Nigeria: Government Appointments And The Roots of Corruption

The recent appointments made by President Muhammadu Buhari have generated reactions across the spectrum of Nigeria's political thought and groups. Surprisingly, even confessed Buharists have urged caution and admonished the president to be more circumspect in making appointments in a complex polity such as Nigeria. Probably in answer to the deluge of negativity that followed the so-called lopsided nature of recent and not so recent political appointments by the current Nigerian leader, his spokesperson and party chairman have promised that the next slew of appointments would be sensitive to the idiosyncrasies of the Nigerian socio-political reality. 

The current leadership promised Nigerians genuine change in political direction from one of ineptitude and directionlessness to one of probity, transparency and lofty nationalistic ideas. Presently, the expectation of Nigerians are being somewhat dampened by the almost somnambulistic knee-jerk approach to governance as exhibited by the government. There appears to be nothing in place or in the process of enunciation to ameliorate the rather unfortunate conditions of the average Nigerian. Too much time is spent on what is wrong instead making things right.  A government-in-waiting for over a decade has been too deliberate in formulating policies that could change the tide in favour of ordinary citizens. Some key government posts were announced a few days ago while we await a full cabinet announcement in September - about four months after the presidential inauguration. These are not the signs of confidence but tentativeness.  Political commentators have voiced their displeasure concerning the president's appointments to date because it appears to favour a particular geopolitical group - the north.  Southern politicians tend to pretend or act naïve when it comes to the question of who holds real power in Nigeria. The northern political establishment has never left anyone in doubt that northern interests trump any other interest in the country. Buhari is a product of the military arm of the northern political establishment and after his "95/5%" statement in the United States; you wonder why anyone is miffed by his present antics. For one, the Nigerian president is constitutionally one of the most powerful head of state in the world and northern politicians or militicians tend to exercise this authority without fear. 

The present government has vowed to be intolerant of corruption and at every opportunity reminds Nigerians of its anticorruption stance. The issue of corruption in Nigeria is not new. But the government is acting as if corruption is the exclusive badge of the Jonathan administration. I have made the suggestion elsewhere that Nigerians do not hate corruption, only its consequences.  Corruption cannot be fought by the simplistic act of making outlandish claims of missing money to the press and blaming it on members of the Jonathan administration. I hold no sympathies for any government but the suffering masses of Nigeria. If members of the former government have misappropriated funds belonging to the Nigerian state, the best thing to do is to charge them, and let the law take its course.  

Corruption is the natural reaction that is common in a nation that renders its citizens desperate without a way out of their desperation. In Nigeria, you must participate, condone [or pretend] or be depressed by corruption. The average Nigerian is dominated by the thought of survival in a heartless system where we have a minority wondering what to do with what they have and a majority wondering if they would ever have any. The middle class has been rendered insolvent by the weight of having to provide essential things that makes life easier.  The average Nigerian has to provide shelter, electricity, water, transportation, healthcare and schooling for his or her children.  While it may be rightly argued that the individual is responsible for all the above, the Nigerian state is supposed to make it easy to attain by timely and sufficient worker remunerations, efficient public transport systems, free and well equipped public schools [primary to secondary] with a Nigeria-focused philosophy, affordable healthcare and efficient public utilities.  For example, how do you expect a Professor to perform his duties efficiently as a researcher and teacher without research funds, while saddled with providing for his children's school fees and car tires at the same time? Do you really expect such a fellow not to take short cuts when he sees the sacrifice of genius for the satisfaction of knaves and the recurrent success of the power mad? The same argument can be made for most Nigerian federal workers and when it comes to the state level the story is even more pathetic.  Workers are owed salaries for most of the year while the governor buys a sleek chopper to help fight crimes - crimes he helped create! 

Without dealing with the structural inequities that have their roots in a faulty federation which spawned a parasitic leadership, jailing Jonathan [or any other previous leader] and his entire cabinet [which may be justified] is mere window dressing. Nigerians must decide what 'Nigerian' means; what is expected of them, and what they should expect from the presently nebulous concept called Nigeria. A starting point should probably include the redacting of our current inane constitution and the creation of a new one that guarantees that Nigerians live like men with power to democratize their existence instead of slinking along in contented slavery.  

