Why Nigeria is in crisis —Professor Terlumun

Uji Wilfred Terlumun is a Professor of Social and Economic History, Federal University of Lafia, Nasarawa State. The former Executive Secretary Teaching Service Board (TSB), Benue State, speaks with NATHANIEL GBAORON, issues the economy, political leadership, among others.

WHAT is your view on state of the nation?

Modern Nigeria began as creation of British colonial imperialism in all facets and ramifications.  This background is important for us to understand the state of the nation. The colonial heritage and legacy is still on, that has crippled all local and indigenous industries reducing the nation to a subservient consumer nation that over-depends on imported western manufactured goods and services. After over 60 years of independence, Nigeria, despite her great human and material resources, is still a peripheral subservient economy to the West. In the 1960s, foreign capital established assembly packaged industries in Nigeria. From the 1970s up to the 1980s, the policies of indigenisation and that of structural adjustment programmes, leading up to privatization and commercialization of public entered. Nigeria despite her tremendous human and material resources is still grappling with the challenge of underdevelopment and poverty. In the 1960s and the 1970s, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ranked Nigeria side by side with nations like Brazil, India, China, South Korea, a ranking and prediction based on growth rate, that these nations were going to emerge as industrialized nations by the twenty first century. All of these nations except Nigeria has achieved economic success.

Why has Nigeria continued to lag behind in terms of development?

There are several reasons as to why Nigeria has continued to lag behind these countries in terms of development. Poor industrial development has reduced Nigeria to a consumer orientated society with over dependency on white collar jobs.  In the 1960s, there was the existence of Assembly Packaging industries led by foreign capital through multi corporations. By the 1970s, attempts were made to indigenize the ownership of capital through a ratio percentage basis. This attempt did not produce the desired result of industrialization as corruption and mismanagement of state owned industries led to the collapse of the industrial sector. By the 1980s and the 1990s, there has been attempts at the privatisation of state-owned corporations, combined with fiscal and monetary policy and discipline. These reforms under the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) and  the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) produced little results in addressing the challenge of poverty and inequality as well as job creation in Nigeria. Since 1999 to the present, there has been massive social welfare and investments Progrmmes aimed at job Creation, wealth distribution and poverty reduction. Despite Government huge spendings on these social welfare progrmmes, as well as changing how Government does business, with reforms in the public sector, the anti graft war, yet, both bureaucratic and private sector corruption has frustrated the gains of these reforms. In Nigeria today, statistics by the World Bank and the National Bureau for Statistics (NBS) indicates that the poverty rate is over sixty percent, unemployment stands at forty percent, inflation at over ten percent, interest rates at over 15 percent, external borrowing at over $50 billion, external reserves depleted with the naira badly devalued. Gross Domestic Product stands at four percent per annum with Gross Per Capital Income unevenly distributed. Nigeria has continued to over depend on the export of crude oil for National Income and Revenue earnings, while the agricultural economy over depends on crude factors of production contributing very little to the Gross Domestic Product and the export Economy. Secondly, Illiteracy level is very high with one of the most highest rate of out of school children that stands at over twenty million children reduced as refugees by the Boko Haram insurgency and the herdsmen militia crises, thirdly, over population with the attending crises of land grabbing and communal feuds across the country. A recent statistics projects the population of Nigeria at a near three hundred million far greater than the population of Europe and North America.

Where do you stand on the debate for the restructuring of the country and why?

I am in agreement with the findings and resolutions of the President Good luck Jonathan national conference. The conference attracted a broad representative of all shed of opinion and interest across Nigeria. It was a true reflection of the thinking and feeling of the people of Nigeria on restructuring. There are those who call for a Sovereign National Conference on how to peacefully partition Nigeria. We can achieve development together as Nigerians despite the colonial heritage. Other nations such as India and China have achieved such heights despite their ethnic and religious diversity. Ethnicity and religion is not a curse, it is a blessing in disguise. How a nation mobilize her ethnic and religious resource for development is critical to nation building and social engineering. The United States and  India are good examples. In Nigeria, we can achieve same feet at social engineering and nation building. Since the emergence of the modern Nigerian state, both centrifugal and centripetal forces have continued to rock the politics, unity and stability of the Nigerian State.

