Edikan Umoren
4 January 2009
opinion
Lagos — When a US study was leaked to the effect that Nigeria might become a failed-state soon, the regular Nigerian commentators reacted in a predictable manner. Death to America, mostly!
But I find good reason for Nigeria to be appreciative of such predictions, even if extreme in nature. Early in the nineties US political thin-tank had a similar prophecy about their country. China was predicted to be the next global superpower, implicitly announcing the steady terminal decline of the American civilization. The US public reacted differently. They masterminded a debate and escalated it to global dimensions. The best in academics and rabble-rousers on both sides of the Atlantic contributed. In the end, America fashioned out a complex political-economic philosophy of damage control, should the doomsday come. That is the concise history of Constructive Engagement. Any watcher of US foreign policy body language since early nineties cannot miss the practical expression of Constructive Engagement. The prediction of an imminent decline of US civilization or sole superpower status was not taken with a few frantic cries of self-pity and dangerous self-delusion. Issues were separated from emotions and analyzed truthfully and dispassionately, no recourse to the McCarthy days, until the indicators of the threat were clearly and properly anticipated.
The exact timing and content of the current financial system failure in America (and the world that America led) might not have been known back in the nineties when their effects were foretold but the outcomes, what a CNN reporter sagely described as the movement of the world's capital base from USA, was expected and provided for way back in the beginning of the 90s.
With the way the Nigerian financial experts in Custom Street and Regulators in Tinubu Square (and their Abuja equivalents) are talking from both ends of the mouth about the impact of the world financial crisis on Nigeria's economy and immunity of the Nigerian economy to the global financial crisis almost simultaneously seem perplexing to the rest of us. It got so bad that Thisday back-cover had to take a multi-piece article on the subject defining "stock market crash", "melt-down" and such other advanced concepts in a bid to call our emergent experts to order before they caused a run on the banks. What precisely does the Central bank mean by the global financial crisis having no effect on Nigeria's financial system, and then a promise of a bailout package, and then a declaration that funding of the forex market is guaranteed, and then 25% crash of the naira against US dollar in one week, and then a declaration that we deliberately crash the naira to avert inflation .. Must we find an explanation to a patently opaque financial system of Nigeria whenever the more transparently managed economies of the world are discussing purposefully? If Nigeria plays the ostrich with its polity like they do it should be clear that they have forfeited the shield of honesty over our exposed statehood.
It is a shame that Nigeria took the failed-state leak in bad faith and, worse still, a total lack of intellectual curiosity. In Thomas Hardy's words, Nigeria collectively betrayed "a universal (national) wish not to live" in that instance. And yet the symptoms of a failed-state are literarily crawling in our verandas. An economy that has enjoyed a decade of persistent windfall from oil energy markets has within the same period lost everything that defines a modern state - education system, healthcare system, public transport infrastructure, security of life and property, economic stability - only to walk cap in hand to private investors to come and take over government responsibilities because crude oil prices have taken a dip for a mere three months. What exactly is a failed state? We need a dispassionate discussion on the definition of failed state at least for the sake of negotiating a soft-landing like America did with Constructive Engagement. Righteous indignation and or lazy resignation to God's will are not good enough in the 21st century where even terminally ill patients insist on their right to know how long they have to round up their affairs on earth. With a little effort Nigerians might discover that the Americans were neither extraordinarily brilliant nor mischievous in predicting the failure of the Nigerian state. I thought that the Americans were dim-witted to have made big news of an obvious and persistent signs of a failed-state that Nigerians have practically resign to live with. The real danger is in Nigeria denying her obvious collapse on all fronts and thereby foreclosing any windows for local solutions or even some help from Cotonou or Accra.