Joseph can be reached at jrotimibgood@gmail.com

Nigeria has no army only soldiers

Ever since the so-called Royal West African Frontier Force metamorphosed into the Nigerian 'Army', its objectives have virtually remained unchanged. Its objectives are the protection of those in power by the oppression of those governed. The Nigerian Army consists of soldiers organized along political lines to favour a particular region and its penchant for dictating the power equation in Nigeria. If one examines our 'army' and its antecedents, the only difference between them and civilians is the uniform and a gun. The Nigerian Army; apart from being ill equipped, underpaid, and inadequate in numbers also suffer from deep-seated corruption and indiscipline among the officer corps. 

The blows began to land on the army through its lope-sided recruitment exercises decades ago. The recruitments favoured the northern part of the country. Once the north realized that real power flows from the barrel of guns northern young men with aristocratic ties and those with potential were recruited into the army.  Gradually, these young men were used to saturate the strategic areas of command. These men never forgot their benefactors and understood the fact that the leadership of the country and their unique positions need to be secured in perpetuity.  The first military coup in Nigeria gave the necessary excuse the north needed to consolidate its stranglehold on the country's socio-political development or retrogression, depending on which side you are on. The counter coup and the subsequent civil war served to vilify the South East and fully co-opt the South West as partners in northern domination of Nigeria. The officers on the winning side of the Nigerian civil war have been in power or have been complicit in who attains power since the end of the civil war.  Common to all these officers is their training; they were trained in western military traditions of defence and general soldiering but curiously lacking professionalism. It appears as if implicit in their training was the order to go and maintain the status quo and keep Nigeria down for exploitation. Thomas Sankara, a soldier himself, said "… a soldier without any political or ideological training is a potential criminal". In fact, at a point in Nigeria, the only reason young men go into the military was not because of some nationalistic favour but to snag the juiciest post either within the military or as a reward for coups. 

With the death of professionalism in the military, it is not much of a stretch to imagine that the formation of an integrated and well trained army will be difficult. The Biafrans lost the civil war because they failed to integrate the disparate interests within their ranks and did not secure enough support both before and during the war. The Biafrans had some precious moments that could have turned the tide of the war or at least force real negotiations but failed to capitalize on them. Since the civil war, the Nigerian Army has been virtually idle except for peacekeeping duties and of course, the occasional localised uprisings that enable them use brute force on civilians. The Boko Haram issue and to some extent the Niger Delta militants exposed the military to be just a bunch of soldiers for hire without coordination. For example, in an area under military emergency, Boko Haram, who look more like a bunch of wayward beggars with AK47s ran roughshod in North Eastern Nigeria and other parts of the north while our 'Army' betrayed each other and ran for cover, resulting in killings and abductions. This anathema has been going on for six full years with no end in sight. Boko Haram is an external exploitation of an internal disequilibrium stemming from our unique history of less than stellar attempt at nationhood.

The politicization of the Nigerian Military and destruction of professionalism has largely produced soldiers of fortune rather than a national army that is ready to defend the country. Today, the incumbent president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is another northern militician in a long line of former officers that 'fought' the civil war. For nearly two months of incumbency, he has been playing the political game close to his chest but especially close to northern interests. He has made some key appointments that appear to favour the north.  But there is no real cabinet in place, no ministerial appointments, while Boko Haram attacks across the nation have increased, probably due to an ill-advised decision to remove strategic military checkpoints across the country.  A number of Boko Haram members were recently released while others are to be incarcerated in the south of the country for unknown reasons. The latter move is understandably causing uneasiness in the South East because of the human and economic losses their kinsmen have suffered through Boko Haram attacks in the north. 

Buhari is currently playing up international acceptance and statesmanship, getting invitation for photo-ops ostensibly to find solutions to terrorism. He has moved the so-called central command near the theatre of war in the northeast. But because the service chiefs clearly understand they might not be in service for long, the coordination of the fight against Boko Haram is in the doldrums. The US and other European nations might offer to help but at what cost? We may reach an agreement to establish AFRICOM bases in Nigeria, but who benefits in the long run.

