something noteworthy to the table of national recovery which can be built upon and extended. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo brought the idea of an Excess Crude Account to tide us over the rainy day. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua pioneered the amnesty programme for the agitating militants in the Niger Delta; Dr. Goodluck Jonathan held a successful National Conference; while President Muhammmadu Buhari has launched an anti-corruption programme. These apart, there are the resilience and magnificent capacities of our civil society. If we are able to collate these departures, we can forge them into a road map for reinvention and national self-revalidation.