Glorious and great Rubicon Nigeria crossed last Wednesday when the nation marked 25 years of democracy. In the last quarter of a century, the nation has struggled and wobbled. And unfortunately, till now, the gaits aren’t yet steady as the Giant of Africa’s systemic afflictions in many areas continue to fester. As Nigeria continues to dig the ground for sweet water, bitter water keeps springing forth for many Nigerians. My people are still shedding tears of pain that have refused to cease flowing as they hope that one day, democracy will make our mountains move.
Today, Nigeria stands tall amidst African countries in economic and security turmoil. What exactly are we doing today about our many ills? How faithful truly are we to confronting the afflictions that confront us? How sincere and knowledgeable are our leaders? How wide awake are the followers who obey their leaders in galling genuflection? What are Nigeria’s forward-match blueprints for the next 10, 20, or 30 years, and our children’s tomorrow? Will the cornucopian haemorrhage and hounding heteronomy ever end? Who has the answer to all the nagging questions about Nigeria without detouring into a trashy tergiversation? And how has democracy really helped the people who sleep and wake up with empty stomachs as poverty and hunger continue to bite badly? Readers, let me take you briefly down the memory lane of democracy in Nigeria.
In 1999, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, one-time military head of state, became Nigeria’s civilian president. Like Biblical Joseph from the calaboose, his garment was changed and made to reign over about 150 million Nigerians through an election. Obasanjo survived his first term, did what he could do, sought re-election four years later and won. Before his tenure was over, many Nigerians couldn’t wait to see him go. They yearned for somebody else because democracy made life worse for the people. His administration had no visible solution to the millions of empty stomachs democracy created.
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua succeeded Obasanjo in 2007. Nigerians, in their inveterate manner, hailed the Katsina governor. Six months into power, he was also shouted down. “Baba Go-slow” was one of his christened names because the demons of democracy didn’t let the people breathe. Yar’Adua set a template and tempo, did what he could for Nigeria as president. Then suddenly, the Giver of Life withdrew breath from the president halfway into his first term. The death created a confusing vacuum. Yar’Adua’s deputy was a meek and mild Goodluck Ebele Jonathan from Otuoke. Goodluck’s meekness was taken advantage of by remnants of Yar’Adua’s power cabal. The clique tried to prevent him from ascending as president. Nigeria’s constitution and millions of Nigerians rose up in defence of Goodluck. He became President. Goodluck was beloved in the city and adored in the field, but heavy walls of Nigeria’s democracy were whittled down by a fiery furnace of corruption among other virulent vices. Then General Muhammadu Buhari(retd.) challenged Goodluck for the throne in an election. Hope also became aglow for many with Buhari coming aboard the presidential electioneering plane. In March 2015, Buhari won the election. When he said at his inauguration on May 29, 2015, in this one-liner: “I belong to everybody; I belong to nobody”; Nigerians believed the General had drawn a battle line between himself and prevalent poverty in Nigeria. Buhari completed his route last year after serving eight years. It is widely adjudged that he left Nigeria poorer and more confused than he met it.
Millions of human empty stomachs created by democracy under Buhari have become the albatrosses of his successor, Bola Tinubu. Remember that Tinubu had bellowed out loud to whoever cared to listen during the campaign that it was his turn to be president? Now is his turn indeed as he struggles to turn the wheels of the nation’s ship from a monumental wreck. In 2017, the International Monetary Fund said that Nigeria was on track to becoming one of the 20 largest economies in the world by 2020. But in 2021, its mission chief, Amine Mati, said that the prediction failed flat because the economy underperformed by growing too slowly to reduce poverty or joblessness. Miseries have deepened and more pain evident on main street. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the nation’s unemployment is rising. A staggering 23.18 million persons of Nigeria’s labour force are out of jobs. It further indicated an increase in the country’s unemployment portfolio, mostly among young and able youths. A gloomy economic atmosphere is an indicator that there may be an uptick in youth restlessness and their involvement in serious crimes if they are unable to feed themselves and take care of their families. Will democracy under Tinubu help stave off these scary projections? Will democracy get Nigeria out of the valley of the shadow of debt of a whooping N42 trillion?
Nigeria has 174 universities, 134 polytechnics, 27 monotechnics, and 220 colleges of education. Hundreds of applications for more private universities sit on the desk of the National Universities Commission for approval. Nigerian tertiary institutions produce about 600,000 graduates every year. Eighty per cent of them are unemployable because they lack attributes such as analytical and good communication skills. The graduates went through school but school didn’t go through them. Our public schools are not better than public toilets. A nation building its tomorrow on a paraplegic educational system will crumble on the wheelchair of retrogression and backwardness. Who has this democracy helped aside politicians and their cronies? A democratic system that drains is one that drowns.
Do Nigerians deserve a chokehold of hunger and poverty? Democracy has not brought down the significant poverty level. The National Bureau of Statistics reports that about 40.1 per cent of the population, or over 82.9 million Nigerians, are considered poor based on national standards, with real per capita expenditures below N137,430 per year. The multidimensional poverty index indicates that 63 per cent of Nigerians, approximately 133 million people, experience multidimensional poverty. This measure includes deprivations in areas such as education, health, living standards, and employment. The disparity between regions is stark, with 65 per cent of the poor living in the northern part of the country. It is projected that the poverty rate in Nigeria will increase to 38.8 per cent, exacerbated by rising costs of living and inflation. Efforts to address these issues include ambitious fiscal reforms aimed at stabilising the economy and increasing revenue.
Except President Tinubu chooses to be a different kind of servant-leader, democracy will continue to be a dream-killing maddening machine which has killed our highways and byways and turned our hospitals into concentration camps where death is buy-one-get-one-free. As of today, democracy, as practised in our nation, has turned the country into a dysfunctional and decrepit piece of crap and scraps that must be fixed. But I continue to have hope. It’s a patriotic thing to do. The work involved in a big turnaround in all spheres of governance is humongous. But, when I read that MDA revenues in February 2023 were a paltry N154.25 billion, and a few months ago it shot up to N835.7 billion, my hope rises for democracy. When I read that the Central Bank of Nigeria has cleared the verified outstanding forex backlog of $1.3 billion and that the total sum cleared backlogs now, just under $5 billion since the new CBN management team came on board just nine months ago, my hope rises. When I read also that the CBN has paid Nigeria’s debt service obligations for the first quarter of 2024 to its creditors and the IMF later predicted a reduction of Nigeria’s annual inflation to 26 per cent by the end of 2024, my hope rises. These are all dividends of democracy Nigerians are hoping for. But we must, and can do better than this. Ours must not be empty-stomach democracy.
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