Nigeria cannot purport to be a Federal Republic while denying the component ethnicities exercise of any meaningful autonomy
By Chris Ohanele
A critical challenge
As we head into the 2023 election cycle, all kinds of candidates, most of them unfit, will as usual come forward making false promises. Social media platforms are already gathering pace with talk of who the main candidates will be, and people are already picking and choosing. But caution is warranted, and we should not continue to allow ourselves to be fooled. We must be wise to know that most of the politicians, the ones we like as well as those we detest, are in it for themselves. They have little interest in the welfare of citizens. And we must not be deceived by the name of the political party for there is little to choose between them. As Radio Biafra used to say during the civil war in the late 1960s, “they want your money, not your prosperity. People be vigilant.”
It is Nigeria’s misfortune that most of the people seeking political power are wholly unqualified for the positions they crave and have little regard for selfless public service. Same thing goes for most of those who are currently in power. It is common knowledge that selfish, greedy, incompetent people, some of them ex-criminals, seized the political space a long time ago, and the least of their concerns is to serve the public good. As these people are unfit for the positions they occupy or seek, we the people must stop deluding ourselves that they will ever be able to deliver the goods. We need to look elsewhere and make every effort to attract those who are best suited for public service but who unfortunately are largely missing in action. Yes, there are capable people all over Nigeria who inherently care about the welfare of the people, have the passion to render selfless service, and the intellect to understand the problems of society and organize people and ideas for the sake of achieving solutions. But rather than get into the murky political arena they largely stay away and engage themselves with more honest pursuits. Whereas the masses of the population may not feel responsible for these misfortunes, in some ways they are enablers, even if unwittingly.
It is about time to be more introspective and be able to ask some pertinent questions.
- What attracts unsuitable people to political positions knowing they lack both the passion for selfless service and the capacity to perform the duties of the office?
- What must be done to discourage them and keep them away from political power?
- What will cause more of those suitable for public service to come off the fence and jump into the political fray?
- Why are people so gullible and enabling of insincere politicians who hurt them year after year?
- Why do so many people seem overawed by power even when that power is deployed to subjugate them?
Like many others I have reflected on these and other questions, but in this commentary, I am only concerned to express some views on the first three.
What attracts unsuitable people to politics is MONEY! They seek power only as a means to their ultimate objective. They are generally greedy and selfish and have little regard for the higher purpose of serving the needs of people and building the community. Our politics generally attracts these kinds of people and repels most of the best suited ones; that is, those with integrity and the passion and the intellect and the competence to serve the public interest.
To get capable people to come off the fence and jump into the political arena it is essential to take out the unsuitable elements by removing what motivates them. MONEY! Everyone knows full well that those who are best suited to serve the interest of the community and the country will not do the “dirty things” and are loath to reduce themselves to the level of mingling and dragging with crooks who currently dominate the political mine field. More transparency and more accountability in the political system would demoralize the dishonest ones and enable more of the right people to step up.
Obviously, there is no fail-proof system anywhere in the world but suffice it to say that self-respecting countries deny incentives to people unworthy of public office. They make sure that money is not the main attraction for serving in government and that politicians are not the highest paid government workers in the land.
Nigeria has a culture of importing everything possible from abroad. What about importing some good ideas? Did you know that police chiefs in several US cities earn higher salaries than US senators? Even some of them get paid twice what the senator gets. Can Nigerians imagine the Commissioner of Police in a state earning higher remunerations than the senators from that state? I mean official income, not illicit funds gotten from multifarious underhanded schemes. Did you also know that some fire chiefs (i.e. heads of fire service in some US states) earn more than US senators? For comparison every educated Nigerian should dig into the facts and see what our politicians are paid officially and what they are not paid but which they corruptly take for themselves.
The notion that political office should not be for personal enrichment may seem counterintuitive and an unrealistic proposition to most Nigerians. That is not what we have grown used to and of course we know that everywhere in the world politics and money go together – lobbying, campaigning, influence peddling, advertising, etc. But it is always a bad idea to enable people to become rich by mere fact of holding political office whether in the party or any arm of government. However, once out of office they will be free to take up opportunities that can give them handsome financial reward based on their experience and extensive contacts. If we get this right, then we will be on our way to attracting political leaders suitable for the challenging but honourable task of holding public office to render selfless service. And only then shall we have a chance to steer Nigeria or any would-be breakaway component of it from the edge of the precipice.
Politics must be about gaining the power necessary to provide service to the public and develop the community and the country. And there are people with the passion to do that and we should seek them out and through bold action deny space to those with a selfish motive who are bent on holding the country down. The political system must be re-engineered to marginalize incompetent, thieving individuals and create the necessary enabling environment that allows capable people to emerge and overwhelm the crooks and the knaves. The Nigerian state must be restructured to once again be a true federation as was the case in 1960 to 1965. The 1999 constitution has to be done away with.