There is no way Boko Haram or any other terrorist organization for that matter can survive for this long and attack the country with such brazen impunity if we had a national, patriotic and professional army. The same disease affecting the army affects all other components of our security apparatus. The death and destruction terrorism has brought on Nigeria has upended our pretext to nationhood. And the manipulation of the military to impose political power on the rest of the country by the north has helped produce soldiers not an army.  

South Africa: Barking Up the Wrong Tree

For some years, It has been a macabre indulgence of SouthAfrican poor blacks to visit their anger and frustration on the so-called 'strangers' in their midst. The reason for attacks on other Africans living in South Africa have been instigated by the misspoken words of local potentates who unfortunately have become a common rallying point of pointless anachronism and threatened violence in African countries. Attacks have also been because of misplaced xenophobia exploited by frustrated locals.

From the apartheid days [unfortunately there is still apartheid] in south Africa blacks have always been treated with the utmost disdain and the homelands were nothing other than large slave camps to support the white-led government in its continued domination of the country.  The incident of the Marikana miners was a sad reminder that apartheid tactics are still very possible in the 'new' South Africa. Apartheid officially 'ended' about twenty years ago and yet the average black person still lives as if the system was still in place.  Any right-thinking person would agree that apartheid only changed its tactics by putting up a black front while retaining most of its benefits and privileges. It is these benefits and privileges; especially economic ones, that have precluded the majority of black SouthAfricans from full participation as equals in the 'new' South Africa. The whites in South Africa hold the rights to most of the best agricultural lands, leaving blacks alienated and dispossessed. Because the natives have not really organized themselves to fight back, they fight themselves or foreigners in their midst that appear to compete with them for the crumbs falling off the oppressor’s [both black and white elite] table. One thing we always fail to get is that white supremacy would begin to crumble the day we stop fighting amongst each other. Our confusion and internalised self-hatred are the bane of black empowerment and progress. There is plenty to go round if only we can organize without rancour while keeping real enemies at bay.

Mandela was a great individual who sacrificed a great deal of his freedom for his beliefs.  But the freed Mandela was different from the one that was incarcerated for nearly thirty years. The release of Mandela was years in the making with political horse-trading and compromises that eventually short-changed the black majority in South Africa. When Mandela became the first black President of South Africa it was with the tacit understanding that white socio-political and economic structures would be left largely intact. The real meaning of this was that South Africans would have their symbolic Madiba but with white-skewed national economic equilibrium.  Mandela surprised some close watchers by instituting the so-called peace and reconciliation committee where members of the public who were wronged by the apartheid regime met with some of their oppressors and publically ‘reconciled’. In a synchronized display of public reconciliation, aggrieved, mainly black, South Africans forgave murderers and criminals, and ‘forgot grievances and injustices’ as if they never happened.  But to the impartial observer, peace and reconciliation without justice cannot solve South Africa’s deep divisions and uneven economic opportunities. The ‘peace and reconciliation’ only positioned the whites and black elites to continue their overlordship, bolstered by a vague sense of forgiven guilt. South Africa has had black leadership for more than twenty years and yet the economic emancipation of the majority of its people appears a distant prospect.

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that South Africa is not yet fully liberated.  There has only been a transfer of power from white supremacists to their black surrogates. These surrogates suffer an apparent amnesia of years of oppressive apartheid because they sit on the master's tainted throne. Blacks in South Africa see each other and other Africans as enemies than they see the white man because it is easier to vent on fellow oppressed. Self-hatred is evident in most of Africa’s conflicts where pogroms and genocides between tribes happen in order to avenge ancient crimes or ‘solve’ land disputes. In all these disputes, white oppression and colonial designs were the precursors or enhancer of such conflicts.

 Xenophobic attacks on so-called foreigners who are victims of the same slave master by indigenous black South Africans is pathetic and should be condemned in the strongest terms. South Africans should be fair and strong enough to throw off the yokes of white supremacy, whether it is white Boers or the new black elite that are now insulated from the struggles of the ordinary people that are ensconced in homelands that look very much like prisons. All Africans, or at least most of them, stood by South Africa during its most depressing times as a nation; it is therefore unconscionable for it to play the xenophobic card, whether the whistle is blown by an overzealous tribal bigot or an acquiescent central government that to all intents and purposes is not really in power or has been swallowed by it.

