Nigeria: One nation, different people

This column has criticized the sensationalism that trailed the campaign and argued that it wasn’t rooted in any serious thought of why the nation was sliding. The slogan adopted for the campaign especially here at home was ‘Nigeria, Good People, Great Nation’; the last item which was tactically omitted and which I heard many young […]

This column has criticized the sensationalism that trailed the campaign and argued that it wasn’t rooted in any serious thought of why the nation was sliding. The slogan adopted for the campaign especially here at home was ‘Nigeria, Good People, Great Nation’; the last item which was tactically omitted and which I heard many young people singing was ‘Nigeria, Great Nation, Good People, Bad Leaders’.

In any case, long after President Yar’adua had passed on and Dora had done what she could both in terms of her narrow understanding of the sociology and dynamics of what a cabal was, and having jumped into the waters of electoral politics where she faced a very humiliating outrage from the Anambra people and lost to a more dynamic and substantial Nigerian citizen, Chris Nigige, the government of Goodluck Jonathan has since jettisoned the rebranding campaign, and we don’t hear Mallam Labaran Maku talk about it anymore.

The reason is quite simple and clear. For you to rebrand outside, you must rebrand inside, and in fact the imperativeness of internal rebranding is critical and essential if the polity is to move in the right direction. Failure to do internal rebranding is probably the more reason why today Nigerians at all levels are culpable and grossly insincere. That is why things are not working and they will not work unless concerted national effort is brought to correct the numerous ills of the society.

Now that the government and some particular sections of the country are on top of their voices talking about the crimes of the Boko Haram movement, the leadership at the highest level in Abuja is utterly mismanaging the Nigerian situation thus creating the possibilities of more problems in the country in the near future. There are programs of government that are though probably intended at addressing certain sectional grievances, but nevertheless seem set to present very disturbing scenarios in the not too distant future.

I, like many other Nigerians of Northern extraction are comfortable with what seem to be the official position of the government in Abuja that the social explosion we are witnessing is our problem and not necessarily national. Their concerns are mainly to the fact that such crises are either directly or indirectly sponsored by some of our leaders so that we may either wrestle power from the South or make the nation ungovernable for their son whose turn it is to rule!

I don’t have the pleasure of time to join in such pedestrian outrage of a desperate cabal but what I do know faithfully is that the social unrest in the North is the most dangerous of all that we have had in the past and requires proper management, otherwise the story will not be a pleasurable one in the few years to come.

The heart of this piece is on the growing inequality which seems to be an official policy of the Nigerian State. What we see all over the place is the spirited efforts by the government to single out the youth in the Niger Delta area for training in various areas at home and especially abroad.

Two reasons are said to be responsible for this internal discrimination and apartheid. One is that they are from the region where the oil is produced, not cultivated or created and secondly to avert another round of militancy. The reasons are as good as they are germane but the implication of selectivism in a crisis-ridden society like ours could be more dangerous than stark apathy on the part of the ruling class.

I didn’t hear or read about the famous Uche Chukwmerejie lecture where as I heard he told the world that the Boko Haram phenomena is a deliberate Northern insurgency ideology of wanting to take over power after it had left them and that MOSSOB must intensify its campaigns of violence if an Ndi Igbo president is to be realized in the not too distant future. I will hate to comment on the capacity and integrity of Senator Chukwumerejie, but one fact that stands clearly is that age is of essence in this unfortunate emotional outrage and untruth.

Current unconfirmed statistics on the age configuration of the Nigerian population is more frightening if the government is a sensible and serious one. It is insinuated that over 75% of the about 150 million Nigerians are below the age of 45 years and at the pace the population is growing, by the year 2050, the country may have up  to about 250 million of its citizens with more than 75% below the age of 35 years.

The meaning of this statistics is that Nigeria’s population is young and restive and given the poor state of education in the country and the endemic poverty that has taken away the right to parenting from millions of households, the capacity to engage young minds to productive ventures and discipline is not only difficult but impossible. What that means is that if parents cannot feed their children, they cannot keep them at home to instill the necessary moral values that are necessary.

We have not been able to expand our schools at all levels to meet the challenges of a growing population. What is a reality therefore is that less than 30% of our children are accessing education and even at that, of very low quality. The meaning of this is that the society is in trouble and awaits a more fundamental crisis in the future.

Unfortunately again, more than 70% of these young people are of Northern Nigerian extraction and they will even be more in percentage by 2050. The meaning of this again is that with the current social explosion on ground and lopsided government policy of enhancing youth from a certain section of the country, more frustration and discontentment is to be expected in the country.

I stand for power devolution between the various levels of government. I am of the view that Abuja has no business holding over 50% of the national resources with very little to show for it. The time has come when states must have more resources so that development can trickle down. This, the governors must pursue with the necessary zeal as an item of amendment in the constitution.

Another danger Nigerians are either consciously or unconsciously sitting on is the inequality in the distribution of the national income. In fiscal federalism many factors are considered in the distribution of federal funds, prominent among them are population, landmass, needs and derivation. In Nigeria, the principle of derivation has taken over and is responsible for the huge disparity between what states earn from the federation account.

As big and populous as Kano and Lagos States are, they earn from the federation less than half what the smallest and less peopled state of Bayelsa earns on monthly basis. A good example is that in August or September, Rivers State collected about N47 billion as its share from the federation’s revenue while Borno earned less than N3 billion. Instead, what President Jonathan and his government did was to increase the number of soldiers on the streets of Maiduguri and other towns so that they continue to maim rape and kill innocent young people whose crime according to the Borno Council of Elders was that they are young people.

If Rivers will get N47 billion from the federation account, Kano the state with the largest population in the country should not go home with N5 billion. How do we expect the government even at that to run schools that will be of similar quality with the ones in Bayelsa, Rivers or Delta state? You don’t build a healthy and prosperous nation on the basis of sharp differences and discrimination, such a nation cannot stand.