I feel honoured to be asked to deliver this year’s lecture in honour of Pastor S. A. Odunaiya, founder and first President of the Young Men Christian League of the Christ Apostolic Church. I am informed that this is the 19th edition of the lecture series. That you have been able to hold this lecture for 19 years says something about your seriousness, your consistency, your resilience, your sense of history and your dedication to a good cause. I congratulate you.
I have seen the list of eminent persons who have availed you of their thoughts on various aspects of the Nigerian condition. It is an impressive list of some of Nigeria’s well known cognoscenti, merchants of knowledge and masters of political, economic and social punditry. I have seen such names as Dr Reuben Abati, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, Justice Olayinka Ayoola, Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, Dr Tunji Braithwaite, Aare Afe Babalola SAN, Professor Remi Sonaiya. The list also includes Nigeria’s Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo SAN. As you have numbered me among these eminent persons by asking to say a few words to you, I thank you. I thank you for the privilege of allowing me to enjoy a few minutes of fame.
I also thank you for your generosity in asking me to pick a subject of my choice considering prevailing issues in Nigeria such as restructuring, insecurity, corruption, economic recession and the magic year 2019. I decided that in order not to pidgeon-hole myself it was better to take a bird’s eye view of Nigeria at 57 because I believe that will give me the latitude to deal with a multiplicity of contemporary issues in one broad sweep. That is why I titled the lecture, “See who is 57”.
Unlike many countries in Africa, Nigeria acquired its independence on October 1, 1960 without firing a shot. Harold Macmillan, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, had told the Houses of Parliament of the Union of South Africa on February 3, 1960 that a “wind of change” was sweeping across Africa. At the United Nations 1960 was called the year of Africa because 14 former French Colonies, the Belgian Congo, Somalia and Nigeria all achieved independence that year. At the ceremony where the Union Jack was lowered and the green-white-green flag of Nigeria was hoisted the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa had said: “Today’s ceremony marks the culmination of a process which began 15 years ago and has now reached a happy and successful conclusion. It is with justifiable pride that we claim the achievement of our independence to be unparalleled in the annuals of history. Each step of our constitutional advance has been purposefully and peacefully planned with full and open consultation not only between representatives of all the various interests in Nigeria but in harmonious cooperation with the administering power which has today relinquished its authority.”
The euphoria did not last long. Five short years later the dam broke. Nigeria’s soldiers led by Major Chukwuma Nzeogu sacked the politicians in a bloody coup on January 15, 1966. Since months later, precisely on July 29, 1966 another coup, also bloody, took place bringing some unexpected complication into the life of the newly born nation. The series of crises that followed the two coups led to the loss of trust and faith in the country’s unity. Inspite of the best efforts of its leaders including some African leaders the country drifted into a civil war, the Biafran war that lasted 30 months following the declaration of the then Eastern Region as the Republic of Biafra by Lt Col. Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. While some countries fought a war to achieve their independence Nigeria fought a war to consolidate its independence.
By the gift of hindsight Nigeria was a happy country before the January 15, 1966 coup. Eventhough the coup leader talked about corruption and the desire of his partners to deal with ten percenters the situation has been, by comparison, far worse in subsequent years. In the First Republic, the roads were well maintained all the year round, by what was called PWD (Public Works Department). Today in many parts of the country children use shovels to fill the potholes on public highways in exchange for a few coins by motorists. Today cars slow down and crawl at extremely unmotorable portions of the road where traders have wisely established mammy markets. There they sell bananas, groundnuts, plantain and pure water. But the bad news is that armed bandits sometimes waylay motorists at such points when they have to slow down either to buy what is on offer or simply to glide carefully through those rock-and-roll roads. Another dimension of the roads palaver in recent times is that federal roads are badly maintained or not maintained at all. Some state governments take up the responsibility. Some of them mischievously plant signboards that read: “This is a federal road but we are fixing it. Please bear with us.”
