There are many who feel 2012 has a deserved place of dishonour even in infamy. What with the tragedies in low and high places; from floods sacking whole communities to bombs strapped to humans establishing a reign of terror and economically crippling whole regions of our country, to flying machines, with and without fixed wings, dropping out of the sky, killing men of high responsibility, even causing fear in the domains some presided over. These Jets and Helicopters of death which generated statistics that seem to suggest we are often choosing a culture of death over life also point to another great paradox of rapidly rising private jet count and fast expanding reaches of poverty. The unequal society and the dangers it poses, especially, as many of the super rich created little value, as can be seen from unemployment figures, remain the time bomb gifted to us by 2012 and has more devasting power than Boko Haram bombs.
From my prism, though, what jumps at me from 2012 is a year full of ironies. Indeed 2012 appears to me as a feast of paradoxes in which people used injustice to chase justice, death to chase live, and bullying that decelerate the possibilities of economic prosperity ostensibly in pursuit of reform and sustainable development. Our reflections will therefore cover a broad spectrum of these paradoxes with a view to suggesting how I think they will shape the future.
Let me begin with the paradox of wilful division that is creating a poor and growing Nigeria at the same time. I found one reason for it in the week before Christmas. Through the Centre for Values in Leadership which I founded ten years ago to help build leadership values and skills in young professionals we had initiated a programme to help relief flood victims of aspects of the trauma they were afflicted with. This is because developing the habit of sacrificial giving of self for the good of others is one of the tripod of CVL leadership development platforms, along with a habit of learning, and developing courage of conviction. So I had toured several of the flood affected regions and returned with lorry loads of relief materials donated by concerned citizens Delta, and Anambra. I suspended distribution to go on a programme in the US and therefore had to rush to Adamawa on my return from the US, before it was too late in the year, to see the people who live around the confluence of the Benue and Gongola rivers. They had been visited with a vengeance by the floods and seemed to have been forgotten by the government.
To move two truckloads of relief material in good time before my flight into Yola, CVL staff had to journey often to truck terminals in Lagos, negotiating rates. A few hours after a deal is struck the transporters decline to proceed. The rates kept going up with each new trucker and we went from N225, 000 to nearly N400,000. We would discover in the end that the drivers were scared of going to the North East of Nigeria. We found those willing to risk it only willing to do so at a premium.
On arriving Yola I met a peaceful community that did not seem troubled by terror, yet the obvious high transaction cost involved in doing business there, as we experienced, would mean lower levels of economic activity and lower competitiveness, worsening poverty levels that were already unacceptable. Further north of Yola where the terror found native place in the Boko Haram insurgency, the city of Maiduguri was said to be more or less a ghost town. With this trend those parts of the country, the really terrorized, and the regions perceived as dangerous even though the level of violence is far less than in parts of Los Angeles, would experience economic decline.
As we are in a season of Africa rising when growth is generous, it is possible for the country to surge forward while some parts are in reverse gear. This has grave implications for the future because we can end up with the kind of situation in Germany after the Berlin wall but without the capacity and commitment to bridging the prosperity gap. This may lead to an institutionalized case of a tale of two cities in which the division leaves us in a long term vicious cycle of violence. The evidence is such you would expect those behind the bombs and acts of terror to recognize that it is a lose-lose proposition and engage to arrive at a win-win resolution. Instead we have allowed the paradox of growth in Lagos while some parts of Nigeria are in self inflicted meltdown. Still it is the collective duty to help save a part that chooses to self destruct out of misunderstanding of its reality. In truth our shared humanity as our shared nationality means that we can diminished when we are diminished.
Closely related to this paradox as a major feature of 2012, is the frequent preference for injustice to minority or out of power groups even when it is clear that united we stand, divided we fall. Unrestrained narcissism, around the country sadly results in the powerful shooting themselves in the foot in the belief they are oppressing others. On my visit to Numan I listened to speech after speech of how the government in Yola marginalizes people of the Numan federation. But it is not only in Adamawa you find this kind of unintended masochism where self love unwittingly produces effects that hurts self in the long run. In Plateau, Kaduna and other places this has yielded mindless violence with deaths of scores of innocents. In 2012 that paradox persisted. Terrible as this may be I am convinced that more damage came to prospects of well being in Ngeria from how authority figures exercised power ostensibly in advance of the good of all.