Firstly, the British colonial state created a tripartite system which became synonymous with the politics of ethnicity and religion in Nigeria. The tripartite system has permeated all sectors of the Nigerian State including the Military and the Civil Class. In the First Republic, politics and followership were recruited along the regional and ethnic lines.

The Northern Region was under the control of the Fulani and Hausa oligarchy through the political instrument of the Northern People’s Congress. This created a politics of ethnic hegemony that heightened the fears of minority ethnic groups. In the South West Region was the Action Group under the control of the Omo Oduduwa, a Yoruba Cultural group. In the South East was the National Council of Nigerian and the Cameron, led by Dr Azikiwe that drew the followership of the Ibos. The fight for ethnic hegemony under the tripartite system both in Military and Political Sphere led to the Nigerian Civil War of 1967 to 1979. In the Second Republic, political recruitment and mobilization still reflected the pattern of the First Republic with some slight modification and arrangements. It was the politics of ethnic hegemony and the fear of domination that led to the annulment of June 12 election of 1993. Since then, there has been calls but various state actors and political actors in Nigeria for a need for National Conference that would agree on the restructuring of the Nation

During the era of President  Jonathan, the government conveyed a National Conference as to how to redefine Nigeria in the best way possible to accommodate the fears of ethnic minorities, ensure equitable distribution of national resources, a devolution of powers and resources from the center to the subunits of the Nigerian federal state. Ethnic militias and militant religious groups have also exploited the fragile nature of the Nigerian political state to vent out violence and mayhem on the Nigerian State. In the North-East is the Boko Haram, in the South-East is the Movement for the realization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, in the South-South, the Niger Delta militants; in the South-West, the Oduduwa fraternity. The tripartite political structure has continued to define how political power and offices are shared by the dominant ethnic groups in a politics of exclusion and inclusion. It’s the major framework of understanding the electoral system in Nigeria and how elections are often conducted based on the framework of a prebendal state and politics. The idea is that elections in Nigeria are often a feudal contest of feudal lords, where the most violent and shrewd, under patron-client arrangements, forcefully captures political power. This has been the Nigerian political experience since 1999 to date in terms of who wins elections and who gets what in terms of appointments and the distribution of state resources.

Another reason is poor infrastructural development and access to housing and healthcare. The World Bank estimates that there is one medical doctor to over one thousand Nigerians. There is inadequate shelter and housing despite the government investment in the sector. Transport infrastructure, that of integrated critical transport infrastructure is poor and lacking as the nation over depends on road infrastructure to the detriment of other forms of transport infrastructure.

How did we get here as a country, given its natural endowment; what’s wrong with the economy?

Nigeria is where we are today because of several reasons: we need ask ourselves, how did the other contemporaries of Nigeria like Brazil, India and China, achieved industrial success despite their colonial background and heritage with multiplicity of ethnic and religious diversity which is even more challenging than that of Nigeria? The answers to these questions will also reveal what is it that Nigeria can do to get out of the present challenge of poverty. The need for a skills orientated educational system that is practical and technical driven that produces graduates with right relevant technical skills that can both domesticate and harness our abundant human and material resources.

Colonial Education was for literacy to produce a white collar job society to service the public bureaucracy of the colonial state. Nigeria as from the 1970s to the 1980s, through the National Policy on Education attempted to address this fundamental defect of our past colonial legacy. In the basic education structure of Nigerian secondary schools, there is a policy to introduce technical education and skills acquisition at that level. This is an excellent policy of the Nigerian Government over time but however, the policy has failed to yield good results because the Basic Education Structure is under the control of States who have exploited that structure to their advantage by way of corruption and misappropriation. Tertiary education is poorly funded in terms of research and innovation. By the 1970 s and the 1980s, the state in Nigeria began a policy of establishing research centers outside Universities as independent outfits for both research and finding. This policy has deprived Tertiary institutions of vital research funding that can turn around the nations technological and scientific advancements.

