All eyes are on the presidential, governorship and legislative elections in Nigeria slated for next year. This is hardly surprising. For in an underdeveloped political economy in which government is heartbeat and engine room, elections which are essentially struggles for the control of resources are bound to loom larger than life.
Nevertheless, we must ask ourselves a critical question. What is the end result of political activity in the first place? The answer is important. It also goes to the heart of our perennial under-achievement as a nation. The essence of political activity should be to uplift the populace and elevate living standards. Sadly, much of the state of heightened anxiety as we move towards 2015 alarmingly overlooks this inconvenient fact.
This is because 2015 is not just the year slated for Nigeria’s presidential and general elections. It is also the year in which all the 189 member states of the United Nations (there are 193) and at least 23 international organisations willingly committed themselves to help to achieve the eight international development goals better known as the Millennium Development Goals.
The goals themselves are ludicrously minimalist. They represent the barest crucible such as for example, a commitment to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Further statements of intent include the achievement of universal primary education, the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women as well as the need to reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
The United Nations (UN) goals are minimalist because they represent what any responsible government ought to be striving for. Nevertheless, they have been codified and are now used as a template. This is fair enough. Which brings to the fore that most inconvenient of questions. How far is Africa’s post-rebasing largest economy on course to attaining these minimalist goals?
Unfortunately, if a report released last week is to be taken seriously not very far! The Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) has dammingly said that Nigeria is way off track in the attainment of the MDGs by the 2015 deadline. “Nigeria” the report thundered, “is off track in meeting the MDG’s, many of which happen at the local level and must be mindful of the need for better integration between levels of government, mainstreaming supports with budgets, improving transparency and accountability.”
From this, it is clear that Nigeria’s structural dysfunction hinders the attainment of the MDG’s. All politics, a former speaker of the United States House of Representatives has famously observed, is local. This means that the development effort too should be bottom up. Goals such as education, health, sanitation and so forth are best tackled at the base, that is at the local government level.
Unfortunately, empowering the base has become a contradiction-in-terms within the framework of Nigeria’s lopsided quasi-federalism. For perverse reasons the Local Government’s have become political football. Money accruing to them are diverted and mismanaged and local democracy is skewed by state administrations that refuse to allow free and fair local government elections.
Under this arrangement, it should not come as a surprise that the vital role of the Local Government’s in meeting the MDG’s has been truncated. There is of course a heavy price to pay for this. This means that mouth-watering “growth” figures will never be translated into real sustainable development. Therefore, we will continue the vicious cycle of growth without development.
Unless and until the political establishment allows local governments to flourish and operate real grassroots democracy, the country will continue to stagnate. Elsewhere, all over the world, the most innovative social ideas are being evolved and implemented at the Local Government level. We are demonstrably gaining nothing by not following suit.
That we have failed to meet the 2015 deadline is damning enough. To compound it, no one seems to give it a thought. All eyes are on the other 2015. This means that the other 2015 is not going to turn into elevated living standards either. And so the vicious cycle continues.