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Nigeria:
From Isaac Boroh to the Taliban
By Tony Iyare
Long before
what was described as a "security breach" by the government of President
Olusegun Obasanjo and the 'Taliban' incursion in Yobe state became
rife, many citizens have been troubled by the raging question of
the replay of a rebel gang in Nigeria: This must be little surprising.
Gleaning from the rise in rebel upsurge particularly in the West
African sub region, many discourses now centre on the contagion
effect on the country. Many are however agitated as to whether Nigerians
have the balls to give vent to a street and ragtag army even in
the face of tyranny and a debilitating economy. The questions are
endless. Can the flame of a rebel movement glow in this clime? Do
Nigerians have the political will to sustain any rebel movement?
Can a rebel movement thrive in a country enmeshed in a matrix of
multi-ethnic convergence of cultures? Will our respective ethnic
cocoon give life to a myriad of rebel groups? What is the likely
character of the emergent rebel movement? Will the rebel movement
provide an antidote to the prevailing political, economic, social
and cultural morass? No one can claim to have all the answers.
However a common index for the crystallisation and nurturing of
rebel movements either in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote D'Ivoire,
Eritrea, Congo DRC, Sudan, Uganda or Rwanda remains the crises engendered
by the failed states dotting the African continent which has become
a huge theatre of war. What is significant here is the existence
of states that are virtually rudderless. Nigeria like these countries
have showed signs of the near absence of governance in the lives
of the people, collapse of social institutions, rise in abject poverty
and the prevalence of (small or heavy) arms almost everywhere. The
death of the Nigerian state, seems to have been pronounced by the
same Bretton Woods institutions that our leaders prefer to ape in
their policies. Few months ago, some IMF officials came up with
a damning report which says that the country has had little to show
for oil revenues earned between 1965 and 2001 put at $350 billion.
The report
also says that since Nigerian leaders have been prostrate in delivering
any dividend either in terms of an effective social infrastructure
or improved social welfare for its people, the yearly budgets should
just be shared annually amongst the citizenry. So we have had budgets
that are long on figures but pale into insignificance when translated
into roads, healthcare, housing, education and provision of social
infrastructure for the people. In its first term, the Obasanjo administration
claimed it spent N1.02 trillion on poverty alleviation, N350 billion
on roads and N220 Billion on NEPA. Apart from Keke NAPEP, the huge
sum spent cannot be seen on the streets where poverty still walks
tall. Many Nigerians are likely to die from the yoke of poverty.
The UNDP's Human Development Report for 2003 says 70.2 per cent
of the country's population live below $1 (N140) a day. The most
tragic aspect of the report is that Nigeria is ranked along countries
like Rwanda, Burundi, Congo DRC, Sudan, Uganda and others on the
throes of a protracted war.
The African
Development Bank ADB projects that to meet the Millennium Development
Goals MDGs to reduce abject poverty by half in 2015, African economies
will have to record a 6 per cent growth annually. Unfortunately
for many countries in the continent including Nigeria, the growth
rate in the last five years has been 3.5 per cent, thereby making
the projection of the MDGs unrealisable. If the trend continues,
analysts fear the goal of reducing acute poverty by half may not
be achieved until the year 2065. There's also no relationship between
the N350 billion spent on roads and the craters dotting the highways
in many parts of the country. In spite of the money spent on NEPA,
many will tell you that the amount spent on diesel to power their
generators has been on a geometric rise. NEPA seem to have returned
to the abysmal performance of the pre-Obasanjo era. Although it
envisages that 7 million jobs will be created under the National
Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy NEEDS, the attempt
to virtually castrate the state and render the country bare through
a policy of mindless privatisation of public assets makes these
projections unrealistic.
How can a government
seek to create 7 million jobs in an economy in which its role is
becoming increasingly nominal? Each time you listen to the Minister
of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, newly appointed Governor of
Central Bank, Professor Charles Soludo and one of the biggest fan
of a near passive state role in the economy, Professor Pat Utomi,
you cannot but be amused at the logic of a diminished state intervention
to lay the basis for sound social welfare package for the people.
It is preposterous to continue to bandy the argument intend at stripping
the state of its responsibility to its people when even the IMF
and World Bank are beginning to shop for people and community centred
development. We cannot seek to build an impotent and rentier state
when the kingpins of free enterprise observe their moribund philosophy
only in the breach. While we have been told to withdraw subsidy
on agriculture, the G8 and OECD countries subsidise their agricultural
production with $1billion daily. How do you explain the ban on European
steel when we are being asked to open our markets to all sorts of
junks?
Although President
Obasanjo has romanticised the idea of foreign investment inflow
which is underscored by his junketing to most foreign capitals,
the results have not been fruitful. No one is sure about the total
amount of foreign investment that has come to Nigeria. Foreign Direct
Investment FDI to sub Saharan Africa, according to the UNDP is said
to have nose dived from $12.6billion in 2001 to $7billion in 2002.
