Nigeria at 56

The fifty sixth anniversary of Nigeria’s independence was marked throughout the country yesterday, October 1. The Federal Government marked the anniversary in a low key manner with a program that included prayers in mosques and churches and a change of guards ceremony. This was partly because the anniversary is not a landmark one such as […]

The fifty sixth anniversary of Nigeria’s independence was marked throughout the country yesterday, October 1. The Federal Government marked the anniversary in a low key manner with a program that included prayers in mosques and churches and a change of guards ceremony. This was partly because the anniversary is not a landmark one such as 50 or 60. It is also partly due to the economic recession in the country which makes it inauspicious to mount a major celebration.
President Muhammadu Buhari however made a televised speech to mark the anniversary. Early in the speech he said, “I know that uppermost in your minds today is the economic crisis. The recession for many individuals and families is real.” Indeed it is and Buhari enumerated several areas in which families are feeling the pinch, from buying costly food to paying children’s school fees to joblessness and inability to undertake local and international travel. He however said he ran for office four times in order to prove that Nigeria can be ruled honestly and transparently. He said the current economic recession will not last and he then gave a rundown of his 16 month old administration’s achievements in areas ranging from security to anti-corruption, agriculture, power, housing, infrastructure and economic restructuring.
Even though the economic crunch has dampened Nigerians’ spirit and beclouded the Independence Day celebrations, economic recession in itself is not a sign of national failure. Older, richer and more advanced countries also experience cyclical economic ups and downs. In Nigeria’s case however the recession came about as a direct result of the steep fall in international oil prices. This event, over which we have no control, exposed our folly as a nation that depends on crude oil prices for most foreign exchange earnings. It also exposed Nigerians’ double folly of living a life of insatiable national taste for foreign food, clothing, consumer goods and also foreign refined fuel.
The folly of the ordinary Nigerian in depending on foreign food and other items is surpassed only by the leadership’s mind-boggling corruption and the squandering of national savings in the days when oil prices shot through the roof. The excess crude account, meant to serve a rainy day, was drawn down and squandered in the midst of high oil prices and little money was put into the sovereign wealth fund. Here we are, high and dry and the Niger Delta militants added salt to injury by blowing up oil installations in order to hamper oil exports, local fuel refining and power generation.
The Buhari administration has been crying to high heavens that it inherited this mess and did not create it. Some pundits however say it compounded the problem with its extremely slow response to the crisis, its dilly-dallying on a rescue plan, its lacklustre economic management team, its wasting too much time before passing a budget, the budget’s late and slow implementation, and the increasing realisation that the 2016 federal budget is unrealistic because government has almost no hope of raising 6.5 trillion naira to finance it.
This poor record on the economic front is however counter balanced by the regime’s excellent performance on the internal security front, especially in fighting Boko Haram insurgents.
Nigerians are also confident that under Buhari, mega stealing of national resources has abated, although a dent has hardly been made in lower level corruption and impunity by political actors and bureaucrats. Still, on the occasion of Nigeria’s national day, what is required beyond the apportioning of blames for past deeds and criticising current rulers is collective national soul searching as to where things went wrong and what must be done to set things right in the short, medium and long term.
As many pundits have said, the current recession is an opportunity for Nigeria to reorganise itself and do away with the worst national habits and practices. These include dependence on a mono-economy, wasteful public spending, mindless corruption by political and other leaders, dependence on foreign food and refined fuel, leaders’ vanity and impunity, duplication of government agencies, maintaining agencies that have outlived their usefulness, very poor maintenance culture, irresponsible levels of medical tourism and sending kids to school abroad, extremely wide income gaps between rich and poor, phenomenon of abandoned projects, election rigging and violence, and rapidly evolving criminal enterprises.
While every country in the world has its shortcomings, ours are a bit too many and together they add up to a debilitating quantum that makes for a gloomy future. Among other matters that require deep soul searching on Independence Day is religious intolerance and extremism. Boko Haram is the worst manifestation of it and the nation must never again allow a situation where a demagoguish zealot builds an army of disaffected youths around a warped pseudo-religious idea. Boko Haram is however not the only detestable tendency; youths must be taught to stop taking the law into their own hands and killing or maiming fellow citizens based on allegations of blasphemy.
The Federal Government’s recently launched Change Begins With Me campaign ignited a fiery national debate as to whether it is the people or the government that must change for Nigeria as a whole to change. Truth is, it is both. While the leaders must lead the way to positive change through good example, the followers must follow positively or else things will not get better. We congratulate all Nigerians on the occasion of the 56th Independence Day and we look forward to a recession-free 57th Independence Day next year.