Why Nigeria’s Problems Are Defying Solutions

I started becoming really interested in politics in the 1990s. Then the military government held sway, and I remember hearing a lot of people say that our problem is military rule – that if we could get rid of the soldiers and enthrone democracy, things would begin to change. This thinking was a key factor that inspired the excitements accompanying the botched transition programme that climaxed with the June 12, 1993 presidential election.

Then came the transition programme of 1998 – 1999 that led to the emergence of Olusegun Obasanjo as the president. The frenzy was no less intense, as many people foresaw a new era as we welcomed a democratic dispensation in the country after more than 15 years. So much was made of the lawless approach of the khaki rulers as the nation envisioned a new era of rule of law and accountability.

Now, on May 29 2024, it will be a quarter of a century into this democratic journey. Which way Nigeria? If we sit down to take reckoning of the journey so far, can we say that we have been better off with this democratic experience vis-a-vis where we were before then? Certainly, not many persons would take this view because things have obviously got far worse.

We opted for democracy in the belief that it’s the best arrangement for guaranteeing accountability and good governance. This thinking is not wrong. Dictatorship potentially stifles accountability, thus putting good governance so much at risk. But ironically, accountability is still far from prevailing in our land, and governance is no where near “good” years after we returned to democracy.

The military era brought about so much instability in the seat of power as successive coups ensured forceful removal of governments, sometimes even before the head of state could settle for work. This instability was blamed as a key factor in our repeated poor performance as a nation. As a secondary school student, I remember encountering this phrase (political instability) uncountable number of times as one of the reasons things have not been working in various aspects of our national life.

However, since 1999, we have maintained regime stability both at the centre and across states. Governments have exhausted their tenures, leading to smooth transitions. Abrupt termination of rule has ceased, save for a few instances where the courts have removed elected governors. Thus, we have had 25 years – a quarter of a century – of regime stability, yet things are getting worse rather than getting better.

When we blame military rule we seem to overlook the fact that we have had dictatorial governments achieve great feats. The USSR attained the height of its technological and military glory under notoriously dictatorial leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev. China’s meteoric economic and scientific rise has been achieved under a succession of dictators starting from Mao Tse Tung in 1949. With its one-party structure where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains a hegemonic presence in the political space, China seems to have jammed the door on democracy, at least for a long time to come. Of course, Mumar Gaddafi’s Libya is a closer example of where dictatorship produced progress.

The implication of all this is that we are not exactly sure of where our problem lies. If it is military dictatorship, we got rid of it many years ago. If it is regime instability, this also left with military rule. But moreover, while dictatorship did not stop some other nations from growing, democracy – or what we so describe – now fails to bring us progress.

Furthermore, many people have blamed our national structure for our backwardness. They have advocated the so-called restructuring to grant some autonomy to the constituent units as obtained in the first republic.
The way some persons speak about it tends to suggest that changing the administrative structure of Nigeria would magically remove all her problems and bring all good things to her.

But then it is also instructive to recall that the federal system we practised in the first republic did not prevent the progressive decay that culminated in the collapse of the government of the day. It was this reality that informed the Unification Degree 34 of May 1966 by the General Aguiyi-Ironsi regime. The federal system of government has worked well in the United States while the unitary system has also worked excellently in Japan and the UK in spite of the historical and cultural heterogeneity of the British society.

We copied the American presidential system, and today some people feel we should go back to the British parliamentary system. Ironically, these systems have worked perfectly in the two respective climes from where we copied them. What exactly is our problem?

In a previous article, I likened Nigeria and Nigerians to a bad workman that quarrels with his tools. There is no other way to describe our situation considering our long history of unsuccessful experiments with various systems and methods of statecraft that have worked so well in other climes.

This strengthens my view that we have always been chasing shadows, seeking for solutions where they do not exist, instead of facing the reality that our problems lie in our weak institutions and distorted value system. Our state apparatuses are too weak to check corruption and other untoward tendencies that impede our growth. Thus, those that run our affairs – from the man in Aso Rock to the least officer in the civil service – have continued to swim in impunity. The system does not punish evil, so evil thrives. In other words, there is a lopsided reward system that discourages accountability and encourages impunity.

It is for the above reason that whatever system or method of governance we have tried failed us. The fact that each of these has worked elsewhere is evident that these systems and methods are not the problem per se. The problem is with us who try to adopt them.

There is no point heaping the blame on whoever is in power. From Tafawa Balewa to Bola Tinubu, we have demonised every single leader of Nigeria, with the succeeding one ending up seeming worse than the predecessor. As a child in the late 80s and early 90s, I remember vividly how Babangida was being vilified as the man who finally ruined Nigeria. This was the time the price of petrol was at various times less than one naira or a little above it. Thereafter, Abacha arrived and became so much demonised even though at the time a bag of cement sold for five naira.

The consistent pattern has been that we would cry and wail, yearning for a new leader who would ease our burden, but soon after a new leader comes, we would resume our cry, wailing even more loudly and regretting that yesterday was better than today. Unfortunately, this pattern will persist until we rebuild our value system and strengthen our institutions. While who becomes the leader is crucial to realising this goal, more important is the need for growth public consciousness regarding what is required of such a leader and our role as citizens in this process. The decay has so much permeated our social fabrics that it has gone beyond the fault of one or a few leaders.

Recently, I was speaking with a colleague on the state of our nation and why things never seem to improve. I called his attention to the fact that one doesn’t need to go too far to decipher what our problem is. The fact that one can secure a government job by simply sending their name to a connected person is enough to tell them that the nation they belong to is such where merit has no place, where people get things by circumventing due process. If one can pay some thousands to someone somewhere to influence one’s NYSC posting, it is enough evidence that this is a country where money can buy anything and help anyone to circumvent rules whenever and wherever. In such a country, no one should expect transparency, no one should expect accountability in running of public affairs and managing public funds.

Thus, it amounts to downright hypocrisy for one who exploits the weakness of his country’s institutions in the above stated ways to still turn around to expect something different from the same country. Most of us have been guilty of this, a situation that does not give one any hope that things will get better.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.