From the small receiving clerk, to anybody in uniform, and most sadly, regulatory agencies, power is deployed in a way that you can only read the meaning of authority as terror to those over whom you have jurisdiction. In 2012 this debilitating Nigerian cultural factor of the person of authority, as bully, was widely unchecked. Having, as Business teacher run annual conferences on Nigerian content in the Oil industry, I have always wondered why Nigerian leaders fail to see the reason Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil etc achieve much more with the same multinationals. Why would Shell ceo speak of how their developing of local talent resulted in Malaysia becoming a net exporter of human capital in the Oil industry and we do not ask ourselves why this is not so here where Shell has bigger stake. To my mind it is because the Nigerian chooses to bully, and irritate, instead of reasoning with, being fair and firm, and seeking win-win. In the end the bully is readily assuaged with a little bribe or a shopping trip to Houston. In 2012 we still continued to failed to think through how to train public officials to begin with the big picture and be mindful of the dignity of all while being firm to ensure public goals are met.
In my role as a Business Angel trying to help young entrepreneurs achieve their dreams, which I know will result in jobs being created to attain my personal desire to reduce poverty and advance my primary social goal of a full employment economy, I witnessed one potential creator of jobs after the other have their faith shaken by bullying Securities and Exchange Commission officials who really could explain what they violated why their approach was so disruptive and destructive, or one tax agency clamping down on another venturer with spurious projections of what they may be earning. In the end it becomes a round robin of dog eat dog as the same SEC is unfairly bullied by a National Assembly that should back off Arumah Otteh who they lack the moral authority to go after.
In another venture I am associated with, the Ogun state government has frustrated a land lease for commercial purpose because it was approved by a previous government of the state, unmindful that more than a hundred million Naira and goodwill worth a lot more has gone into it. The damage to Nigeria’s reputation with foreign investors and the confidence of local investors being shredded, received little consideration.
These weaknesses in how we use power and a failure to understand the use of what Joseph Nye jnr and others would call soft power, threaten Nigeria leading the flock of Flying Geese, as Africa rises. In a lecture at Imperial College in London a few months ago I finished with a statement that Nigeria’s future was so bright, in spite of hiccups we all complain about, that those who do not wear sunglasses were in grave danger of going blind. But I was acutely aware that we have the capacity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In many ways the increasingly systemic bureaucratic corruption which was so palpable in 2012, challenged educational system, and goal displacement particularly accentuated by the tendency to see power rather than purpose and the path to progress, could take away this potential.
In making this point, especially as people see projections that Nigeria could be an economic superpower by 2030, I like to remind people of Argentina. This is a country which was top ten in the world in the 1920s at similar levels of development as the United States and in some ways even with greater potential. In its misfortune it got leaders like Juan Peron, a popular nationalist, and by the 1990s the country was down to West Africa level GDP while the US was by miles the world’s pre-eminent economy. The danger of going down the part of Argentina was signalled in 2012 by the failure of the elite to take what I like to call the Franz Fanon test. In playing games with national dialogue we remained unwilling as a generation to seek to discover the mission of our generation and either fulfil or betray it.
Part of the paradox of 2012 in Nigeria has been a failure of those who should know to realize what is shaping the Nigerian ascendancy in spite of, and not because of us. These include first the commodities boom with China and India rising that began to frustrate Afropessimism and gave both the Diaspora and trading partners the chance to rethink Africa; the troubles of mismanaged collectivism in Europe which should amuse Samuel Beer who years ago wrote the book Britain Against Itself; the youth bulge in Africa which has be re-jigged from a threat yesterday to what is now fashionably referred to as a demographic dividend; the new skills coming home from those abroad, etc..
Knowing this, why have we not put capable and passionate people to work re-inventing education in Nigeria; taking Nigeria’s factor endowments and constructing value chains from them into the global economy and empowering people to accelerate the pace; and why did 2012 not see much effort in institution building given that it is the bane of our development efforts and can be a check on the abuse of power. There are many questions to be answered if lessons from 2012 are to lead to an acceleration of the pace of progress.
The year slipped in with an unnerving failure of government to communicate in a democracy. The announcement of a petroleum products price hike in a sector known to be rife with corruption provoked citizen response. Having been involved civil society effort to raise the voice of citizens since 1972 I could see in 2012 a maturing of frustration channelling by the educated middle class, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Concerned Professionals in 1993. Occupy Falomo, the Ojota freedom convergence and protests across the country expired with evidence we cannot quite call what we have a democracy. Tanks rolled out against peacefully assembled citizens and in Falomo where protestors included several high court judges and Senior Advocates of Nigeria guns were pointed at our faces by stern looking troops. The government had betrayed the votes of the people who voted for democracy and desecrated the graves of those who some of us marched with to push the military out to allow them the privilege of the power they had just abused.
