Buhari and the Nigeria reality

Since the close of polls, people have asked what version of Nigeria I yearn for. And without as much as blinking, I have stated without compunctions that an egalitarian Nigeria with all its features is the Nigeria of my dream. For starters, a huge employment deficit faces the country. Every month there are thousands of […]

Since the close of polls, people have asked what version of Nigeria I yearn for. And without as much as blinking, I have stated without compunctions that an egalitarian Nigeria with all its features is the Nigeria of my dream.
For starters, a huge employment deficit faces the country. Every month there are thousands of new entrants into our labour market and the president-elect has promised two million jobs per annum, which translates literally to a zero-sum for unemployment between now and 2019. This is delightful, but in truth, hardly achievable. The youngsters, who represent our much-flaunted demographic dividend, need jobs if we are to avoid further social unrest. Without productive employment, they will add to the hordes of those roaming our neighbourhoods and unleashing mayhem.
Our youths are a restless bunch. And they all cherish the good life. They are prepared to do whatever necessary to acquire some measure of luxury but without meaningful jobs they will be joining gangs, touts, petty criminals, etc. Those who are able to muster some funds will bribe their way to jobs in the police, immigration, army or some other government departments and then fleece the public to recover the amount they paid to secure the places. And that is why a society with equal opportunity is what we desire.
Poverty reduction may be a subsidiary of the first but it has a different political undertone. In the last sixteen years the disparities between the rich and the poor has widened almost irrevocably. This, combined with fears of growing poverty from high inflation in recent years, has damaged social harmony. Agreeably, poverty estimates have never been controversial in Nigeria. Large differences between the incidences of poverty estimated on the basis of actual meals consumed per day, compared with the expenditure per person with respect to the affluent group has heightened tempers. If the poor are suffering from malnourishment’ the rich are grossly overfed. How does Buharis world intend to address the matter?
The benefits of economic activity during the previous decade have largely accrued to the richer and more educated category of our society. In fact the crisis of leadership that brought Buhari to power is an implosion of the upper class who could not agree on a sharing formula. So the proliferation of the skill-intensive sectors of finance, telecommunications, IT and oil and gas, and in motor vehicles and motorcycles, in which those with limited skills, the majority of the labour force, participate meaningfully must be rivalled by agriculture and other artisan groups if any meaningful progress is to be made in wealth sharing. It is neither desirable nor feasible to separate economic growth from distributional outcomes since they are inextricably linked through employment growth. Jobless growth is not sustainable either in economics or in politics.
Admittedly, this is easier said than done, considering the magnitude of financing that would be required to make even a marginal dent in the extreme levels of poverty in Nigeria.
 Antagonism between the legislature and the executive, decline in morals, political corruption and insurgency and heavy military spending, failing economy, the ‘mob’ and the cost of the ‘games’ slave labour must be seen to be getting uprooted in concrete terms and not just in rhetorical terms. That is Nigeria’s new reality.
Of all the causes of Rome’s demise, scholarship seems to place more weight on political corruption and its seismic impact on the empire. Horace, for example, categorized Rome’s corruption as perverse, evil and even intergenerational: the new country that Buhari is heading must look at political corruption through the same lenses.
The above raises the question: when will the inflection point set in? It has been difficult to predict even in Western advanced democracies with good data and sophisticated models when tangible interventions can begin to show germination. So we should ask instead, when will sentiments change in the market and panic set in? It could be painful, long-drawn or a sudden jump over the cliff but if it does not translate to tangible change on the ground, as the Hausa dog would say, change would change itself.