Nigeria @62: Buhari will leave us in dependence

THE main talking points as we mark the 62nd Independence anniversary of our dear country Nigeria today would surely revolve around the 2023 political campaigns and the current state of the country. There are those who would look back at the past seven years and five months of the Buhari administration and draw topics – such topics that would depict their varying feelings about how Nigeria has been for them under Buhari and sundry issues. It’s sure going to be different strokes for different folks. Many will take their experiences in our national economic life as an indefeasible right to judge the government because it cuts deep. Many others would also look at Nigeria from the prism of security, infrastructure, corruption, education, health and the general administration for the same reason. Whichever angle you’re looking at Nigeria from during this celebration, I think we are totally in dependence.

At 62, Nigeria is deeply in dependence, barely making ends meet on its own as an independent economy. Then, there are those whose dependence is totally on Nigeria. It’s a cycle of dependency – a lice-on-the-dog kind of situation. Such people are like the proverbial egret by which Ovonramwen Nogbaisi described the colonialist foragers. At 62, Nigeria is surviving almost solely on borrowings from nearly everywhere. In this Buhari dispensation, Nigeria’s external debt stock has grown much more in size than what it was when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s government felt the need to get the burden off the country’s neck. Chief Obasanjo must have thought deeply about where he hails from and a saying there that it is not a virtue to wear the wreath of debt while you display prosperity.

Of a fact, life is a cycle of dependency. Life is a cycle of give and take. We thrive in this time-proven ecosystem that shows that fish eats fish to fatten up, and that the toiling sandy hand will bring the delicious oily mouth. In the Kegites Club, it is imparted as a piece of knowledge, that tact, which helps you pull through life, is part of ‘kariability,’ a way of life. The Kegites Club Nigeria, National Headquarters taught us that tact and adroitness in tight situations, referred to as BBHS, is ‘karid’.

However, there must be a limit to being in dependence. When you win some and I win some, the game would be more exciting and competitive. It is also an eternal truth that when a child is ripe enough to own a hoe, he should own a hoe. Nigeria is 62 today and should not be in dependence when it comes to some basic necessities of life. There are many visible spheres of Nigeria’s corporate life which shamefully negate many truths about life.

Tayo is the main character in Sarah Ladipo Mayinka’s 2008 novel, ‘In Dependence’. The title of this beautiful piece of work has a cluster of meanings, and it has come handy in laying Nigeria’s life at 62 on my table. Tayo’s life is playing out like Nigeria, I mean the Nigeria born on Saturday, the first day of October, 1960. One analysis of the character says Tayo is a strong, intelligent and endowed man but he always seems to be on the wrong side of everything. “He always seems to do wrong.” The novel is a study in the eternal issues of love and betrayal; gender, race and what could stand as their common denominator: Trust. These issues bog Nigeria so much; and they appear to be getting worse as Nigeria gets older. It is beyond the lack of trust in successive governments, it is more in the lack of love by and the betrayal of the government and sundry political leaders, visited on the citizenry.

By the country’s next Independence anniversary on 1 October, 2023, Nigeria would hopefully have a new, democratic government of the people by the people and for the people. By then, Nigerians might have the privilege to truly discover that indeed, the Buhari government has left us at the lowest of our debt-to-income ratio ever as a country. Right now, the government is exerting efforts to make the economic troubles of the country look like they are the same as the economic troubles faced by the whole world. There are efforts to make things look like that, but many discerning people, especially dispassionate Nigerians, know that we are in our own kind of peculiar mess. Not a few Nigerians can see that truly competent defence and excuses by both relevant government officials and random supporters are now spread so thin that they could be easily seen through like a window without curtain.

Yet, there are daily reports of heightening insecurity, debilitating debt and crippling inflation. A recent report quoted stakeholders in the agricultural sector of the country as lamenting that 84 per cent of Nigerians can’t afford healthy diet or three square meals a day. The group known as ‘Sahel Food Systems Changemakers’ blamed the development on “insecurity, climate change, micro-economic challenges and the recent Ukraine/Russian war.” Two of the causative factors are in our hands but what have we got? The group’s Vice President (Programme Innovation and Delivery AGRA), Mrs. Aggie Konde, said: “Insecurity has contributed 30 to 40 per cent of the hunger currently witnessed in the country.” The group observed that “Farmers cannot go to the field. If we do not have land for farmers obviously there’s going to be hunger.” I think we knew all of these, the relevant powers are just aloof while their supporters are drunk on being politically correct. This is a pointer to the path of continued dependence in the immediate and the near future.

Some other actions by the current administration to hasten Nigeria’s steps on the path of dependence are in the sphere of debts – foreign and domestic. In this regard, we are profoundly not independent. We are in absolute dependence on our foreign and local creditors. Nigeria’s debts are mind-boggling, and we have negated Yoruba’s admonition to debtors as we keep junketing about for more. As teaser, in June this year, we are N42 trillion in domestic debts. The president only recently approached the Senate seeking N402billion in promissory notes. The states of the federation borrowed N820billion in six months while their debts have hit the roof at N5.28trillion. We are elastic when it comes to seeking to borrow, and we have flowery words to elucidate the abyss the monies have sunk into.

The country will be dependent on more things than only quality leadership beginning from the end of the Buhari administration. But it is a very good place to start the process or putting our country back on track. We can achieve much more than we have been doing in the past seven years, and we need the right leadership as a stepping stone.

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