Mike PetersWe currently live in interesting times in Nigeria. The whole nation is overwhelmed with one ungodly event or the other.
The stories are very unpalatable and are quickly becoming recurring episodes; endless series of untold hardships, resulting in profound levels of devastation, death, economic depression, political mismanagements, obnoxious policies, and total destruction of human and material resources.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelTo be more specific, data from the World Bank in 2021 revealed that 40 per cent of Nigerians (83 million people) lived below the poverty line, while another 25 per cent (53 million) were vulnerable. It becomes even more worrisome to know that Nigeria has almost plummeted its foreign reserve amidst sluggish 3 per cent GDP growth in the ocean of dangerously soaring inflation and the Naira slump in the foreign exchange market. Nigeria’s economy seems to have found itself in a muddy path of the darkest grove.
In Nigeria today, no one feels safe. Terrorists, bandits, and kidnappers are having a free ride, causing untold horror in all parts of the country. Youths have been plunged into a horrendous wave of unemployment and job loss, while hunger and poverty keep lashing aggressively at the bulk of the population. Amidst these various occurrences of social-economic perils, we can visibly see infrastructural decay and the total crumble of our commonwealth in the hands of few greedy politicians and government officials.
Ideally, one would have imagined that a country facing this level of inhuman and horrific events will be more intentional in selecting and organising the next machinery of the state. The last election primaries in Nigeria revealed a massive show of political embarrassment and failed system. Clearly, Nigeria has come to embrace the malodorous, noisome and completely rotten system that characterize all sectors and organs of government, especially, the systemic vices that beset the operations of our electoral umpires.
In June 2022, all political parties in the country held their conventions and party primaries to select their representatives for political offices ahead of 2023. This process saw the highest display of lawlessness in the country. To begin with, majority of the parties engaged in several electoral misconducts, ranging from the devious prices of their presidential nomination forms which sold as high as 100 million Naira (₦ 100, 000,000) at a time the country is faced with economic disaster. INEC also allowed greedy politicians to further insult the conscience of the nation and blatantly abuse our national polity when it permitted these lawless individuals to buy double nomination forms. At this point, the section 115, sub-section D of the electoral act should have been invoked, but INEC chose to be a lapdog.
Worse still, politicians and party loyalists engaged in flagrant abuse of power and position, with total disregard for our common good and brazenly matched on to oppress the already humiliated naira. Politicians brought untold devastation to the rest of Nigeria’s dignity under INEC’s watch when dollar became the trading power for delegates’ votes at the presidential primaries. This ungodly act contravenes the provision of the Law and puts the naira value further in steep darkness.
We are all waiting for INEC, EFCC, ICPC and other bodies to name and shame the unpatriotic political elites who hypocritically constitute sacrilegious national embarrassment, especially during the primaries and in hindsight. Another low bar recorded by INEC and other concerned agencies is the involvement of the Central Bank’s Governor, in partisan politics which constitutes conflict of interest in sheer disrespect to the provisions of Section 9 of the CBN Act, Section 18 (4) (b) of the BOFIA Act and Paragraph 1 of the Code of Conduct for Public Officer enshrined in Part 1 of the 5th Schedule to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended.
A lot is expected from INEC in this coming election. The sanity of our electoral process rests on their understanding of our critical national issues, unbiased interpretation of the electoral law and in the deployment of all resources meant for a truly free and fair election. Among other concerns, INEC should do its best to secure the election materials which is housed at the Central Bank of Nigeria whose leadership has obviously taken a side when it comes to partisan neutrality. The obvious disenfranchisement of voters in all forms is a horrible threat that must be addressed. Since we like copying the Western nations, why not let us adopt the idea that was recently announced by several states in the USA in November, 2022 that same-day voters’ registration be allowed to accommodate qualified voters. This might negate INEC’s mode of operation as they may claim this is too early or Nigeria not mature for this. What good has their ‘standard’ operations served us anyway?
Consequent on all these, and the endemic corruption that has been elevated to the highest political space, our country treasury has been plummeted, inflation is at the highest peak and financial mismanagements have altogether afflicted the country with incurable economic and financial crises. For instance, NNPC, Customs, the office of Accountant General, CBN, National assembly and other sectors have been embroiled in heavy financial scandals running in millions of dollars, at the detriment of our fragile economy and the lives of the average common man.
In a sad twist of events, Nigeria’s political managers have only resorted to mindless borrowings which has increased our external debt to $40.1 billion as at June 2022. It is most disturbing to see the political class in their vainglorious approach think that the best approach to solve some of our economic woes is to burden Nigerians with heavy taxations and levies; they justify these obnoxious policies with some world bank and IMF suggestions, forgetting that Nigerians are already battered by food crises, inflation, unemployment, poverty and internal displacements, with no hint of restitution in sight.
