$11bn, N160m and our vanishing sense of publicness

Let’s begin with three scenarios. An elaborate $11 billion dollar scam midwifed chiefly by Nigerians against the federal government has just been thrown out for lack of merit in a London court after more than 10 years in the making. Some 469 members of the National Assembly are taking delivery of bullet-proof, exotic sports utility […]

Let’s begin with three scenarios. An elaborate $11 billion dollar scam midwifed chiefly by Nigerians against the federal government has just been thrown out for lack of merit in a London court after more than 10 years in the making. Some 469 members of the National Assembly are taking delivery of bullet-proof, exotic sports utility vehicles valued at N160 million each, totaling over N100 billion at a time of unprecedented economic crisis for millions of the very citizens they supposedly represent in the Red and Green chambers of the national legislature. An ordinary Nigerian citizen finds his car break down in the middle of a busy road. He leaves it there for hours, or even tries to repair it right there, rather than tow it to the side of the road—even by hand—to allow for a free flow of traffic.

Now, what do these disparate scenarios have in common? It might help to clarify each a bit further before we answer. The $11 billion dollar case is a criminal scheme hatched largely by Nigerians to defraud their own country. So here, a crime is at least presumably committed, as even the judge who threw out the case called it a “monstrous fraud”. In contrast, the purchase of exotic vehicles might be offensive to public sensibility, and indeed it is, but it is perfectly legal, in that bureaucratic procedures were followed in taking delivery of the vehicles. This much, many lawmakers have said in response to the public outrage against the purchase.

The third scenario, however, unlike the first two, does not involve any public office or official and is scarcely a crime. At least most citizens would not regard it as a crime, since this is a widespread, everyday practice by many Nigerians when they find themselves in the same situation on the road.

So, to repeat our original question: what binds the three events? My answer is that all are symptoms of the same national malaise: our vanishing sense of publicness. For the federal government to use public money to purchase such expensive vehicles for lawmakers in this very period of extra-ordinary belt-tightening by ordinary Nigerians is beyond insensitive of the lawmakers. But in my view, it is hardly more insensitive than to leave your vehicle right in the middle of the road. In fact, the same unstated assumption underlies both acts: the individual does not care how his action affects the rest, that is, the public.

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Anyone who can leave their vehicle in the middle of the road, not minding the often enormous disruption and inconvenience to other road users, cannot, theoretically speaking, consider themselves any different from another who would conspire to defraud their own country, or empty the public coffers for their own personal pleasure or convenience. Indeed, some lawmakers have said in defence that they need such vehicles to ply Nigeria’s generally bad roads, implying that they don’t care what happens to other citizens—that is, the Nigerian public—who ply the same roads every day, as long as they themselves are better off.

In every society, some things are simply and categorically public—in the sense of a common good, or as in public property—which both the state and the citizen are obligated to protect against any private encroachment for the very reason of their publicness, that is, because everyone benefits from them. My argument is that in Nigeria today, this very idea of the public, this sense of publicness, has almost vanished completely, and that this vanishment of a sense of publicness, in turn, manifests in very many acts, events and circumstances involving ordinary citizens, low-level and high-level state officials alike.

For example, the most extraordinary thing about the vehicle purchase for lawmakers is not the outrageous amount the government would spend on the exotic cars nor the insensitivity of doing so at such a trying time. These are extraordinary enough, yes. But the most extraordinary thing is that there has been no conscientious objection from any lawmaker. The National Assembly draws its membership from all parts of Nigeria, North and South, men and women, big or small political parties, every “tribe” (I don’t like this word) and religion in the country, and from every social class and professional background. They are representatives of Nigeria, after all, in every way you might define the term.

Yet, not a single one of them has so far publicly rejected the vehicle. Instead, many have sought to defend it, including a senator who said on TV that he had even bigger vehicles before he came to the Senate, yet he would not forgo this for the benefit of his constituents. That itself is a scientific or statistical statement: if you randomly select any 469 Nigerians, most of them will also likely collect the vehicles and “clean mouth,” as we say in Nigeria.

In other words, the malady of a vanishing sense of publicness manifests not only in government or among public officials, whom we like to pillory at every turn, but also in the wider society, even if we do not generally recognise it. Few among us now care about the idea of the public, which is why the provision of public services, the things from which everyone should potentially benefit equally, has been so privatised that privatisation of public goods has become the norm.

The phenomenon we are describing is there in the government and is as bad as it can ever get. This is why a handful of citizens will attempt to defraud their own country of $11 billion, and it is why lawmakers cannot think of themselves driving vehicles less than $140,000 dollars apiece. After all, as some of them have said, even unelected officials drive similar vehicles all the time. And as should be clear by now, not all manifestations of it in government and public officials is corruption, on which we like to blame everything in Nigeria.

But vanishing publicness is rife in society as well and goes beyond the single example of an ordinary Nigerian inconveniencing others on the road without a care in the world. I recently saw a short video clip in which hundreds of Nigerian schoolchildren are attending the morning “assembly” before proceeding to class for the day’s lessons. Then the video reveals the classes, and the viewer will see some of the most dilapidated classrooms they have ever seen. The roofing and the walls in some of the classes have been blown off.

For effect, the poster of the video added a comment as to the kinds of schools in a country where lawmakers want to buy N160 million car each. Of course, the poster of the video is right to make the painful and ironical allusion between dilapidated schools and the cost of governance in Nigeria. Yet, the video also only demonstrates the declining sense of publicness at the level of society. My instinct is that the school remains that way not just because public officials don’t care, which is probably true, but also because the community sees it merely as a “government school”, that is, as none of their business, which indeed it is.

If the same community were to view the same school as public property, as a common good of their own community, they would, in all likelihood, repair it or even avoid it getting that bad in the first place. And that, once again, is the point we are trying to make.