In the 60s agriculture was the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy. Eventhough crude oil was discovered in 1956 at Oloibiri in present day Bayelsa State the first oil export took place in February 1958. Agriculture was our beautiful bride. We wooed her assiduously and she responded favourably. The soil showed us its generosity. We would drop a few seeds in the ground and within a few months it would smile at us with a bumper harvest. That is how we had the groundnut pyramids in the North, the cocoa mountains in the West, the rubber plantations in the Midwest and the oil palm forests in the East. In some parts of the country we had comfortable farm houses with electricity and water. The farms put clothes on our backs, roofs over our heads and food in our stomachs. If you didn’t have a white collar job, and most people didn’t, the farm provided you with a blue collar job. From the farms the people were able to take care of their families and to send their children to schools here and abroad.
Then something happened. Crude oil arrived. We started exporting it in 1958. The dollars rolled in and we cultivated the culture of conspicuous consumption, consumption without production. But we still managed to prosecute the civil war without borrowing a kobo. Did we invest the money in regenerative projects that could have sustained us in lean times? We did not. We were simply import merchants. We had what came to be called the rice armada, the cement armada and other armadas that choked our ports – a reflection of our unbridled profligacy. We even paid the salaries of civil servants in the West Indies. That was the period that General Yakubu Gowon, our Head of State at the time was quoted as saying that money was not our problem but how to spend it. Today at least 30 of our State Governments are unable to pay the salaries of their workers. Today the problem is not a problem of how to spend the money. It is that of finding the money.
The oil boom brought a massive rural-urban drift in search of the bright lights and pleasures of the city. We sent our hoes and matchets on retirement. We picked up our shiny brief cases in search of crude oil contacts. With a piece of paper issued to you by someone in the pinnacle of decision-making you could become a dollar millionaire without raising a finger in honest labour. Professor Wole Soyinka has suggested that in some cases if any woman was ready to lift her skirt she could easily lift oil. I can’t vouch for the veracity or otherwise of this claim so don’t quote me.
Oil put springs in our feet. We started to swagger. We bought all kinds of exotic cars, state of the art electronics etc. We imported everything importable, useful and not so useful. This was the period that we were proud to say, borrowing from the title of Nkem Nwankwo’s book, “My Mercedes is bigger than yours.” Now we have graduated into a higher grade. We now say not my SUV is bigger than yours but “my private jet is bigger than yours.”
At this time we had started engaging in the reckless defamation of Agriculture: it dirties our fingers; it breaks our backs; it takes us to the bush where mosquitoes abound; it damages our nail polish; it causes waist pain. We found a thousand reasons to despise and maltreat a friend that had been a faithful ally simply because we thought we had found a more beautiful bride: oil. We ran our River Basin Authorities aground or simply killed them with corruption. Corruption corroded our dam projects, our silo projects and our fertilizer acquisition and distribution. In 1973, we launched the National Accelerated Food Production Scheme. Noble idea targeted at high yielding species of crops. The scheme has been a roaring success in Malaysia, South Korea, India and Mexico but not in Nigeria.
We woke up in the late 70s to find out that there was not much food on our table and we did not have much money amidst competing alternatives to pay for food importation because we had squandered our riches. Like a woman neglected by a husband she had served very well in the past Agriculture kicked hard. The Federal Government woke up in 1976 to start an agricultural programme it called Operation Feed the Nation (OFN). Some cynics labeled it Operation Fool the Nation on account of its underachievement. When President Shehu Shagari took over government in 1979, he apparently thought that the problem was with the name. he called his own Green Revolution. But it never had the attributes of greenness or of a revolution.
Please permit me to say that despite our enormous wealth there has been a progressive deterioration in public amenities. Take electricity for example. Our struggle with providing electricity to our citizens is sadly laughable. We used to have a corporation called Electricity Corporation of Nigeria but because of its low performance Nigerians nicknamed it Electricity Conservation of Nigeria. And when we changed the name to National Electric Power Authority, Nigerians ever so cynically creative called it Never Expect Power Always. Now we have a new name Power Holding Company of Nigeria. Nigerians think the name that best fits it is Power Hoarding Company of Nigeria.
