Adinuba: Nigeria’s economic development: Why character matters

TOWARD the end of January, 2015, Washington Post published a poll it conducted with a leading American polls firm showing that American voters are more concerned with the character of a candidate in an election than the quality of his or her vision. The report came to a couple of public policy wonks and even campaign strategists as a surprise, but a lot of hard-nosed analysts quickly recognized that the poll result is pretty in line with human nature. This poll confirmed with a pattern which many Americans have begun to recognize since 2004 following President George Bush’s ill-advised war in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but was based on propaganda, lies and false assumptions. Bush’s character and his government’s reputation got a shellacking when the American public got to know that they had been taken for a ride. Barack Obama, the hitherto unknown United States junior Senator from Illinois, was to brilliantly capitalize on Bush’s character flaw to make history as the first African American to become American president. This is not altogether strange. American voters chose Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer and deeply religious man from Georgia, as their president after the deep moral crisis unleashed on Washington by the Watergate scandal generated by Richard Nixon. Perhaps if not for Bill Clinton’s moral flaw over the Monica Lewinsky affair, Vice President Albert Gore would have succeeded him. 

    As the 2015 general election is fast approaching, Nigerians have shown more interest in the character of the candidates than in their manifestos. The opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) has capitalized on the ceaseless drama of scandals of the ruling Peoples Democratic party (PDP) to position itself as the party for change. Outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan appears to be the Nigerian leader least interested in checking graft. Luckily for the APC, its presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari,  is widely considered  the most committed in fighting corruption of all Nigerian leaders ever. 

    While it is true that fighting corruption alone will not cause a tremendous spike in economic growth, it must be recognized that graft on the humungous scale we see in Nigeria today is the greatest threat to our development as a nation. If a nation has the best economic policies but suffers a deep crisis of values, as embodied by official graft, the policies just cannot work. Nigeria’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the 1980s is generally viewed as a failure but Ghana’s Economic Adjustment Programme (EAP) under Jerry Rawlings was a  huge success. What accounts for the difference? Rawlings fought corruption which Ghanaians used to call kalabule with iron fists, but in Nigeria, Ibrahim Babangida celebrated it with gusto! It is corruption, not the absence of defence or economic policy, which is responsible for the under equipment of the Nigerian military in the fight against Boko Haram terrorists. It is corruption, not a lack of sound economic or energy policy, which accounts for  the comatose state of Nigeria’s four refineries, hence the paradoxical  importation of petroleum products in a country saturated with crude oil. 

    My great friend, Pius Okigbo, Africa’s most decorated economist, used to argue persuasively in the 1980s and 1990s, that “Nigeria’s development woes were social, and not economic”. See, for example, his volumes published under the title Essays In The Public Philosophy of Development.  After listening to his scintillating lecture in Lagos on the nexus between social values and economic development, Ken Saro-Wiwa wrote that he wished Okigbo had been his professor of literature! Okigbo was a quintessential Renaissance man. He held degrees in general studies, law, economics and history from the University of London and went to earn research degrees in economics from Northwestern University at Evanston, emerging with the best doctoral thesis. He did postdoctoral research studies in economics at Oxford and decades later earned a D.Sc from the University of London on merit. Okigbo was not just a world class economist but a polyvalent intellectual and thinker. So, he was not having a brainwave when he stated that Nigeria’s development problem was not economic but social. In other words, no nation can get its economic growth right without first getting its values right. 

    It is truly disappointing to see professionals in this day and age, especially those in developing nations where the question of a lack of values is more acute, attempt to play down the huge problem of corruption for whatever reason. Enron, once thought too big to fail, collapsed on account of corruption. So have many other big corporations in the United States and elsewhere. With the global meltdown of 2008 which brought to the fore such issues as incredible pay for CEOs and the dangers of charismatic leadership, the attention of management researchers, scholars and practitioners has once again shifted to the primacy of integrity and transparency  in business management and national economic growth. Leading accounting  research and professional  journals are not left, just as accounting bodies and associations. All leading management schools in the world are now devoting more attention to business ethics.  

    In the middle 1990s, Francis Fukuyama published a tour de force entitled Trust: The Social Virtues And The Creation Of Prosperity in which he established that societies which have low social capital do not make quick progress, unlike those with high social capital. By social capital, Fukuyama is referring to the stock of virtues like honour, trust, integrity, loyalty, etc. There is a strong correlation between economic growth and high moral standards.  Clinton, as president of the world’s greatest economic force, was impeached over the Monica Lewinsky affair by the House of Representatives but saved by the Senate. But is such impeachment conceivable in poor countries?

    As early as 1958, Edward Banefield, a top American sociologist, wrote a magnificent book which called world attention to the need to uphold high ethical standards. It was published by The Free Press of New York, a division of Random Books, under the title The Moral Basis of The Backward Society. One of the most powerful examples cited in the book is Italy, a nation divided into two. While the northern part which has key places like Milan is like any other part of the First World, places like Naples and Sicily in the South look like Third World areas because of the culture of the people which rewards massive bribery and corruption and thus enables criminal gangs like the mafia to thrive from generation to generation.

    Therefore, it is not for nothing that Catholic institutions have always emphasized ethics. Georgetown, Loyola University in Chicago, Lagos Business School, Notre Dame, IESE, for instance, are known for this emphasis. Yet, PDP operatives who attended Catholic institutions seek to play down the central question of integrity. Let us restate an obvious fact: even if we hired 1,000 world class economists to manage the Nigerian economy, our economy will remain in the doldrums if electricity and other key infrastructure are not in place because of corruption and other negative values. In societies where the values are right, even state-owned enterprises work excellently, as compellingly demonstrated by Ethiopian Airline, Emirates, Statoil, South African Airways, Singapore Airlines, Manitoba Hydro International, etc. 

     Many Nigerians want Buhari as the next president  because of the deep conviction that he stands for honour, integrity and leadership by personal example. He has been head of state, minister in charge of petroleum resources, a state governor, chairman of the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund, etc. Yet, he has no millions of dollars anywhere, no mansions. Private jet owners and wheeler dealers are uncomfortable with him because of their shadowy sources of income.

    It is not only in America that voters are keenly interested in the character of candidates in an election. Nigerian voters are more than ever now keen on character.

• Adinuba is head of Discovery Public Affairs Consulting.