On Sunday evening, I watched the erudite Professor, Pat Utomi, political economist and former presidential candidate share his views on the state of the nation in an Arise TV talk show hosted by Reuben Abati. Here are some thought-provoking excerpts from the hour-long conversation which I recorded and adapted for my column today:
When you reach a point where public office is almost for purchase, then you’ve got a real crisis. I will dare to day that Nigeria is an existential crisis. And this is not frivolous. It’s amazing how African musicians are some of the most thoughtful and philosophical people on the continent but we don’t take them seriously. We know for example that Fela Anikulapo-Kuti is one of the greatest philosophers that ever came out of this country. A Ghanaian musician called Ben Brako made this profound statement: that a country where its politicians are richer than its businessmen is a country on the verge of collapse.
We have a situation where our politicians are flying hundred million cheques to buy a form when most of their countrymen can’t even eat one good meal.
A church says one day “we would feed you”. And just to be able to get in and eat some food, people mass out overnight. In the process, there is a stampede and thirty-one people die. In most normal countries, most politicians would stop the process of what they were going through. But it didn’t seem to matter to big politicians of Nigeria. “Oh, thirty-one people died? Really? Let’s bring some more Ghana-must-go bags of dollars and share to delegates.”
That is so deeply troubling at the moral level, at a system value level, and at the level of understanding that our country is actually in complete disconnect from reality. And this is what the challenge is now. We must find a way of stopping this before it kills us.
In the Good Book, God said to the people: “I put before you, life and death. Choose life that you may live.” Nigeria is in a position where death stares it in the face. The actions of the leading politicians and political parties are invitations to death.
A class war has started in Nigeria evidenced in a lot of the unknown gunmen killings. A friend of mine has been a victim. What was his offence? Absolutely none. He looked prosperous, he looked like a politician, and he was shot dead. And so, the class warfare has started. And the first targets are political actors in Nigeria. But they are not even smart enough to realize what has happened. And so they are still carrying on. That is the level of the challenge that people who have invited a class war don’t even know they are in the middle of such a war. And they are carrying on business as usual. That is frightening for a society to sink to that level.
Choosing between APC and PDP is not an option between the devil and the deep blue sea. There are options between APC and PDP. And the challenge is how to make Nigerians recognize those options are real. This is a liberation struggle. People want to be liberated. And if they become part of the movement that liberates them, they would be able to shout one day: “Viva, Viva. Viva la liberation.” The revolution has started. More people are killed every day in Nigeria than anywhere in the world. Not even in the Ukraine-Russian conflict do as many people die. And by the way, according to some people who claim to know better, what we are even reporting completely underestimates the number of people dying.
Nigeria is a rolling civil war. We are on the road to Somalia. You need thoughtful people who realize that their country is about to go under to come and say: “Enough! Let’s sit together and see how we can fix our country.”
A transaction culture where you are buying delegates steeps you in a certain mindset. It does not matter what you say. There are those you have paid outright. There are those you have IOUs on. Once you are in power, this group would come to say “this is what you owe us for making it possible.” Another group would come and you spend more time sharing than in committed focus on how you will produce your way out of poverty. The IMF has suggested that next year, everything that we earn as revenue in Nigeria, will barely service our debts. This year already, according to the numbers coming out from the government, we are spending more on the so-called fuel subsidy than we are likely to earn this year. Now, if you have in these transactions paid off this fellow, promised that fellow, is it still possible to somehow develop a new way of doing things that would lead you to getting us out of this mess? No. In structural economics, there is what is called the structure-conduct-performance paradigm in which structure often dictates your conduct. And your conduct influences performance outcomes. Same fundamental thing. Culture matters. Values shape human progress. If the culture in these two parties is about sharing, it’s about transactions, it is not likely to be able to produce an outcome that is different than where we are today.
I have heard the “emi lokan” or “it’s my turn” joke trending. Who is anybody to promise another person the heritage of 200 million Nigerians? The thought itself is fundamentally flawed; it’s fascist in nature, because no one man whether he is called president or anything, to be able to say: “I will give you the fortunes of 200 million people, because you and I sat down in our bedroom and agreed to something.” The statement itself is scandalous. It should not be made in public. So, that is a non-starter conversation.
The Nigerian people ought to look at where they are and ask themselves: “how can we move forward from here?” It’s not Turn-by-turn Nigerian Limited. That’s not how democracy runs. Democracy runs on rational, thoughtful, public conversation. You come and persuade people that there is a body of ideas that would make their lives better. And if the people are persuaded, they would say: “OK, we think you should go and execute what you have pledged.” If the people are not convinced, they say: “Who else is there who we can turn to, to deliver us from where we are?” And that’s what Nigerians must be doing. Not listening to gossip about what people discuss in their bedrooms. Because that’s what it amounts to. It’s public entrenchment of private gossip. And we should not deal with that as a country. Otherwise, we would look like fools before the world. Yoruba-Buhari this. Igbos this.
That is not democracy. The question is: How are we going to fix this huge mess? We have a country that will not earn as much as it would pay on debt service next year. How are we going to deal with that? We need people who are not spendthrifts, who are so transaction-driven that we would deepen the mess because of next year.
Leadership is about character. If you see that the character is flawed and that the other character is better, surely you can’t trust the flawed character. You go for one that is better. If you see that the competence is greater, surely you can’t trust the less competent. You go for the one whose competence is greater. Leadership is about compassion, is about other-centered behaviour, not about self. Once you are obsessed with yourself, you are not a leader. Let us look for those who have shown a tradition of caring for others, who would sacrificially give of themselves for the good of others. Let us not look for people who have taken advantage of public position to just make themselves richer.