Joseph can be reached at jrotimibgood@gmail.com

Nigeria and Nigerians: Separate and Unequal

Nigeria was a concept imposed by colonial entities for the sole purpose of exploitative and extractive ease. Nigerians, as a people, became 'farm animals' for the farm concept called Nigeria. At independence, two clear archetypes of leaders emerged from the ruins of colonialism: the nationalists and the regionalists. Though regions were supreme at the inception of political development in Nigeria, some regional leaders were more enlightened, visionary, inclusive, progressive and amenable to national integration. The nationalists of Nigeria wanted to create a self-sufficient, purposeful and proud people while the regionalists wanted to create regional power bases and cared less about nationalism unless where it upheld regional tenets of feudalism and religious parochialism.

The departing colonial powers had plans and their plans were never in the interest of the budding nation. After assessing the political and economic potential of the country, the colonialists decided that, the only way to keep the 'Nigerian farm' under control will be to create an abstract concept that is relatable but unattainable. The most likely group to bring this about or at least maintain the status quo would be those who value regionalism over the Nigerian state. The most regional and therefore the least nationalistic was the northern part of Nigeria where the traditional and religious order was deliberately left intact by the colonial authorities. The northern part of the country was indirectly ruled through feudal traditional rulers. A similar convenient master-servant relationship was adopted for national governance at independence as the departing authorities imposed northern hegemony on the country. It was therefore easy to continue manipulating Nigeria and its resources after independence with the northern political establishment in power. The more independent minded, educated and articulate southern political establishment was sidelined through divisive means while conjured census numbers delivered the masterstroke by giving the north more political power. 

As countries go, Nigeria is a vague concept used by the political elite to defraud the commonwealth. 'Nigeria' is a convenient ruse that is used to whip us in line when we demand answers to national questions of sovereignty, security, nationhood and what the responsibility of the state to its citizens should be. It is easier to define who an American, Briton or an Israeli is when contrasted with who is a Nigerian.  When an American is abducted or killed anywhere on the planet the 24-hour, news cycle makes everyone conscious of the fact that the might of the United States will not be spared to rescue its citizens and bring the criminals to justice. About a year ago, the killing of three Israeli boys led to an all out war to bring those responsible to justice. It is no wonder that such countries produce citizens that are proud and willing to die for the motherland. In Nigeria, life is cheap, and Nigerians justifiably have no national pride. Despite the thousands killed; not just by Boko Haram, but also during senseless 'religious' riots over the years, no concrete steps have been taken to solve the problem or bring perpetrators to justice. There are records of many Nigerians missing, incarcerated, or killed all over the world but the Nigerian state is unmoved. 

When our leaders talk about Nigerian unity, they are referring to the concept not the people. We have not moved beyond the concept of Nigeria since its formation. The concept allows the leaders to exploit glaring inconsistencies in the constitution, enthronement of a parasitic class and destruction of any sense of nationhood while crippling the rule of law. Nigerian leaders hate to discuss the basis of the country's unity because it would probably destroy their concept of Nigeria and with it their unearned privileges. Aguiyi Ironsi was eliminated because he abolished the old regions of Nigeria and foisted a unitary government but what passes for federalism today is a glorified unitary system. 

 Our leaders hold tenaciously to the fallacy that the country makes the people but they need to realize that without the people the state is a concept awaiting realization. Gowon, Obasanjo, Danjuma and Babangida have all mused about the indivisibility and non-negotiability of Nigeria's existence at various times. But these leaders were simply equating the concept of Nigeria for true nationhood. If they understood the full import of nation building, the country should have been put on the path of greatness when these leaders had the chance.  The true failure of the Nigerian state is the exchange of the aspiration of living Nigerians who have borne, and still bear untold hardships for an abstract concept. 

Joseph can be reached at jrotimibgood@gmail.com