Nigeria has spent stratospheric sums of money on electricity over the years but we have very little to show for it. President Umaru Yar’Adua said that Nigeria spent $10 billion on electricity generation during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s time in office. However, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Dimeji Bankole said that the figure for those eight years was about $16 billion. Yet it is only recently that Nigeria claimed to have attained 7000 megawatts mark which is even thoroughly unstable. South Africa with a population of about 50 million has about 60,000 megawatts; Malaysia with a 32 million population in 2013 has 30,000 megawatts. Egypt as at 2008 was generating 33,000 megawatts. Brazil with a population of 188 million generates 90,000 megawatts while South Korea with a population of 49 million generates 44,000 megawatts. To fill the gap we had to find our way to the world’s generator manufacturers.
The Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria has put the number of Nigerians who own generators of various sizes at 60 million and that they spend about N1.56 billion to fuel them yearly. Jubail Moukarem Group, a Lebanese medium sized company started importing generators into Nigeria in 1998 with about 600 generators yearly. By 2008 it had risen to 4,000 yearly. I don’t know what the figure is as we speak.
The Financial Vanguard of January 28, 2008 detailed the use of generators by some banks in Nigeria. United Bank for Africa spends N61.32 million a week to fuel generators in its 730 branches. Intercontinental Bank spends N21 million per week on its 250 generators; Fidelity Bank spends N10 million weekly on its 120 generators; Ecobank N10.9 million weekly on its 130 generators; Equitorial Trust Bank N60 million for its 72 generators and Union Bank N33.6 million weekly for its 400 generators. It is a crying shame that this high consumption of generators is occurring in a country that has abundant gas which is flared away every second, hydro-electric power potential and solar and wind energy potential.
In the 60s and 70s our universities were well regarded globally because the standard was high. Our universities attracted many foreign students and lecturers which gave a sort of international flavour. Today most of them look like glorified secondary schools. But the experts say that the problem started from 1976 when the Federal Government introduced the Universal Primary Education. In 1975 the enrolment figure was six million. But with the introduction of free and compulsory primary education the figure ballooned to 8.5 million in 1976. It hit 15 million pupils in 1982 but the funding level did not match the explosion. So the standard plummeted from that level up. Other factors may have combined to do the damage shortage of teachers and facilities, incessant strikes, the birth of cultism, exam malpractices etc. In 2001 the World Bank issued a damning report on education in Nigeria. It said: “University graduates are poorly trained and unproductive on the job. Graduate skills have steadily deteriorated over the past decade.” Employers, fully aware of the dip in quality, now look for, mostly, graduates who were trained abroad, or who have two or three degrees or those who have a first class or second class upper division degrees that they can train to improve their skill sets. These strategies leave many of our graduates pounding the streets daily with a very slim chance of being employed. Professor Wole Soyinka had suggested sometime ago that all the universities should be shut for a year or two so that stakeholders can find a solution to the problem. That is a drastic measure that education activists, students and parents are unwilling to hear. But truth must be told, the situation is terribly bad. I was on an interview panel some years ago. What happened there shocked me. A law graduate was asked at the interview: where does an appeal from the Court of Appeal go to? She said: High Court. Another graduate, an Accountant was asked to explain what a Balance Sheet is. She squeezed her face, pouted, opened her mouth but nothing came out. The panelists were underwhelmed by such a palpable display of ignorance. This is not a representative sample but it still indicates in some tangential way the dip in the standard of our education and the depth of the decay. Indira Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India once said: “Nothing is absolutely perfect. Sunshine is accompanied by a shadow.” No one expected our educational system to be perfect but no one also expected it to be this imperfect. I believe we do need to hold a colloquium on education. This should be a gathering of the clan: students, lecturers, parents, employers, civil society groups, alumni associations and donors. Nothing short of a holistic review of where we are, how we got here and where we need to be will be good enough. At the convocation of the University of Uyo in June 2001 where he was given an honorary doctorate degree Chief Ufot Ekaette, then Secretary to the Government of the Federation had said: “Our educational system is a near perfect mirror-image of our national lives, a paradox of affluence and extreme poverty, a pious people living in abject bankruptcy and the emergence of conflicting value systems which detracted from the effort to focus attention and energy on the task of social regeneration, genuine economic development and a sustainable democratic system.” I agree entirely.
