We are still ‘dancing on the brink’

The news ought to be good, very good now with 22 years of precious democracy under our belt. The government of the people by the people and for the people, has found its berth. The jackboot has been lifted off our scrawny neck, heralding a new era for the country and its people.

Still, the news about the state of our nation continues to be a source of worry for all of us. The experts keep piling up the bad news, jolting us each time from our apparent somnolence about the unvarnished facts about our country we refuse to take into consideration as we celebrate every motion as a monumental and radical movement in the land.

It is not entirely their fault, the experts, that is. They are not to blame. It is not their fault that we have been living with paradoxes that befuddle other nations. It is no secret that ours is an oil-rich nation, providing leadership in OPEC. It boasts of the biggest economy in Africa. Yet, paradoxically, it is officially classified as the poverty capital of the world. Of its estimated population of 209 million, fully 100 million are labelled as extremely poor. It is a huge paradox.

Nigeria is a big country endowed with incredible natural and human resources. Eighty per cent of our 923,768 square km is fully arable. Still, we are net importers of food from such small nations as Thailand and South Korea, the latter with only 33 per arable land. Yes, you got it: it is a huge paradox that few nations could live with. Nor should we forget that all our political leaders at federal, state and local governments are magic-performing men but each of whom, past and present, rode the crest wave of motion that defied movement; hence we have moved this far, running on the same spot. It is no small wonder to me that the prayer warriors and the juju men who are the eyes and the ears of the gods have never told us why and if it is our lot to live with these painful paradoxes.

The preceding four paragraphs serve as a long introduction to situate the latest bad news about our country on the litany of our failures. Last week, the United States think tank, known quite famously as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Harvard Kennedy School published a study on the state of our country. John Campbell, former US ambassador to Nigeria and Robert Rotberg of the Kennedy School, co-authors of the study, jointly released the report. Since leaving the country, Campbell has maintained his interest in the affairs of our country. In 2010, he published a book, Dancing on the Brink, in which he warned that Nigeria was “in grave danger.” While its political leaders were quite busy savouring their enormous and rewarding political power, the country itself was sliding down the path to Golgotha. No one took him seriously. Nigerians are masters at brinkmanship.

The new report minces no words about the current fate of our country. It has tipped over the cliff “from being a weak state to ‘a fully failed state.” According to the study, (and it is worth quoting at length), “Nigeria has long teetered on the precipice of failure. But now, unable to keep its citizens safe and secure, Nigeria has become a fully failed state of critical geopolitical concern. Its failure matters because the peace and prosperity of Africa and preventing the spread of disorder and militancy around the globe depend on a stronger Nigeria.

“Long West Africa’s hegemon, Nigeria played a positive role in promoting peace and security. With state failure, it can no longer sustain that vocation…Its security challenges are already destabilising the West African region in the face of the resurgent jihadism, making the battles of the Sahel that much more difficult to contain.”

A failed Nigerian state has horrendous ramifications for the country, its neighbours, the continent and, as the authors of the study pointed out, on the rest of the world. Some of us may still be processing these implications of these conclusions for us and our country. I would not be surprised, and none of us should be, if those in the corridors of power with the assumed right to live a lie and inclined to dismiss whatever views, be they from experts or laymen, that do not square up with their definition of patriotism, would wave off the study as an intellectually dressed up piece of garbage aimed at making the Buhari administration look bad. This dismissive attitude has had a damaging effect on almost every effort by individuals and groups of Nigerians who are no less patriotic than those whose fortune put them in the salubrious corridors of power at the moment to make our country live up to its billing as the cradle of black renaissance.

The study was not a product of sentiment or hostility. Scholars use some set criteria to judge the state each of the 193-member nations of the UN. Nations are generally classified as strong, weak, failed, and collapsed. Nigeria is on the last but one step. That should give us hope that we and our leaders can still join hands and pull the country back from sliding into the nadir as a collapsed state and avoid the fate of Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

If it is any consolation, some 80 or 90 members of the UN are weak states and are unable to provide “essential public goods, the most important of which are security and safety.” If a state is unable to pull itself back from this stage, it slides into a failed state. Such a state, according to the report, “lacks security, is unsafe, has weak rules of law, is corrupt, limits political participation and voice, discriminates within its borders against various classes and kinds of citizens… (and)…are violent.” As a failed state, Nigeria is in the good company of “possibly a dozen or so” of UN member-states. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Myanmar have made the grade.

Nigeria’s right to keep their company is assured by its “weak rules of law, is corrupt and discriminates within its borders against various classes and kinds of citizens,” for which read ethnic groups and the poor management of our diversities.

If those in power chuckle over the report, the rest of us should take it and its conclusions seriously and ignore the insinuation that it was authored by intellectuals not in love with the Buhari administration. This, indeed, is not about the Buhari administration. It is about our country and the critical challenges of salvaging it. If the country has failed, as indeed it has, under Buhari’s watch, it is arguably his luck but not entirely his fault. The progressive infestation of the apple by worms is a historical fact. We saw the worms, but we thought that if left alone, they would eat the apple and quench.

The study has simply told us what we have always suspected but voiced sotto voce, about the state of our nation. The evidence of its progressive weakening has at best been hidden in plain sight. We knew that things were not going well. We knew that our political leaders refused to face this basic fact, believing that in ignoring it, it does not exist.

The study confronts us with facts and a situation we cannot continue to ignore or run away from any more with dire consequences for our country, Africa and the black race. Nigeria carries more international responsibilities than we, as citizens, tend to appreciate. It is such a big irony that under Buhari who knew the country was in a mess and came to clean it up, everything that did not need to go wrong has done so in his six years as president.

Neither the economy nor its management is stellar, and Nigeria finds itself living on internal and external borrowing to meet its basic obligations. The economy has gone into recession twice and further weakened it and deepened our poverty, frustration and engendered soul-destroying hopelessness and despair. It also refused to let Buhari fulfil his promise to take 100 million people out of poverty in ten years. This economy has a bad attitude, I tell you.

Insecurity is, of course, our greatest problem. Ordinarily when a government fails to make the people secure and safe, it loses its legitimacy. It is the reason security is the number one duty the constitution imposes on the three tiers of government. No one is safe anywhere in the country anymore. Our young school children in the north-west geopolitical zone have been turned into money-making bargaining chips between criminals and the governments.

I believe that we can pull back from the ultimate brink by committing to the enormous challenges. The fate of our nation is in our hands. As the authors of the study pointed out, “only Nigeria can save itself, but doing so takes the kind of political will that has so far been wanting.”

Finding the political will is not rocket science.