Obasanjo disclosed recently that foreign investment to Africa has
hit $18 billion but this has not been independently verified. What
has really accrued to Nigeria in this largesse is also not known.
What is clear however is that foreigners will not invest where the
citizens themselves have little faith about their country's economic
viability. How can foreigners be persuaded to invest in Nigeria
when 80 per cent of investment owned by her citizens is located
outside the country? The net effect is that the government has hardly
created additional employment in the last five years, filling our
streets with an army of jobless youth. These angry and hungry youth
will be ready captive to any rebel army or militia and can be easily
recruited. The large army of children dropping out of school evokes
a spectre of potential band of foot soldiers. That a country like
Liberia with 3.2 million people has 15,000 child soldiers is instructive..
Although capacity utilisation is said to have risen to 45 per cent
according to the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria MAN, many
firms are closing down daily because of the combined effect of poor
infrastructure, rising cost of diesel, excruciating cost of borrowing
funds, unstable government policies and utter lack of protection
of local industries.
How can Nigerian
banks be engine of growth when they seek to lend money at 35% interest
rate? It is understandable why the speculative business thrive here.
In the wake of the September 11, 2001 disaster in the US which almost
grounded the Aviation industry, the American government had to embark
on huge bail outs to ensure that the sector and other businesses
employing millions of Americans did not collapse. But the Nigerian
political elite prefer to do the locomotive clap and make merry
at the collapse of every business. In fact it has ensured through
a visionless and eclectic policy to serve as undertaker to these
failed businesses. As for education, healthcare and housing, the
government is paying lip service. The Obasanjo government does not
think it has any business squaring up with the 26 per cent of the
budget for education advocated by UNESCO. Apart from poor funding
of the universities, it is embarking on a policy of out pricing
university education beyond the reach of many Nigerians. At a time
when government is supposed to be reconsidering bringing back the
cafeteria to boost the nutritional needs of the students, it is
talking about increasing bed space from N90 to N10,000, While the
much vilified government of General Sani Abacha organised a summit
to review the demands of the health sector, this regime is just
carrying on as if the health care needs of its people are not important.
The morbid state
of the hospitals is completely unjustifiable. The ghost of Isaac
Boroh and Ken Saro Wiwa is still very much alive in the restive
Niger Delta where we claim to be spending billions of Naira via
the NDDC without any fundamental impact on the lives of the people.
We daily siphon the black gold from the Niger Delta, deluding ourselves
that the threat posed to the existence of the people by the ensuing
despoliation of the environment can be wished away. Each time you
read about the prices of the houses in new estates in Lekki and
Abuja, you wonder whether many Nigerians will ever get near owning
a house. It is worrisome when governments at the centre and the
states, continue to build houses that their citizens cannot buy
unless they deal below the table. Closely followed to the collapse
of governance and its attendant poverty of the citizenry is the
near decay of social institutions. With increasing no of judges
disposed to giving jankara judgements, the judiciary is becoming
impotent as the last hope of the common man. It is sad that the
manner of judgements echoing from many of our courts is now a function
of cash and carry. Also, elections in Nigeria, no longer provides
you the opportunity to remove any bad leader. In fact the political
leaders are selected rather than being elected. We can no longer
rely on the Independent National Electoral Commission or the State
Electoral Commissions for any credible election as the figures are
cooked.
That was why many largely shunned the LG election knowing that their
votes do not count. The police too are hardly reliable as law enforcers.
It is hardly surprising that in many neighbourhoods in Lagos, people
prefer to ask the members of O'dua Peoples' Congress OPC to stand
sentry rather than the police. Lastly the prevalence of both small
and heavy arms in the hands of non state actors is evidence that
the mushrooming of rebel movements here is only a matter of time.
In many African cities and villages today, it is easier to be offered
an AK 47 or a Kalashnikov than bread. So the cheapest commodity
on our streets is guns, guns and guns. Even the police seize cache
of arms, virtually daily. And that is why just for a mess of pottage,
you can hire killers to do your bidding on the streets. If we still
have doubts that a rebel army could be in the offing, we may need
to ponder on what influenced the growth of the Taliban in Yobe.
They courted and befriended the local population while they got
immersed in their design to lay siege on the perceived corrupt political
elite. The greed, corruption and insensitivity of the political
elite may be daily making street intervention in power relations
in Nigeria very attractive. But no one can exactly predict the direction
of such an armed revolt.
The World Bank report on the rise of conflicts in Africa did point
out that rebel armies tend to mushroom around the areas with mineral
resources. These resources are usually battered for arms and other
valuables to sustain the war. It also provides the financial armour
to hire a mercenary army. The fear is that many rebel movements
will contend for space in a multi-ethnic Nigeria. The availability
of precious minerals nearly everywhere also means that the country
will likely end up with a myriad of rebel movements angling for
a slice of Nigeria's vast territory. But how far will they go to
engender a process of national development and raise the country
from its present morass is not easily predictable.
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