60 years after, our leaders still steal our meat

In a few hours, Nigerians will be celebrating 60 years of independence or dependent independence, depending on which side of the horoscope you are looking at it. And it’s no surprise that again the forces that be are again interested in influencing the 2023 election. What’s different this time around is the chessboard of perceived citizen participation, and youth involvement: the actors, their preferred outcomes, and their preferred mechanisms of influence may have changed or will change, till then.

Nigeria has experienced military coups, a civil war and very poor economic development, and its population is more impoverished today than at independence. Behind this lies the “oil curse”. The ruling elite have captured the rents generated from oil for personal enrichment and power purposes. Nigeria’s elite formation has three distinct characteristics. It is based on a fusion of elites, with the military establishment dominating, through power diversification (with the conversion of political power into economic power as the most important), and it is enriched through economic extraction (where the usurpation of the country’s oil wealth is pivotal).

The excessive centralisation of power, authoritarianism, and the pervasiveness of patronage and rent-seeking cultures have developed a political or ruling class. Oil resources have given this class the incentive to control the state apparatus (and thus the income), and the means to retain control of the state.

The main beneficiaries, and thus the main constituent components of the oil-rich elite, are the “big men” (the inner circle of the ruling elite), the military establishment, and politicians.

Since formal democratization at the turn of the century, various reforms have been half-heartedly attempted. Despite the nomination of economic reformers to prominent positions, the vested interests of the political class have not been challenged.

So to be a leader in Nigeria, you need to follow the rules on how to steal a piece of meat, and you will come out a saint. Nigeria is partly where she is as a nation because of how her leadership emerges, the value, and systems that dictate who gets what. Our leadership emerges stealthily because almost all the time, the big boss is less educated that the small boss, when one boss is Christian, the other boss must be Muslim.

Our leaders say the people asked for them, but the first meat they steal is ours. Our leaders blame the meat for being in the pot. They do not care about how many pieces of meat are in the pot, they go about a gluttonous frenzy forgetting that we collectively own the pot.

In leadership it is turn by turn, and not merit by merit, each leader demonizes the one before, never there to partake in preparing the soup pot, but every ready to mess the condiments up, it is 60 years and we are yet to get the right leadership trajectory, when will we all stop stealing from the pot.

Dr. Charles Dickson

pcdbooks@yahoo.com

 

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