The fierce urgency of capable political leadership
According to experts who study the progress of nations Nigeria has since joined the unhappy club of failed states. Its politics was broken a long time ago and took almost everything down with it – civility, humility, humanity, integrity, service, accountability, the economy, intellectual content, etc. It also took with it sanctity of life as well as security of lives and property. In many parts of Nigeria local militias have sprung up and non-state actors have moved into ungoverned spaces from where they carry out attacks and commit nefarious acts such as armed robbery, extortions, kidnappings, killings, etc. Nigeria has since succumbed under the weight of what Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe called an avalanche of cumulative grievances.
But know this. The people who have presided over Nigeria’s ruin do not actually want the country to collapse altogether. They simply want it to remain in a weak or failed condition. On the one hand, a strong state will deny them of their illicit gains and hold them accountable; on the other, a collapsed state will have nothing left for them to loot. If the country is restructured in line with current popular demand that will be a good move but would still not be enough. And nobody should be so deluded as to believe that a possible breakaway entity, from whichever part of Nigeria, and by whatever name so called, would automatically be rid of the teething problems that have bedeviled Nigeria for so long. There is every likelihood that the dead weight of pre-existing ills will be carried over to a new and hapless dispensation.
The overarching challenge now is how to attract the quality of leadership necessary to arrest the slide, stabilize the country, and give people the opportunity to pick up their lives and make it worthwhile again. The task is urgent and will take years to accomplish.
How do we take money out of politics?
- Remunerations of public office holders must be realistic, not excessive. They should be good enough to attract capable people with a public service ethos, but not too high as to be attractive to criminals of all types whose prime motivation for political office is to steal public funds. To serve people selflessly, that must be the attraction to politics and for public office.
- Politicians should no longer be permitted to fix their own salaries and allowances. That should be the task of an independent commission which must ensure that
- salaries and benefits of government and other public officials are not excessive and should take into account the domestic socio-economic condition of citizens. They should reflect a clear understanding of the fact that the vast majority of the country are poor people, barely able to eke out a living.
- remunerations are benchmarked against other countries, based on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) or some other objective criteria. It is about time Nigeria imported some good ideas.
- The power that public officials exercise over public funds must be checked.
Why should a governor, for instance, have so much direct power over local government funds or the unfettered power to keep cronies who merely do his bidding and serve his personal interests rather than those of the general population?
- The judicial and accountability systems must be strengthened. Corruption exists in every country to a lesser or greater extent. Serious countries understand this and provide for the necessary restraints and constraints. They know that you cannot merely rely on public officials being nice or religious people. The best deterrent to a corrupt official is knowing that there is a real possibility of jail or even stiffer penalties. As someone succinctly put it, it is not catechism that deters people, but fear of the police. Good police, that is.
Sovereignty
Before citing any examples from abroad, I would like to address upfront the question of sovereignty which is often cited by apologists to defend odious privileges enjoyed by political office holders and push back against ideas and practices from other countries which they find inconvenient. Sovereignty, the authority of a state to govern itself, embraces a host of powers including to make and execute laws, to borrow or lend, to enter into relations with other countries or break them, to declare war or end war, and the power to negotiate treaties. It also includes the power to buy products or adopt ideas and practices from other countries.
A sovereign country can import foreign products such as cars, airplanes, telephones, computers, technologies, and foreign technical experts. It can also export its own goods and services. But how can we acknowledge these prerogatives and still reject good ideas and practices from abroad on the grounds of sovereignty? Some people will tell you something like ‘we are not America or Britain, this is Nigeria’. Whatever their argument, it easily collapses when they have to answer the question as to why Nigerian public officials should be at liberty to embrace developments from foreign countries which benefit them personally but reject ideas and practices from the same countries that will benefit the country and its people. When we want that foreign-made car or telephone or generator, we immediately put on our hypocrisy cap, and no longer care that this is Nigeria or that we must buy made in Nigeria only.
Any confident country whose affairs are run by patriotic leaders should, in exercise of its sovereignty, be willing to learn from others and make the country even better. Thus, when a new useful product from abroad becomes available, we do not refuse it, we embrace it. In like manner government should have the courage and sincerity to embrace, and citizens should support, ideas that work in other countries that will likely work in Nigeria also.
Some examples from abroad
Let me now cite the following examples from the USA and UK, both countries significant to Nigerians because one is the favourite country of choice for Nigerians abroad, the other being the former colonial administrator from which Nigeria inherited its civil service. There is so much information that anyone can glean from what is available in the public domain.