Chronicling the tell-tale signs of Nigeria's failed state could be made easier by re-examining the slogans that successive governments deployed to manage Nigerians patriotic fervor during the last 40 years. Sloganeering has been used with very deadly efficiency by different shades of government since the civil war. First a slogan is sold to the public on face value of protecting and preserving Nigeria's nationhood. The citizenry responds with voluntary personal sacrifice and an uncommon zeal to evangelize others. As the critical mass builds, citizens get to a point that they can no more tolerate any dissent from what is apparently for the common good and so they boo or boot any dissenting voice into line. Not too long it dawns on the frenzied citizenry that the political class (military or civilian) was deliberately exploiting the people's patriotism in the wrong direction while they wreck havoc on the state's wealth or settle primordial scores. This cycle repeats with a ridiculous predictability until the Nigerian public has totally lost faith in the state, and they are persistently assured by the actions and inactions of managers of the system that their apathy is the least they can do to protect their individuality. You cannot have a better progressive picture of a failed state than that. Deception as state political philosophy disconnects citizens from the state and the concept of a state is not complete without patriots.
Some of the slogans that worked the failed-state levers of Nigeria are recalled bellow and they include: Gowon years' slogan "to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done" which replaced a system of merit with quota system and decreed away a healthy regional competition in favor of artificial states; the Murtala years' war against the bourgeoisie evil which wiped away Nigeria's middle class within and outside government; Babangida's years' national debate "to take or not to take IMF loan" with associated conditionality which turned out to be a carefully crafted ploy to save the rulers from global scrutiny on how and where they intended to spend the loan; the Obasanjo era of "due process" and "anti-corruption war" which together classified Nigerians into "those that are capable of sin" and "those that can never do wrong". And now we have a seven-point agenda that even the vendors could not explain their content to citizens who have forgotten the bliss of a good night's sleep because they create and manage their "public utilities and security" all night. Permit me to skip the three governments of Shagari, Buhari and Abacha that do not bear mentioning of their lesser sins of un-preparedness, naiveté, and unveiled greed respectively. These were relatively unsophisticated systems in terms of deliberate and systematic deception of the public.
What is common to these slogans is that their creators had intention from the outset to deceive Nigerians, use their energies and wealth to sponsor personal and sectional ambitions which were not always noble. The saving grace is that Nigerians are not deep sleepers; they do not stay awake for long either. The lie always imploded soon enough but our collective short memory always denied us the use of lessons learned.
Nigerians always woke up to the fact that this is all state deception of a bewildered population, systematic destruction of nationhood and the pride of Nigerian-ness. The intended consequence had always been to stifle public debate through control of all channels of career development and decent livelihood, and that was dead easy for an economy that is kept simple and controlled by simple governments. The unintended consequence has been the drifting apart of a national spirit and hardening of tribal and cult enclaves within the Nigerian polity which America aptly interpreted as sure signs of a failed-state. For the avoidance of doubt, institutionalization of state deception or outright fraud is the first and final step towards the demise of any state. History is consistent on this.
Every student of history knows that any state doctrine, programme or solution that is beyond public scrutiny and periodic review is a sure harbinger of a civilization's decline or a failed state. How do we explain the decay of all public systems and institutions over the last two decades of boom in our mono-economy article - oil and gas? When a citizenry rightly distrust even populist programs of government because they had been deceived too often and find no justification to identify with the programs of government for fear of being fooled again the value of the national anthem and flag diminishes in their psyche. It is hard to say that the Nigerian state had not failed already. Unlike Americans and the global power shift, Nigeria had no plans for the outcome of a failed state. Presidential election in Ghana came off peacefully, as I suspect it will. Rawlings has become the multi-party system icon of West Africa; away from the direction of all eyes on earth - Obasanjo. Add that to steady power supply and a transparent economy of Ghana and you can figure the outcomes of a failed state that Nigeria would never admit. This global financial crisis and recession will definitely be over during Obama's tenure because the Americans do not deny the failure of their system. But Nigeria's failed state prospects might live on by the strength of our collective denials.
Umoren wrote from Lagos
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