A large part of our problem in the last 57 years as a nation has been the pervasiveness of corruption and its easy acceptability as a way of life by many Nigerians. It comes in many and varied forms. The Policeman says to a motorist “your boys are here—-.” What is that? Corruption. The security man at a bank does not know who you are but he calls you “Chairman.” One day I was arriving at the Lagos Airport from Abuja. On arrival I picked up some newspapers. One young man came and grapped the newspapers. I thought he wanted me to dash him the newspapers so I told him I have not read them yet so I could not give them to him. He said he only wanted to hold them for me so I could give him something.
The menace of the police who torment motorists especially commercial drivers is well known so the least said about them the better. I learn that cashiers who collect revenue for government also ask for their egunje. You must pay them some money before they collect money from you. Otherwise they tell you if you don’t pay armed robbers will take the money from you when you are going back home. By far the biggest corruption episodes occur mainly in contract awards and execution as well as in the oil industry. A few years ago, the Federal Government set up a team to investigate contract pricing in comparison with projects of similar size in other African countries. It was discovered that in general projects in Nigeria cost as much as twice or thrice the cost in other African countries.
If you want to trace the growth path of corruption, its devilish trajectory in Nigeria you will discover that the monster has been growing exponentially since Nzeogwu first talked about ten percenters. When Murtala Muhammed overthrew Gowon he set up a committee to investigate the 12 Governors that served under Gowon. Ten of them were found guilty of corruption. Only two were certified to be above board. Since then corruption has been walking on four legs despite the best efforts of subsequent governments.
You may remember that there was a man who ran the affairs of this beleaguered country. His name is General Sani Abacha. He set a new record in kleptomania. By government estimates this autocratic ruler had stolen, by the time he died, about $6 billion dollars and stashed it away in various coded accounts in various countries. So his government was one that was defined by two demons, autocracy and kleptocracy. We can never say how Nigeria managed to survive from drinking that poisonous cocktail, autocracy and kleptocracy.
Let us turn attention to the oil industry for that is the headquarters, the epicenter of corruption. It is logical that corruption should take up residence there because that is where the bulk of the country’s money – in naira and dollars – is located. Let me give you a few verified examples:
- In December 2011 the Federal Government permitted a forensic report conducted by KPMG, a well-known consulting and auditing firm to be published. The audit commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Finance discovered lots of sharp business practices, violation of regulations, illegal deductions of funds belonging to the states and failure to account for several billions of naira that should go to the Federation Account. Auditors found that between 2007 and 2009 the NNPC overdeducted funds in subsidy claims to the tune of N28.5 billion. It has not been able to account for it. When I read recently of their story about subsidy claims I simply said to myself: aha, here we go again. I said so because transactions at the NNPC are always opaque and impenetrable so whatever they tell you about money please take it with a pinch of salt.
- In May 2009 Willbros Group Inc, a US company, admitted to making corrupt payments totaling over $6.3 million to officials of the NNPC. It also included its subsidiary NAPIMS. This money was paid in return for assistance in obtaining and retaining contract for work on the Eastern Gas Gathering System (EGGS).
- In July 2004, ABB Vetco Gray, a US company and its UK subsidiary ABB Vetco Gray UK Limited admitted to paying over $1 million in bribes to officials at NNPC subsidiary NAPIMS in exchange for obtaining confidential bid information and favourable recommendations from Nigerian government agencies.
- In November 2013 after a report was published by Swiss Non-Governmental advocacy organization – Erklaring Von Bern – allegations of heavy fraud surfaced placing the NNPC under the weather for siphoning $6.8 billion in crude oil revenues.
There are several other cases. An official audit reported in March 2016 that the NNPC had failed to pay $1.6 billion to the Federation Account. What of the recent $25 billion controversy raised by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources? What of the recent withholding of about N30 billion by the NNPC which made the states to boycott the November Federation Account meeting. The NNPC then forked out about N30 billion from somewhere for sharing. What of the Haliburton allegations in which two or three former Presidents are allegedly involved. Some culprits have been jailed in the US but in Nigeria nothing has yet happened.
