“The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility”
By Sonny Ogulewe
I have always been fascinated by Chinua Achebe’s literary works but had never taken the time to read his much talked about little book “The Trouble with Nigeria” until recently. The sixty-eight paged book is highly recommended. When you are done reading it you will never again have illusions about Nigeria and the reasons why we are where we are. What is intriguing about the book is his direct confrontation with the truth in his first paragraph where he specifically challenged us that “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility” This patriotic, blunt, and unapologetic assessment excellently mirrors our national quagmire and the treacheries of our elders and religious leaders who would rather hypocritically blame our misfortunes on acts of God.
Exactly forty-three ago, our revered sage had described Nigeria as “one of the most disorderly nations in the world. It is one of the most corrupt, insensitive, inefficient places under the sun. It is one of the most expensive countries and one of those that give least value for money. It is dirty, callous, noisy, ostentatious, dishonest and vulgar. In short among the most unpleasant places on earth” What has changed today? What has changed is that things have gone from bad to worse. Contrastingly, the setting period of the book was when a brand-new Peugeot 504 L was sold for N1,080 and today the same amount could hardly buy a loaf of bread, today over 63% of Nigerians in live multidimensional poverty and the country has become the “poverty capital of the world”. Achebe would certainly turn in his in grave and curse our leadership for bringing such misery and calamity on a potentially great nation. Viewed within the broad context of leadership and progress, it is not arguable that Nigerian leadership has been a complete failure and have made Nigeria “The open sore of a continent”according Wole Soyinka.
READ ALSO:
Nigerian leaders lack the vision to implement policies, says Obasanjo
One of the sad realities or at best describes our complexities as a country according to Achebe is the fact that our leaders “do not live in the country”, to experience the misery their failures have inflicted on hapless Nigerians because they are “harnessed to the trappings of protocol and blockaded by a buffer of griming courtiers and sycophants.” which make them “gradually begin to forget what the real world looks like” in the comfort of their illusions and this is made worse by their compradorial elders and men of “God” who now like an ostrich stick their heads in sand and inadvertently encourage them by the high dosage of opium they feed the hapless masses on regular basis.
Overtime, our leaders have masked their failures in deceitful and glamorous mantras- OBJ’s “I see Hope”, PMB’s “Change” and BAT’s “Renewed Hope”. According to a German author, Trova Freidman, “without hope it is impossible to wake up in the morning” This sedation or rather seductive jingoism has actively robbed Nigerians of the zeal to vehemently challenge bad leadership and root for a change. Regrettably, to Achebe, this is a folly and deceitful indulgence of the “elite world of make-belief and unrealistic expectations” that things will get better someday. Of course, there is a life span for these glamorous sedations and fantasies. They are increasingly becoming anachronistic, no longer tenable and contemporarily too weak to hold the people down from demanding for a change.
Walter Rodney was incisive in his caution to leaders in his work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa that “it is not possible for a people exposed to severe degree of abuse, dehumanization, deprivation and isolation not to develop depression borne out of extreme rage, suppressed over a long period of time, it is now a matter of when and how this depressive mode will manifest and suffice itself”. This is a word of caution to leadership not to take peoples’ silence for acquiescence.
Achebe listed several problems that have made Nigeria a sleeping giant. These he noted as tribalism, false image of ourselves, leadership, lack of patriotism, social injustice, indiscipline and the of course the behemoth –corruption. Among all these, he viewed leadership as the key driver as well as the solution. According to him “Nigerians are corrupt because the system under which they live today makes corruption easy and profitable, they will cease to be corrupt when corruption is made difficult and inconvenient” It is the leadership that has provided the impetus for corruption to strive because a society is reflective of its leadership. Again, forty -three years ago he decried that “corruption in Nigeria has passed the alarming and entered the fatal stage. And Nigeria will die if we keep pretending that she is only slightly indisposed” I smiled to at myself when I came across this statement. I smiled because the level and sophistication of corruption toady is such that would make Achebe regret in his grave that he only but imagined corruption as pick pocketing or 10% under the table not the kind of monumental, institutional and systemic sleaze of today.
To put our predicament squarely, Akinwunmi Adesina, a Nigerian and the current President of African Development Bank recently gave a chilling testament of the serial failure of leadership in Nigeria, where he lamented that “Nigeria has gas and crude oil in abundance, yet 86 million Nigerian people live daily without electricity. Today Nigeria is number one country in the world in terms of total number of people without electricity”. He made this revelation during the 90th birthday celebration of one of the Nigerian former leaders. What an irony.
The confusions and contradictions in Nigeria would have resolved if leadership have not been living in denial of the reality. Imagine the seeming tomfoolery recently displayed on national television by the Hon. Minister of Culture and Creative Economy, celebrating the fantasy of making Nigeria the world tourism center. I had wished she had the opportunity to read Achebe’s small book. He had actually queried and considered it delusional for anyone to imagine that “we can talk about developing tourism in Nigeria… that only a masochist with exuberant taste for self-violence will pick Nigeria for a holiday” consideringher its self- inflicted liabilities.
Achebe was not fatalist, in spite of his pains he was still optimistic that “Nigeria is not absolutely beyond redemption” However, the snag in this optimism is the fact that it is hollow and unrealistic from the benefit of hindsight, because that Nigeria’s leadership which is the major obstacle hindering the redemption has not changed rather it has accelerated in the decline and increasingly reckless.
In as much one would appreciate Achebe’s sense of patriotism but the context within which is his optimism is anchored is rather too weak when viewed from the antecedents and the realities of today, which in effect are suggestive of the absence of the readiness of Nigeria to make progress. This assertion is underscored by the fact that there is perceptible accelerated decline in our leadership recruitment processes that does not inspire any hope that things could be better. What has changed about how leadership perceive their responsibility? What has changed about how the people perceive leadership and what has changed about how leadership has led?
The sad truth is that things are worse. Our democracy is flagging more than ever. It is so bad that the judiciary which is expected to be bastion of a democracy has become its albatross. It is sad that today people can barely feed and children school study under trees as the schools built by the missionaries before Independence in 1960 have all collapsed. That an oil producing country now spends about 40% of its foreign exchange earnings to import fuel from countries that do not have oil. That our hospitals are no longer “mere consulting clinics” of 1985 but simply undertakers or mortuaries. That the people with the responsibility to protect the people are now the people to be protected from as they extort and kill at will. That the right to protest which is an unalienable right under the democracy is now a treasonable offence. That the common wealth is simply for the few political elites and we spend so much to cater for their outrageous ostentatious indulgences while majority of the people are now impoverished and have no clue where the next meal would come from. It is now mandatory to pray against kidnappers on our highways by every traveler across the country. Election outcomes are now predetermined and predictable months before the election. Our judges allege to now trade Ex-parte orders to any “big man” that will pay the right price. That a godfather could hold the entire state to ransom while a state governor pleads for mercy. The non-state actors now have territorial control where the collect taxes from hapless citizens. That citizens are now detained indefinitely for expressing views in a democracy. The country has been captured and sucked in by a small predatory political class with impunity. How then can Nigeria make progress under the weight of this huge baggage. “Things have fallen apart”.
I do not “see hope” or a “renewed hope” either, rather what I see is a “change” to the worse. Yes indeed, There was a Country. Nigeria cannot continue to be The open sore of a Continent, but who will say to the emperor“your majesty you are naked”. Sadly, The man Died on March 21st, 2013. Chinua Achebe. Continue to Rest in Peace.
Sonny Ogulewe Ph.D, wrote from Abuja