Nigeria’s fragile existence

New Service Chiefs
President Muhammadu Buhari in a meeting with service chiefs.

By Samuel Oluwole Ogundele

 

Nigeria, a country endowed with a rich diversity of natural resources and enviable human capital, is coming very close to disaster or anarchy. The vast majority of the citizenry live in unprecedentedly utter misery. This can be understood against the backdrop of the miseries of unemployment, under-employment, hopelessness, and last but not least, insecurity that have clouded the country’s mindscape. It seems to me, that the gods are angry with the government and the governed, for agonizing and wasting away despite the huge opportunities given to us by Providence. Nigeria is supposed to be one of the world powers.

Governance is a joint responsibility of the leaders and the followers. Any imbalance must be corrected immediately in order to pave the way for progress on a sustainable scale. But unfortunately, this simple and common-sense approach to governance is poorly understood in Nigeria. Accountability, probity, and transparency are a sign of weakness as far as the Nigerian political class is concerned. The agonies, feelings, and lamentation of the people mean nothing to the leaders. This arises largely from their appallingly bossy mind-set. No space for mutuality of respect.

If I were President Muhammadu Buhari, many ministers and military service chiefs would have been sacked due to incompetence, ineptitude, lack of vision/proactive measures, and psychoanalytic tendencies even as Nigeria sinks to the bottom of the ocean of governance. These people (with a few exceptions) are giving the president a bad name capable of haunting him and his descendants in the future. I watched a horrific video on July 30, on how a group of attackers nearly mowed down the governor of Borno State in Baga, while on an official duty. The charismatic, young governor- a Professor of Agricultural Engineering insisted that the bandits were Nigerian soldiers and not Boko Haram members. Apart from the above, the Southern Kaduna locality continues to witness bloody massacres of innocent citizens. Killings across the board especially in the north go on unabated. Human lives mean nothing to our leaders. Nigeria has fallen from grace to grass.

I listened to the lamentation of Senator Ali Ndume on the Channels Television on July 29. The senator spoke the minds of most citizens concerning the so-called re-integration of some de-radicalized, “repentant” Boko Haram members numbering 601, into the Nigerian society. The application of a foreign solution to a Nigerian problem is an invitation to more crises. These were criminals who had murdered many innocents. Some of the survivors are now in the Internally-Displaced Persons’ camps where they remain miserable refugees in their fatherland. The government appears to be promoting crimes and criminality in a subtle fashion. I’m yet to see the logic behind this policy. Nigeria is a democracy as opposed to a military oligarchy. The lamentation should not just be for Ali Ndume. Nigerians across the board must reject this re-integration policy that is poisonous to the heart and soul of mother Nigeria. We have to rise above religious and/or ethnic sentiments which are relics of barbarism and an anathema to progress.

The Nigerian economy is currently a near-complete shambles. We need some patriotic strategies devoid of uncritical romance with China in order to gradually get out of the woods. What is China up to in Nigeria-a microcosm of Africa? The answer is anchored to economic and cultural imperialism/neo-colonialism through the lens of poisonous financing cum investments. Put differently, China wants to control Nigeria’s natural resources (iron ore, crude oil, gold, cotton and so on), its peoples, and future. Nigeria is China’s largest business partner in Africa. Again, China is known for environmental impact assessment abuse in this country. This Asian tiger is also attracted to Nigeria because of its huge export market for Chinese products.  This leads to the stifling of local creativity and/or industrialization. Therefore, it is very dangerous for a dog to be courting a tiger or lion. The former will ultimately end up in the stomach of the latter.

In 2018, John Bolton-the US National Security Adviser claimed that China was fond of using bribes, opaque business agreements, and strategic debts repayment methods to hold African countries captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands. However, most African leaders particularly President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa supported the Africa-China relations. According to them, monies and technical resources taken from China were not necessarily a baited trap if the borrowers managed them properly. However, most Nigerians including federal lawmakers are legitimately worried that the government was about to obtain another loan from China. The political leaders or bosses especially at the executive level have always been betraying the people’s trust over the years. Now, there is a trust deficit! The current Chinese loan agreement threatens facets of Nigeria’s sovereignty if we default on it. Previous loans were not judiciously managed.  The Debt Management Office claimed that a total of $3.121 billion loan was taken from China as of March 31. This represents 3.94% of Nigeria’s total public debts. According to the Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed in February, the government decided to take a loan of $17billion from China because the World Bank and African Development Bank failed to help Nigeria during recession. China is very smart. It knows that Nigeria has a history of poor management of loans due to maximum corruption. The maturity date for the Chinese loan taken in 2018 is 2038. We are moving out of the frying pan into the fire. Sri Lanka, Zambia, and Kenya among others are now gnashing their teeth for taking loans from the Exim Bank of China.  The Sri Lankan government could not pay back the loans for building a seaport and airport. Consequently, the Magampura Rajapaksa Port was leased in 2017 to China for 99 years. Similarly, Zambia-a relatively small economy is currently, a victim of the Chinese Debt Trap Diplomacy. Out of Zambia’s total foreign debt of over $8.7 billion, $7.4 billion belongs to China. Zambia has surrendered its State Electricity Company, ZESCO to China as a debt repayment strategy. Kenya is about to lose its largest and most important seaport in Mombasa to China. The former could not service the debts it incurred from the latter. In Nigeria, several Chinese, Lebanese, and Indian firms have taken over many local businesses like cloth making, soap making, and shoe productions. This scenario involves the use of young men and women as slave labour in their fatherland. What a crying shame! We can successfully embark on local industrialization and infrastructural development, by ensuring that the stolen monies are recovered and are not re-looted by the powers-that-be. Let us stop this extremely irritating master-slave ideology that defines our foreign relations. The Nigerian political leaders must beware of China with its predatory, hegemonic culture before it is too late.

  • Prof Ogundele is of Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan.

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