You do not need more examples from me. You probably are aware of some of them yourself. This country is thoroughly, thoroughly corrupt, fantastically corrupt. At a television programme last week, I talked about what I call the Bermuda Triangle of Corruption. It consists of three deadly components (a) The civil and public servants. They work on contract papers, source for contractors, pad the budgets and plant ghosts on the payroll. (b) The Military and Civilian political elite. They award the contracts; they assign oil blocks; oil lifting contracts; fuel importation with appropriate cushion built in for “chopping.” (c) The professional elite. These are the businessmen, auditors, accountants, lawyers, quantity surveyors, architects, contractors, security agencies. They work together, seamlessly, fluently as an organized conspiratorial mafia to ensure that corruption is alive and well and their pockets are also alive and well. They are entrenched in the system. They oil the system with the profit from their dirty deals. They fight for the system to survive and grow in their own image. They arrange who wins elections. They buy the voters, buy election officials, buy election tribunal officials, they buy the lawyers on both sides of a case, they buy the judges when they can.
The federal government is correct in making some noises about curbing corruption. President Muhammadu Buhari says that about $150 billion have been squirreled out of the country. I think that is what he has been able to locate. It is probably much larger than that. Let me declare here that to fight corruption is a worthy, a very worthy cause to which all of us should in our own ways, big and small, subscribe. We must assist the government to succeed. I know that the success is likely to be obviously limited because corruption in Nigeria is rooted in the system, in the way we conduct ourselves as a country.
No elected government in Nigeria no matter how well intentioned can make a significant impact in terms of curbing corruption. The money that puts any President in Aso Rock is from sources known and unknown (apologies to K. O. Mbadiwe). It is largely dirty money but dirty money and clean money have the same colours. But if you take a close look at those who have always been the midwives of our presidency you will get my message. And now you can see that some of the allegedly corrupt persons have made their grand entry into the ruling party assuring the President that they will deliver their constituencies to him in 2019. How will the President pursue those allegedly corrupt fellows when they have promised to smoothen his way to power in 2019. Besides, the President seems to pursue only the punitive and not preventive aspect of corruption. I have seen no measures being initiated to stop corruption before it occurs. How competitive, how transparent, are contract awards? Is there security of tenure for civil and public servants? Are public accounts ever published publicly? Is there a mechanism for ensuring that NNPC transactions are above board? What do we know about the so-called security votes cornered by State Governors and the President? Do they ever render any accounts even to their oversight agencies? So what, really, are the efforts made by this or the previous governments to prevent corruption? Perhaps the most significant achievement of this government in this area is the whistle blower policy. It is a master stroke. Since we all love awoof money we are likely to squeal on our relations and friends who may be about to put their fingers in the public till. But if they are staunch members of the ruling party then we are just tilting at windmills.
From what I have said so far I am sure you can guess that Nigeria has not yet achieved its manifest destiny. We have 68 political parties and most of us can only remember the names of maybe three or four. The rest are just paper tigers who can do nothing for our democracy except to have their names on INEC’s history book. Even the parties that appear strong, are they run democratically? Do they respect their election promises and manifestoes. Our politics is a lottery service. You keep playing it until you hit the jackpot. If you don’t hit the jackpot you move, you cross carpet and seek your fortune elsewhere. It is bereft of principles because it is largely populated by birds of different plumage who are largely political prostitutes not bound by any ideology except the ideology of graft. My apologies to those who do not fit into this description.
In our political arrangement the idea of impeachment has been vulgarized. People get impeached at five in the morning or at places other than parliament or for reasons that make no sense whatsoever. In Enugu State some years ago, the Deputy Governor was impeached for running a chicken farm where he lives. His boss the Governor who organized the impeachment was running a piggery. In this contest between pigs and chickens, the pig had to win because pigs are bigger than chickens. So the chicken farm was impeached.
Nigeria is an exciting country of paradoxes. Let me just name a few of them:
- We have huge crude oil deposits but we sleep at the petrol stations waiting for petrol.
- We are a major gas producer but we do not have electricity.
- We have a huge land mass, good vegetation and good weather but we import food.
- We have huge deposits of bitumen in several states but our roads are bone breakers.
- We have huge deposits of gold but our women go to Saudi Arabia and Dubai in search of gold.