From 2021 IMF data on over 200 countries and territories, United States is the largest economy in the world based on nominal GDP with UK in fifth position. On Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) basis United States comes second to China while UK is 10th. By comparison Nigeria is ranked as the 29th largest economy in the world in terms of nominal GDP, and 25th on PPP. The disparity becomes even more stark on the per capita income rankings (2021) where Nigeria ranks 162nd compared to the US at 9th and UK at 29th.
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The salary of a Congress member varies based on the job title of the congressman, congresswoman, or senator. Most senators earn a salary of $174,000 per year. In comparison, the Police Chiefs in San Francisco and Los Angeles each earns over $300,000, and the one in New York over $200,000.
Unlike in Nigeria the executive and legislative branches in the UK are not quite separate. To be a Minister in the UK one must be first a Member of Parliament (MP) and earns salaries from both jobs. Thus, in the 2020-21 financial year the UK Prime Minister earned a total of nearly £162,000 from two salaries – one about £82,000 for being an MP and £79,469 for his role as Prime Minister. In comparison Chiefs of the Metropolitan police in London and in Derbyshire, and Lords and Lady Justices of Appeal earned much higher salaries than the Prime Minister. Anyone can find more details online.
Reflection
It is important that Nigerian people should know and reflect on some of these salient facts. Nigerian public officials should not be free to pick and choose according to their whims and caprices. It is not appropriate to fly the airplanes, drive modern cars, use the most expensive phones, attend the best hospitals abroad but consistently refuse to take lessons from abroad that would benefit Nigeria. And it does not reflect well on the Nigerian people who have been shortchanged for so long that they should continue to enable these same people who do not serve their interest.
To remove money from politics the objective starting point is to ensure that politicians’ remunerations are commensurate with the state of the economy, the socio-economic situation of the people, and Nigeria’s relatively low ranking on the various international economic indices. There are 109 Senators, 360 Members of the House of Representatives, and the hundreds of members in the State Houses of Assembly. How many people believe that the cost of servicing all these people along with their aides and assistants and hangers on is commensurate with the benefit of their output? Let me indulge in just a little bit of exaggeration here but I hope you will get the point. If senators, for instance, sat at home doing nothing for one year how many people seriously think that anyone would notice their absence? Who does not know that the duties of police officers are more required today in a security deficient Nigeria than those of a law maker? Is it not more urgent to enforce existing laws than to make new ones? If Nigeria invested more in the police in terms of training and remunerations might the police perform their responsibilities better with time? It is about time we shed certain preconceived notions and begin to think afresh.
Same for the 36 states. For every governor there are 27 or 30 or whatever number of the members of the state House of Assembly. We can all understand that in the absence of a strict regime of accountability, people whose motivation for public office is to steal public funds, will not hesitate to do so. When the system permits so much control of public funds by a governor, protected by immunity, does it surprise anyone that there will be more thieving crooks than capable people aspiring to that position and who will do anything to get it?
What we must do
I have raised questions some of which I have not even attempted to answer, nor should I. Let better qualified people come forward with the answers because they are valid questions. I know there are some people who think that some of the views I have expressed are idealistic to which my response is that every big public action has an ideal basis. In any case these views are realistic and doable if only there is the will.
I have laid out some points, but I have not closed the conversation. The guiding principles by which Nigeria should be governed have to be revisited. The Nigerian state cannot purport to be a Federal Republic while denying the component ethnicities exercise of any meaningful autonomy. It is unconscionable to have a country so rich in resources but teeming with so large an impoverished majority. We cannot continue to have a state structure of impunity whereby corrupt public officials enjoy immunity or escape accountability. The Nigerian state must be restructured to correct existing inequities and make provisions that strengthen accountability, the rule of law, and empower those people who are best suited for public office. Well-meaning people knowledgeable enough to advice on the matter of the constitution have called for the 1999 constitution to be abolished. Everyone should listen and the relevant authorities should heed the advice.
To do all these and more will take time and the courage of people. The task is urgent and further delay is dangerous. But there is one more challenge. “All the rats would like to hang a bell on the neck of the cat. But who is going to bell the cat?” And who is going to take the bull by the horn? Anyone is at liberty to come forward with answers.
Finally, I invite the interested reader to study Frederik de Klerk and Mikhail Gorbachev if you did not already know very much about what they did in their respective countries – Apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union. Again, I can hear murmurs that this is Nigeria and that in some grotesque way we are unique. Anyway, de Klerk and Gorbachev, each of them was an establishment man who upon assumption of office was expected to bolster a discredited and failing system. Instead, they embarked on reforms that eventually toppled the system that raised them. Who knows, Nigeria may have its own de Klerk or Gorbachev somewhere in the current failed system who may rise and midwife a better home for Africa’s most populous country.
- Chris Ohanele, a geologist and former New ventures/Marginal Fields Manager of Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria Limited, wrote in from the U.S.