On Monday this week, the Nigerian jalopy retreated from veering off the cliff and, yet again, postponed the final act of its suicide mission. Miraculously, each time the epileptic ‘Giant of Africa’ goes into its cyclical political seizures, Nigeria’s suicide pilots somehow manage to apply the emergency break and veer a few centimeters away from the precipice. ‘It’s well for Nigeria,’ and we all celebrate.
The latest convulsion was triggered by the sudden increase in the pump price of petrol from ₦65 per litre to ₦141 per litre.by the federal government on January 1, 2012. Organized labour and civil society organizations (CSOs) threatened to embark on strike and demonstrations, starting January 9, 2012 unless the government rescinded the new order. The government not only called their bluff, it surprisingly didn’t have a Plan B. Reportedly, the government—and most Nigerians—thought the strike action would normally kick off on the first day but would quickly lose steam by the second day.
On January 9, 2012, the new ‘normal’ became eight days of unprecedented mass action. An erstwhile docile population mobilized and completely shut down the country. Analysts are still busy counting the cost, tentatively put at about ₦2 billion for each of the eight harrowing days, plus dozens dead. There’s a celebratory confidence that following the subsidy revolt, government will no longer take Nigerians for granted. People are now more aware of the waste and massive corruption in government; and they expect that government’s promise of cracking down on corruption and its other promises would be implemented.
Incidentally, I am on the government’s side, in terms of the arguments for the removal of subsidies, never mind that my family and I were among its worst victims. Hence, I’m not celebrating that Government backed down from the January 1 policy. I’m concern, however, that the ‘subsidy revolt’ has exacerbated the daily upsurge of security challenges in Nigeria, namely kidnappings, arms proliferation, armed robberies, and transnational security challenges.
Despite its nationwide character, the revolt has also exacerbated mistrust and violence associated with ethnic, religious and political conflicts. Political instability within the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the fractious Opposition will escalate in the coming weeks, just as federal-state government tensions over the relationship between petroleum subsidy removal and the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and the ₦18,000.00 minimum wage will dominate the headlines as Government tries to manage the fallouts of the revolt.
Thrown into the mix, of course, is the new dimension of bomb blasts, occurring on a daily-basis, allegedly by the Boko Haram Islamic militant sect. Indeed, there’s a higher degree of fear and insecurity in the land, a palpable tension threatening to shatter the fragile thread that binds Nigeria’s 250+ ethno-linguistic nationalities together.
While much of the self-assuring celebrations about the strike and revolt are fine, we mustn’t mistake the trees for the forest of Nigeria’s governance nightmare. The issue is the Nigerian state whose dominant political culture can be characterized as neo-patrimonial, i.e., a political system based on personalized structures of authority where patron-client relationships operate behind a façcade of ostensibly rational state bureaucracy. It is weighed down by myriad over-developed, but ineffective state institutions, especially the coercive arms; and overwhelmed by multiple “mafias,” from petroleum to electricity/power generator, fertilizer, and geo-political types. The pornographic details of sleaze in the den of robbers called the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) standing astride halting reforms and a byzantine privatization in place since 1987 shows that the Nigerian state is still a major economic actor whose apparent raison d’etre is to crowd out, rather than facilitate, the real private sector. National policies, such the introduction or withdrawal of petroleum subsidy, are actually meant to guarantee regime security, despite all seemingly unassailable arguments or rationale adduced by the state elite.
Today, no political office holder can be immune from the clutches of Nigerian state, no matter their good intentions or their uprightness as individuals. The shackling of leaders is exacerbated by the daily threat from God, especially through his ‘Divine Intervention’ and ‘Divine Deliverance’ in the affairs of the country. The Nigerian state corrupts, and aided by God as we’re meant to believe, it is the most serious threat to our national existence. This is what the veteran writer, Okey Ndibe meant in his exasperated assertion that “In Nigeria, God chooses the most fraudulent [leaders] and we say power belongs to God…God chooses leaders…” Incidentally, the Nigerian people are complicit in their own dehumanization, especially through their invocation of this black market spiritual interference.
And so, on one hand, I’m glad the shut-down is over; but on the other hand, I’m saddened that we seem to have missed the opportunity to finally reconstruct this predatory state created and run by booty hunters, starting with the rapacious George Tubman Goldie and his Royal Niger Company in the 1870s.
To forestall another political seizure, we must embark on a serious programme of state reconstitution, rather than allowing the ruling elite to simply use the lull to devise novel strategies to entrench their more traditional concern with regime protection as national security. We must first remove the legal masks worn by government officials, i.e., the legal backing for their unbridled and festooning propensities for aberrant acts of criminal consequences in Nigeria. Expunging the immunity clause from the Nigerian Constitution would be a start.