- We have abundance of water but we import frozen fish.
- Grinding poverty resides with us in the midst of vulgar opulence.
These perplexing paradoxes I must say bring me to the main meat of my message: leadership. Leadership is it. It is leadership that makes the difference. Charles de Gaulle, France’s imperial President, was quoted in the New York Times magazine of May 12, 1968: “Men are of no importance. What counts is he who commands.” For me the greatness or the lack of it depends on the quality of its leadership. A wise, visionary and transformational leader can make a great difference to the destiny of his country. The man who gave IT development in India a short in the arm was Prime Minister Atai Bihari Vaipayee who ruled India from March 19, 1998 to May 22, 2004. He placed the development of information technology among his top five priorities and formed a task force on IT and software development. Within 90 days the task force produced an extensive report and an action plan with 108 recommendations. Today India is a leading force in IT development. Today India produces an average of 400,000 engineers per year. Its engineers especially its IT engineers are all over the world manning strategic IT facilities. They are here in our telecommunications sector. One man made that difference.
Singapore got its independence on August 9, 1965, five years behind Nigeria. Today Singapore is many kilometres ahead of Nigeria in the development marathon. One man, a 35-year old man called Lee Kuan Yew made the difference. He transformed this small country of six million people into an EL Dorado. It has the world’s best airline, the world’s best airport and the second busiest port after Rotterdam. He documented his development odyssey in a book titled “From Third World to First World.”
Nigeria is an outstanding example of leadership failure. At age 57, Nigeria’s growth is stunted. The country looks like a midget, a Liliput. The suicide rate has gone up. We are number 30 on the world’s suicide map according to the World Health Organisation’s report of 2015. Death by suicide is an individual decision based on the person’s conceptualization of his role in the drama of life. But many Nigerians also die from many causes, many of them preventable. They are road accidents, tanker explosions, hired assassins, kidnappers, armed robbers, acid wars, high blood pressure, cancer, stroke, Boko Haram insurgents, Fulani herdsmen attacks, Ebola, lassa fever, adulterated drugs, fumes from i-better-pass-my-neighbour generators.
Now some people are selling their children to buy food. We paid off our foreign debt during the Obasanjo years. Now we have found our way again to the money lender’s door. The foreign debt is piling up again. So is the domestic debt. Virtually everything has gone up except our standard of living. There could be no clearer evidence of the failure of leadership if a 57-year old country can look the way Nigeria looks today.
The politicians – military or civilian – either in their coup speeches or in their party manifestoes tell us that they will make the trains run on time. When they get there you find that there are no trains at all, no train drivers and no fuel for the trains. So the question of the train arriving and departing on time does not even arise. They tell us that when they win there will be a chicken in every pot. At the end of the day you find that there is neither chicken nor pot.
Nigeria’s celebrated novelist Chinua Achebe wrote a leadership classic many years ago titled “The Trouble with Nigeria”. This little book can be compared to Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s little red book or Muammer Gaddafi’s green book, both of which are classics in their own countries on political engineering. Achebe asserts in this book that the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. I agree with him unreservedly.
I attribute Nigeria’s leadership failure to two main factors (a) Lack of adequate preparation for high office. To become America’s President John F. Kennedy schooled himself in the art of oratory and speed reading. He was reputed to be able to read 500 words per minute. Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States (1977-81) spent a considerable part of his life preparing for the exalted office. He was a farmer, a naval officer, an engineer, a businessman, a planner, a nuclear physicist and a politician. He had been a Governor of Georgia State before he stepped out for the ultimate political trophy: the presidency. During the campaign for the presidency he wrote a book titled “Why not the Best.”
Bill Clinton had nursed presidential ambition right from his teenage years when he had the good fortune of shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy. He, Clinton, went to school in two continents, devoured every leadership literature in sight and honed his oratorical skills. He was reputed to be capable of doing six different things at once.