And the year closed with a badly framed debate following the publication of Chinua Achebe’s book there was a country. I welcomed the book. Seeing so many people even now in their 40s so badly informed on the years before the civil war and even meeting undergraduates who do not know Nigeria fought a civil war, the book was a true gift. Seeing that history is hardly taught in Nigeria and that the leaders refuse to chronicle their experience I have repeatedly urged General Gowon to write his memoirs. Achebe’s reflections were invaluable. But how the discussions were framed was so disgusting I chose not to be part of it. For the avoidance of doubt there was a pogrom in Northern Nigeria, I am a witness. I still remember images of the light aircraft British Petroleum sent to get my family out of Gusau in 1966 taking off with many not so fortunate chasing after it as we taxied to take off from the old airfield. It would be 40 years before I returned to Gusau. Aspect of the war was clear genocide. I am a witness too. Emma Okocha’s book Blood on the Niger captures one experience. I believe my name appears in the book from some Camp record. I was, as a 12 year old, lined up with men, all innocent civilians, to be executed. Thanks to my father’s friend, then Col Nathaniel Nasamu, a federal officer, we were rescued and despatched to Lagos where my father did his work for British Petroleum, and I continued schooling in Ibadan, enjoying James Brown music for the remaining two years of the war. Were that war today, many Nigerian officers would be at The Hague undergoing prosecution. But no one must make light of the speed and commitment to reconciliation or the safety of many Igbos in Lagos, Ibadan and elsewhere during that war.
The bad framing of the debate meant that instead of using it to learn lessons, it moved in the direction of creating new wounds. I have said often about history that it can be neatly packaged reification of myths. In many cases, certainly in the case of American history, it becomes a source of motivation to action for the generation next. We seem to miss this point in dealing with our history. We need heroes and history is our source.
Between the protests of January and the Achebe book debate we had the Nigeria Summit Group’s effort to develop a platform for engaging on a modus Vivendi for Nigeria that remains work in progress which needs to be accelerated in pace.
In 2012, even as we mourned Justice Kayode Eso more reasons emerged to worry about the Judiciary and other institutions. A senior officer who had served Nigeria meritoriously including long stretches as acting High Commissioner in London was prevented from entering his office at the NIA on return from posting in what is obviously personal power play. When this matter the Presidency should have intervened in expeditiously, reached the law courts, elements in the NIA brought the judge to tears when they petitioned, after much effort to intimidate the judge, saying she should not hear the case because the Ambassador in question was from her ethnic group. In another case the Chief Justice would not swear in an Appeals court judge because her state of origin was different from her husbands’ creating a crisis of origin. Are we to now assume that all judges must now step aside if cases before them involve people of their ethnic group? This is important because institutions are about rules and consistency.
The challenge of institutional effectiveness continued in 2012 with 419 raging unabated while institutions seemed unable to make examples of the culprits. I was affected personally with one character going after high profile Nigerians either demanding money, as me, to enable me launch a book or be relieved of an acute case of being broke. Among those who have been on the receiving end of his calls and badgering have been about all the Governors of the South South, Senators, ministers and Speakers of State Houses of Assembly. My state governor who talks with me more frequently knew it was a scam from the first call and sent me the number of the 419er. I have reported to the EVC of NCC and the Minister of Water resources who told me of her experiences with the crook promised to get her communications colleague. One Senator parted with N500,000.00 before he realized he had been duped. Ogun State’s Senator Obadara just managed to call me while the crook was on the other line and abused him properly. But why has he not been arrested?
Nice to know many are so kind. But it should be easy to find my favourite charities if so much love is in the head and giving in the heart..
Finally, of the many issues of 2012 we can deal with here is the laxity with which we continue to approach the privatisation of state resources by public officials. I recall a Reagan aide who had to resign because he used a government helicopter for assignment really because he wanted to play golf at the other destination. Sensitivity to use of public resources for private purpose got to a point that cabinet members who travelled with their wives, having paid for her ticket, would arrive Washington and journey home in the official car and their spouses took a taxi. From that extreme on one hand to the wholesome abuse of public goods we saw from January to December is matter for reflection. We must now have guidelines. Sure it is not new. Under the military staff officers in Dodan Barracks routinely used Jets from the presidential fleet to fly that one daughter back to school in England or the C-130 to send their BMWs for service in Germany. One head of state lost his son as he flew in one of the jets to party with his friends. Should enough not be enough. Is all the abuse not reason for the desperation for public office.
There was a year.
Prof. Utomi is the founder of the Centre for Values in Leadership
About the Author
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