A post-independent Nigeria did not maintain a steady growth and development curve or trajectory long enough as expected, given its abundant human and natural resources. The national economy is as much raped as national politics has suffered a miscarriage, just as public service and moral rectitude have been plundered by ethical devaluation and dearth of national ethos.
After surviving two military coups and a civil war, Nigeria has not been the same again. The general enthusiasm that the country witnessed at independence has since given way to the enthronement of tribalism, geocentric politics, nepotism, and other vices, as well as variants of corruption in the public service have left the imperatives of nationhood and integration as orphans of ethnic competition and tribal distrust.
The absence of a detribalised, people-centred, transparent and inspiring leadership that can harness ethno-linguistic plurality into a unique national asset has meant that for a longer period, national unity and cohesion will remain at best paper proposals and issues for seminars and workshops.
The failure of a neo-Nigerian spirit to thrive, endure and consolidate into ethos that regulate citizens’ perception, response and approach to national unity and integration, is also the bane of the failure of many public sector policies, plans, projects, programmes and budgets.
National conversations rarely take off or succeed because of the absence of a ‘national’ coordinator, or coordinator with a ‘national’ outlook, acceptability and conviction. The situation is even worsening, with the degenerating insecurity situation, ethno-religious strife, suspicion and irresponsible/irresponsive public sector governance. The effect and danger of the development is that the ideals of national conversation and trust building, as riders to national unity and cohesion, are threatened by closed cultural borders kept or maintained by cross-border distrust and lack of cross-border interaction.
Forty-eight years after the take-off of the National Youth Service Corps Scheme, the programme, which appeared to be succeeding initially, has become entangled in a web of ethno-religious and geopolitical agitations that have in turn arrested the growth and flourish of the national process itself.
Ethnic assertions, cultural distrust, religious fundamentalism, absence of peace and security across borders have been threatening the continuity of the scheme, including free flow and mobility of skills and services on a national scale.
With banditry consolidating in the North-West and insurgency still thriving in the North East, while kidnappers, killer herdsmen and other criminal elements continue to straddle the length and breadth of the country, national integration and unity have never been so threatened in the history of this country as it is under the subsisting political dispensation.
Institutions are as much in want of structures and systemic order as professions and careers are in need of discipline and ethical culture. Routines such as recruitment, deployment, posting, and promotion are no longer based on the traditions of service track and excellence, but on privileges of tribe, religion, lineage, and even inheritance. The worst expression of nepotism and lack of commitment to nationhood, equity, good conscience and geopolitical balancing has occurred under the Muhammadu Buhari civilian administration.
The President has superintended over lopsided appointments in the public service and ensured that the security architecture of the country is mostly under the control of a particular ethnic group. Never in the history of Nigeria have agitations for self-assertion been so entrenched and ethnic consciousness so promoted and patronised as is the case in the present political dispensation. Worsening standards and policy compromise have also grated on the potential of national integration, peace and security.
On Wednesday, December 1, 2021, Prof Ishaya Tanko, commenced his single term tenure as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jos. Tanko, who is a native of Kebbi State, is coming as vice-chancellor after a six-month interregnum, during which an acting vice-chancellor had to be appointed to avoid a vacuum and diffuse the tension that became palpable as a result of the geopolitical, religious and ethnic sentiments that propelled the race and competition to succeed the immediate past vice- chancellor, Sebastian Maimako.
This was because about 20 years ago, the political leadership in the country narrowed the stakes from a free and fair contest to one based on quota, state of origin and geographical location of the university. In which case, the appointment of Ishayo Tanko may be returning to and restoring the old order, in furtherance of the urgency to enhance national integration, peace, ethnic mutuality and rebuild the collapsed cross-border trust.
Politics without ideological content, governance without focus, vision, will and sincerity of purpose have impoverished the productivity and potential of the economy, leading to a high unemployment rate, inflation, lack of food security, crime, weak national currency or exchange rate, hunger, poverty, malnourishment, diseases and deprivation. These in turn have heightened the sensibilities of tribes and geopolitical entities now agitating for self-determination, resource control and fiscal federalism. Ethnic clamour and secessionist agitations that have worsened under the Buhari regime are actually an expression of the failure of the national process, national integration project, collapse of trust and lack of conversation on a national scale. Such failures derive from the failure of leadership at the national level.
The celebrated case concerning proceeds from Value Added Tax (VAT) is a vexed issue for national debate and conversation. Not all states and all citizens contribute ultimately and summarily to the VAT revenue. With the imbalances, especially in the distribution of infrastructures and amenities across the country, including the size and number of local government areas in states and geopolitical zones, revenue sharing and derivation formula have to be discussed and reconciled via and dialogue for unity and integration to be attained.
Nigeria’s general elections also present a huge issue for conversation and determination. Ideals, such as signing of the Electoral Act, which was avoided by President Buhari before the 2019 general election, matter as rotation or zoning, voter education, voting, results collation and transmission are still replete with reservations. Similarly, the Constitution itself needs to be factored into the national conversations, especially as it has to do with autonomy for the third tier of government, that is, the local governments; autonomy for the legislature and the judiciary and the powers of state governors.
That Nigeria has not succumbed to predictions of disintegration and, or, revolution does not suggest that the processes of implosion and divisionism are not alive and agog within; nor does it establish the lie that more predictions as possible may come true. The US has once again raised the alarm that Nigeria is in the last phase of its existence as a corporate entity, no thanks to the abundant indications of a failed state. A report by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Harvard Kennedy School said, “Nigeria has since moved from being a weak state to ‘a fully failed state’, having manifested all the signs of a failed country, including the inability of government to protect the citizens, large scale violence and festering insurgency”.
Apparently on a salvage operation, the NIPR is right on time to pull the chestnut out of the fire, reinvent the missing links and all the structural essentials and restore Nigeria as a country?
*** By Ukandi Odey
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