In the Nigerian case, the pathetic lack of of preparation for high office has been most evident. Except for Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo there has hardly been any demonstrable evidence that our past leaders did burn the midnight oil unceasingly, did hold seminal sessions with experts, did write books or position papers on the Nigerian condition, did work with any think tank to sort out policy options. In the case of Shehu Shagari who had political experience at the grassroots but a limited breadth of vision, education and erudition he had opted to be a senator. However, in the mysterious ways of leadership selection in Nigeria the selection machinery threw up Shagari instead of the better educated, more erudite and more perceptive Adamu Ciroma who had even run the Central Bank as its Governor. President Shagari told Dele Giwa in an interview that he had told his ministers to stop stealing but they would not listen. Can you imagine that? On one occasion when some NPN chiefs were sharing public funds illegally he simply left them, went upstairs and prayed. So there you have a theory of a clean President who was surrounded by filthy aides. Is history repeating itself today? I ask you.
Of those who were ready for the job, Azikiwe and Awolowo none of them got the job of Prime Minister or President. They were both at the periphery of substantive power. Of all those who have held power in our civil democracy since 1999 I know of no one who was ready for it. Obasanjo was removed from prison and persuaded to take the job. He even asked curiously “what did I forget in the State House?” Umaru Yar’Adua the ailing former Governor of Katsina State simply wanted to return to Ahmadu Bello University as a teacher but Obasanjo decided to dash him the job of President. Dr Goodluck Jonathan too was compelled to come to the centre. He actually preferred his job as the Governor of his native Bayelsa State. Again Obasanjo picked the man who wasn’t ready instead of the man who was: Dr Peter Odili, the former Governor of Rivers State. And now we have President Muhammadu Buhari who campaigned for the office three times and picked the trophy on the fourth attempt. His critics have said that since he was retired from the Army he had not participated in any public forum, seminar, lecture or colloquium on Nigeria and so was not really ready for the job. But he has it and how he has handled the job is a subject of public conversation especially in the wake of current insecurity issues, corruption and the current economic asphyxia.
Restructuring has become a major talking point for two reasons (a) It is in the manifesto of the ruling party, APC (b) The Federal Government seems overwhelmed by problems in several sectors. Many federal roads remain unfixed. Federal hospitals lack basic equipment and drugs. Some Federal Universities lose their accreditation in some courses due to incapacity and in some cases State Governments have had to bail them out. The Federal Police seem overstretched because of their inadequacy in numerical strength and unfamiliarity with the lay of the land. This is why some activists have called for the establishment of State police. I support it. So the campaigners are asking for a reduction of Federal responsibilities and revenue and a transfer to State Governments who are closer to the people of their states. I am a staunch and unrepentant advocate of restructuring. I believe that the issue will dominate discussions and campaigns in the 2019 elections. Candidates who oppose it will be taking an uninsured risk.
The insecurity problem is on the front burner now especially with the scaling up of attacks on communities by Fulani herdsmen. I am sure that the President is going through an agonizing period because of the severity of the problem and the low blows he has received on the matter. I sympathise with him on this delicate matter. What he needs to do, I think, is to call a stakeholders conference so that a multi-dimensional and holistic solution can be fashioned out to the satisfaction of all concerned.
The second major problem with leadership selection is the lack of active participation by the followers. Nigerian leaders are selected by the godfathers in a manner that looks like voodooism. Everything is thrown into the selection process: cash, tons of cash, guns, juju, shrines, blood oath, wife exchange etc. This is machine politics, a gathering of the godfathers who never sleep. It is an organized cabalism. What role do the people, the followers play in the process? No role whatsoever, they just collect the dollars and the uniform with someone’s image on it and they are told who to vote for. How can that format produce transformational leadership? This is what I call the failure of followership.
A lot of young people in Nigeria are threatening to put someone without grey hair and a balding palate in Aso Villa next year. They are encouraged to think that there is a road to the villa because young people have taken the reins of office in other countries: Canada, Austria, and France. Infact, more recently the world has witnessed the ascension to the prime ministership chair of New Zealand by a young lady 37, called Jacinda Ardern. Ms Ardern who is now the world’s youngest female leader used to be a freelance DJ. Yes, Nigeria’s young people have the numbers but do they know how to get one of their own into Aso Villa, I doubt it. I have bad news for them. They are unlikely to put any young man in the chair Buhari is sitting now in 2019.