Nigeria exudes all the undeniable features of a failed state. Of course, security and territorial control count as critical indicators of a sovereign nation. A report in Punch newspaper indicated that about 2,840 incidents of insecurity were reported between January and July 2022 alone; which had 7222 deaths recorded and 3823 people abducted. The gory statistics also put the killings resulting from domestic terrorism and banditry in Nigeria at 53,418 which capture deaths that occurred in May 2015 to October 2022. This is aside other unreported small-scale kidnappings, ritual killings, ethnic clashes, pockets of banditry, political killings and other vices, costing the nation trillions of naira in spending and investments. No wonder, the Global Terrorism and International Terrorism Research/Analysis Group ranked Nigeria as the second most terrorized country in the world after Syria.
With these scary terrorism index, some Nigerian political office holders have managed to convince themselves by their reckless pronouncements and comments about ‘Nigeria being safer now’. Such unguarded statements have been made by some highly places political scavengers, lobbyists in the ranks of serving Governors, Ministers, and other party loyalists who think such would earn them favours from their principals. Nigeria is facing an abysmal level of security failure in the hands of undaunted miscreants, bandits, kidnappers and terrorists enjoying protection and unsavory connivance with government officials and military personnel.
Amidst the many woes, Nigeria’s critical sectors: medical/health sectors, aviation, manufacturing, labour and civil service, as well as education have felt the crippling bites of the ravaging corruption in Nigeria. For government to deny airlines access to their own money, to the point where many international and local carriers are shutting down operations, says much about our distressed economy. In same respect, many medical practitioners have left the country for greener pastures because of the maladministration, with no sympathy or some form of succour from the managing ministry. Nigeria needs immediate rescue from this mess!
University students and lecturers have been condemned to series of endless strikes, with the recent one lasting for eight months. A country where a senator earns more than N14 million in a single month will have a professor beg for crumbs that is way less than five thousand naira (N500,000) going by the current salary scale. To worsen it, many universities lack basic infrastructure, research aids and deserving ambience for academic activities. Unfortunately, the ministries in charge of the negotiation have consistently made mockery of the process and have gloated in spiteful arguments that have ruined the chances of innocent children having a steady school calendar.
In a similar dance of shame, a self-acclaimed human right activist hurriedly forgot that a measure of good governance is governments accountability and attitude towards quality education, when he went on live TV to suggest that the only solution to ASUU strike is for parents and students to ‘take the knee’ and beg the leadership of the striking body to resume. How did we even get here?
The question is, when are we going to have the Nigeria of our dream? Where corrupt politicians will actually face justice like it is happening elsewhere. South Africa, China, Argentina and other nations. A country like Kenya, where we will build city surveillance in our major metropolises to reduce crime rate, aid criminal investigation and improve safety. What is Nigeria ever going to be known for? What actually goes through the minds of our politicians when they go for their reprehensible medical pilgrimages, foreign education and vacations, knowing the horrible state they have left their own country. Why have they hardened their consciences?
Why do we owe politicians so much that we have to keep paying for their luxury lifestyles at the detriments of our scarce resources. Even when they leave office, they have so much tampered with the law to the extent of assigning themselves jumbo “life pensions” with their families till they leave this earth. Some, enjoy such evil pensions from the various offices held and are still actively costing Nigeria underserving entitlements by fingering contracts and other unscrupulous ventures. The cost of governance has still not been reviewed to shed all the unnecessary portfolios, ministries, agencies and political greed in forms of bonuses, inflated or unnecessary allowances and entitlements. The stench of political mismanagement in Nigeria is appallingly ludicrous.
The country has fallen apart, the only strand of hope we cling onto is the fact that there could be some miraculous change of events. Because democracy has never served us the right leadership. Every successive government has had its destructive mark on the country and depleted our resources beyond reasonable limits. The only difference is that, the current administration has taken all these predicaments to the highest magnitude and has tried to suffocate any area people might see a beam of hope.
We hope Nigeria will get it right for once. If not completely, majority hope to see things turn around, just this time. Maybe we will see true patriotism enthroned over selfish parochial interests, where we see less people who have been acutely blinded by religious bigotry, shameful party loyalty over our national interest, nepotism and cronyism over competence and credibility. We have suffered a lot of moral decays in the hands of these godless and self-serving politicians. If we can at least hope for something better, the average Nigeria has to transit beyond blind and baseless followership to becoming more informed and critical in order to embrace our collective truth and see the nation moving forward. By forward, I mean seeing the Nation becoming a true democracy and land of progress where all structural and constitutional defects that are currently favouring the excesses of few political elites become a thing of the past. Until then, the rot in the system will continue to enthrone the least in the society at the detriment of our common good.
Dr Peters lives in Lagos
Follow Us