The intervention of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) led to the establishment of an Education Tax Fund ran by a federal body TETFUND.

Despite this innovation, bureaucratic corruption has continued to mar the operations of the body. A World Bank report shows that it will take Nigeria fifty years of massive investment in the education sector to get into technical skills orientated education relevant to achieve the nations dream of scientific and technological breakthrough.

The need to grow the economy through foreign capital penetration, small scale and medium enterprises, fiscal and monetary discipline is another factor.

countries such as India and South Korea through the influx of foreign capital and investments were able to domesticate skills and capital through the training of an indigenous business class. There is no country that is an island in terms of industrialisation. The lesson of the Japanese industrialisation shows that there is always a fission and partnership with domestic and foreign capital in such a manner to create industrialisation. There is need to revisit the indigenization of the Nigerian Economy as well as review the  privatisation and commercialisation to remove politicisation of state economic policies. There is need for the separation of business from politics. Allow the best of expertise and capital to grow the economy. The above approach is also applicable to the monetary and fiscal sector where there is too much over bearing of state politics in policy issues.

Another reason is cultural reforms to remove bottle necks that are inimical to economic growth and development such like taking loans to invest in marrying more wives or burial ceremonies. There is need for a thrift and savings culture at the grass roots that minimizes ostentatious consumption and reckless spending through the growing of corporative Societies and mobile banks. Integrated rural development through the creation of farm settlements and villages well supplied with basic social amenities. In the past, the 1970s and 1980s, there has been attempts at Agricultural Revolutions in Nigeria through the state intervention of Lower and Upper River Basins as well as agricultural extension centers in villages, the establishment of state Agricultural banks for capital and inputs. There has been land clearing schemes for farmers and the establishment of ranches for pastoralists.

Through the institutions of rural development, there has been attempts to link up the rural areas with social amenities thereby opening the rural areas to an export based economy as well as diversify the economy. The near collapse of the local government system in Nigeria, the lack of autonomy,  has rubbished  the good attempts by the Federal State to make life better for rural dwellers.

What is the impact of the steps so far taken by the new federal administration, why and how? Any glimmer of hope for redemption?

President Tinubu represents a leadership school of thought that is rare on the African continent, particularly for a country like Nigeria where politics is by ethnic and religious cleavages. President Tinubu, so far, looking at his experience in the South West is one leader whose development agenda transcends that of narrow primordial sentiments. He demonstrated using Lagos State, that in the World of politics, he is a pan-Africanist, a pan-Nigerian, to use that phrase, who has the common good of Nigeria more at heart than his personal interest. So far, in his appointment of national political offices, he has again reaffirmed that principle of being Pan Nigerian in his political selection process.

President Tinubu is not an opportunist, he has not gotten political power on a platter  of gold. For over thirty years or more, he laboured and diligently  prepared himself for the leadership position he holds today. As a leading activist of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) in Nigeria, he had prepared the ground, through painful sacrifice that almost took his life, to emerge as the president of the country.

The “Renewed Hope” Agenda, over 80 pages of a document , an expression of interest for the development of Nigeria, is a well written and crafted Blue Print of Development. The document reflects the depth and wealth of experience that the President has  about the challenges of the Nigerian Nation. The “Renewed Hope” Agenda captures most of the issues discussed earlier on as well as what should be the way forward.

I am of the opinion that President Tinubu knows the challenge of the Nigerian State and what steps to take in making Nigeria Great again. I also believe that given his Pan Nigerian posture as a thoroughly detrabalised  Nigerian, he knows the right people for the job, irrespective of their ethnic and religious divide.

The ‘Renewed Hope’ Agenda Document can be translated into a practical working document with strategic plan and directions under specific time lines. It is my belief that such a strategic plan can be step down sector by sector, by a well experienced economic team.

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