Nigeria’s apathy to business of government

For most Nigerians, this year calls for greater sacrifice. Not for the nation alone. It is a sacrifice for self survival. Like the household of a multi-polygamist, every offspring and wives must “think out of the box” to lay a strong foundation for own posterity.

The individual, families, friends, even children must all craft out strategies to survive the worst economic and political chaos in the history of the Nigerian entity. The country, our own dear Nigeria once acclaimed the giant of Africa and the envy of world economy has gone under.

It was in 1914 that Lord Lugard’s girlfriend, according to recent findings, suggested the amalgamation of the northern and southern British protectorates to form a new political entity, Nigeria. Her reason, it was reliably learnt, was that Lugard was spending many months in Lagos at a stretch, partying with the owambe elites of the time, while she was left alone in the north with her dog for company.

When Lugard would plead massive administrative paper works to justify his absence, his girlfriend wrote to the queen in England and suggested the amalgamation of the northern and southern British protectorates so her man need not isolate one region while “coordinating” affairs from the other. So the word “amalgamation” was a creation of a frustrated, estranged lover woman who wanted a solution to her loneliness, but never really got it.

That founded the spiritual nature of the Nigerian entity because it was founded on suspicion and fear of dominance of the educated and enlightened eastern and western regions over the illiterate northern region.

The nightmare now is that Nigeria has not made the kind of progress it should have made given its age, population and resources. Compared with its peers, the country’s growth is more like that of a dwarf than a giant. Why? Many argue that it is a reflection of failed leadership, which in turn has bred corruption and mediocrity in public service.

As noted by veteran journalist and publisher, Moffat Ekoriko, a lot is made of our leaders’ failings. We are told that they are greedy and incompetent, and it is hard to disagree with the claim. One leader was so economically incompetent and intellectually bankrupt that he declared that “Nigeria’s problem was not money but how to spend it”. Again, another was crazy enough to cancel a free and fair election and almost plunged the country into a second civil war.

And yet another was daft enough to refuse to build a new refinery to meet rising domestic production because western economists had told him it was not the business of government to build refineries.

But there is a fundamental problem at the root of failed leadership and that is failed followership.

The Nigerian has an almost inexplicable apathy to the business of government. There does not seem to be the realisation that government exists to serve his interests and actually derives its power from him. When the government wants public resources, he does not care that the same resources could have been better deployed to provide him with good service.

Such apathy leads to low expectations. The Nigerian expect nothing from his government, be it at the local, state or federal level. When the government spends billions of dollars on education without good schools for his children to attend, the Nigerian shrugs it off. He works extra hard to send his child to a private university or (if God has blessed him enough) to study abroad.

When the government spends billions on power without achieving up to five hours of electricity in a day, he acquires a generating set. There is a power generator for Nigerians of backgrounds: from a single KVA plant (I-better-pass-my-neighbour) to a 500 KVA one (I-am-richer-than-my-neighbourhood).

When power goes off, the entire neighbourhood erupts in a chorus of discordant noises created by everyone turning on their generators.

He wakes up in the morning to discover he has no running water. No problem. He calls a drilling company to dig a water borehole for him. The Nigerian becomes a local government unto himself, generating power and pumping water for self and family. Sometimes he sells to his neighbours. Should the public hospital be found wanting, he thanks his stars that he has the money to pay for private medical care. If the ailment is beyond that poorly equipped private clinic, he buys a plane ticket to the United Kingdom or India for a medical checkup.

There is nowhere else in the world that people would accept what the Nigerian puts up with in the absence of basic services. As a result, those in government do not feel they owe the population any duty, obligation or responsibility.

The Nigerian also does not hold his leader to any standard of probity, not to talk of morality. He discovers that the national assembly is spending 25 per cent of the national budget on itself with the salaries earned by the 469 lawmakers, the highest in the world (higher than the US). You would expect uproar, but not in Nigeria. The revelation simply inspires others to do all they can to get elected into the Assembly.

A man who had no bicycle gets into public office, becomes so rich that he buys a private jet and all the Nigerian does is “thank God for his life”. No one questions how he acquired so much on his salary. If anything, they reward him with traditional honours and knighthood in the church (at a sizeable price) for helping himself to the public till.

The worst manifestation of the followership is the “my-thief-is-holier-than-your-thief” syndrome. When a Nigerian public officer is accused of corruption, his tribesmen would rise to his defence.

The standard refrain is, “Is he worse than so and so a person from the other tribe who stole so much?” What could have been a straightforward criminal act gets so politicised that the criminal becomes a celebrity for “stealing his own share of the national cake”. One who just got released from British prison return home to red carpet reception.

At a thanks giving service (you would wonder who the thief is thanking), the pastor in his sermon declared the thief is a blessing to his people. Nowhere else but in Nigeria.

Lastly, there is the small matter of the cake itself, notes Ekoriko. Nobody contributes any flour towards its baking. The rich pay no tax, the poor pay no tax. The national cake is baked by Mother Nature in the form of crude oil, produced by multinationals and the royalties (or rent) are paid to the Nigerian state.

Since no one had a hand in baking it, no one can feel the pinch if others “share the cake and eat all of it”. With followers like this that has bred a frustrated, plundered generation that has now resorted to arms to protest marginalisation and right to the national cake, the future of the Nigerian entity as one indivisible nation may be decided right before our eyes in no distant future.

Gbubemi God’s Covenant Snr is features editor, The Daily Times of Nigeria newspaper in Lagos