By the way I need to remind them that young men had run Nigeria before. Here are the ages of those who held important positions in Nigeria in the 60s and 70s. Awo 37, Ahmadu Bello 36, Tafawa Balewa 34, Yakubu Gowon 32, Nnamdi Azikiwe 42. M. T. Mbu was Nigeria’s Foreign Minister at 23. The question is: Are today’s Nigerian youths ready, willing and able to compete with the grandees who run the show today? I don’t know. But I wish them luck.
Our economy is still running on one leg: crude oil. Its price is going north and we are smiling to the bank. We do not know how long that will last especially with the fresh threat issued by the militants in the Niger Delta. But we have refused over the years to do the needful in the area of solid minerals. What we need is to have an accommodation with the state governments and all the 774 local governments. If we get them to key in as co-owners we will be home and dry.
If we want to become a developed country we must be ready to pay attention to the basics. One of the requirements is steel. America, Britain, China, Russia, Germany and all other G20 countries devote a lot of attention to steel development. Nigeria started the journey for steel development in 1958 but as today our steel project is comatose. Ajaokuta is a case study in project abandonment. Our construction industry imports over 600, 000 tons of rolled steel products per year thus losing about $1 billion every year. We have also lost the opportunity to produce spare parts for rail lines, petroleum and communication services which our steel factory would have taken care of.
Another factor inhibiting industrial development is low commitment to research and development. Between 2009 and 2013, Japan, Israel, South Korea, Germany and South Africa spent at least 3% of their national budgets on R&D. Within the same period Nigeria spent between 0.4% and 0.6% on it. Also, the volume of patents acquired by a country is a pointer to the level of seriousness in development matters. Between 2009 and 2011 the average application for patents by Americans was 238,000; that of China 319,000; Egypt 500 while Nigeria recorded a miserable 45 patents during the same period. This paucity of patents is not for lack of research institutions in Nigeria. There are about 66 of them, but they are all starved of funds. They duplicate their efforts because there is no central coordinating authority. There is also a gross under exposure and non-utilisation of their research findings.
But our story is not an all-negative narrative of battered hopes and failed dreams. We have made some achievements in telecommunications, music, dance, comedy, arts, entrepreneurship and sports. In movie making our Nollywood is third in the world after America’s Hollywood and India’s Bollywood. So we have a little reason to break into song and dance but we shouldn’t dance for too long. We haven’t risen high and fast enough inspite of the pockets of excellence dotted here and there. But if we ever get it right in the national leadership department then we will get it right in other sectors.
We have a lot of current challenges that are taxing our ingenuity and testing our will as a nation: roaring unemployment, decaying infrastructure, extreme poverty, ethnic irredentism, growth of cultism, destruction of cherished values, cruelty to children, subjugation of women, rampaging corruption, growth of counter culture in the social media, the flourishing of hate ideology, arrogance of power and the disdain for new ideas, challenge to facticity, the future of oil, the impact of climate change etc. If we want to grow as a nation we must put new ideas in the pot and stir. We must survive and thrive. We will only survive and thrive when we begin to accept that we don’t have all the answers but that we can have the answers to our problems by sincere engagement with people of ideas.
What role should the church play in all of these? The church has the force of moral authority given to it by the leadership example of Jesus Christ. If it should use it among its members and urge them to toe the path of honour and truth and to do what is right according to the words of the scriptures and not hesitate to speak truth to power then it would have made a significant contribution to our renaissance. Unfortunately some church leaders have yielded to temptation and have failed to continue to walk on the straight and narrow path of moral rectitude. But we must remember that church leaders are not angels. They are human beings like the rest of us. So we must be ready to forgive their trespasses and encourage them to sin no more.
Nation building is a task that belongs to all of us. If we want a better nation than we have now we must work for it by voting the right people into office. The year 2019 offers us a gilt-edged opportunity to exercise our franchise with wisdom.
Thank you.
Being a lecture delivered by Ray Ekpu, CEO of MayFive Media Limited at the 19th edition of the Pastor S. A. Odunaiya Annual Memorial Lecture at the Christ Apostolic Church Auditorium, Ebute Metta, Lagos on Sunday January 21, 2018.
