In Nigeria, one thing becomes immediately clear: government is… different.
I do not use that word in the sense of whether the government—any government—is civilian or military, feudal or modern, capitalist or communist, authoritarian or democratic, elected or foisted.
I mean it in the sense of water being different from wine, and as rain is distinct from sunshine: in Nigeria, we have failed to grasp the concept of government.
This is the reason why nothing works, and Nigeria is littered with millions of broken dreams and uncompleted and incoherent public projects.
Basically, a government is a mechanism invented to serve the people. In return for that recognition, the government collects taxes and other revenues, which it applies to the general interest.
This is why a government, depending on the level and as provided in the law, would be responsible for supplying or providing various infrastructure or services.
Whether elected, imposed, or hired, the officials involved would follow elementary rules of decency and accountability in advancing the general interest.
This broad definition allows communities or nations to make the most of their resources, including human capital, and to grow together over time.
To many, this is all elementary and self-evident. Mechanisms are put in place to try to enhance not simply the rapid progress of society but to give everyone a sense of confidence that the best is being done and resources optimally and fairly deployed. Reports are published, audits undertaken, and justice for all pursued.
But not in Nigeria, where we appear never to have accepted these lofty ideals.
As a result, we have a nation that has grown increasingly poorer in its 60 years.
Think about it:
Any public school, road, hospital, or institution built in the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, if it still exists, is in terribly shameful shape today.
Any infrastructure developed just 20 years ago has most probably been re-contracted and rebuilt repeatedly since then and is probably being reconstructed as we speak.
Nobody who has served in a senior government capacity, such as president, governor, or minister, resembles who they were prior to that experience, so much so that they cannot walk the streets or shop in the stores, even in their state capital or own village.
State governors spend most of their time in Abuja, buying personal real estate and nurturing their political ambitions, often returning as Senators after overrunning the economy and political machinery of their state.
Note that former ministers and governors who do not chase a senatorial ambition still find Abuja to be the place to be. As they plot their next moves, not only is it a good hiding place from the people they failed to serve during their tenure, it also keeps them close to those currently in control.
Why? Because the reason Nigeria does not work—for everyone—is that the person in an elected office or as an appointee disappears the day they assume duty.
Elsewhere, that is the day such people review and renew their priorities and pledges to their families and communities to serve with every breath they have. Not in Nigeria.
In Nigeria, armed with power and privilege, we shed the toga of personhood for that of power, and the side of the ordinary man for the platform of the wealthy. It is the day we determine our declaration of assets, documenting property and money we intend to accumulate, both at home and abroad, as an estate we already have. Sometimes, aided by civil servants, we find that within two years, even that sprawling estate of riches is insulting to us.
This is why, particularly in the Fourth Republic, Nigeria’s most successful crooks have become mainstream. Each one who makes a breakthrough into government opens a new door for that wing of the kleptocracy into the treasury, which inevitably becomes several doors out of that treasury.
It is why all manner of mysterious people are building estates, hotels, and businesses out of nothing. The same “nothing” is curiously able to support businesses without products, services, or clientele.
This presents a scenario in which Nigeria appears to be a prosperous place: wherever you look, big SUVs (some of them being of the armoured variety) and extensive mansions, most of them unoccupied because the same people who can afford to own them can also afford to send their families abroad—and they have.
Today, the president is spending lavishly—almost as if he received intelligence that the funds might soon run out—including $38m last year for the presidential air fleet and other renovations: a yacht, bulletproof SUVs for himself, more SUVs for the Vice-President and the First Lady, $150,000m SUVs a piece for 460 federal legislators, re-imagined offices in Aso Rock, renovated annexes in Abuja and Lagos, vast presidential honorariums, and mysterious purchases of foreign exchange.
Maybe he intends to convey the confidence that all is well, in the hope that he can somehow drag the country up with him. But he has inspired nobody. This week, he will repeat the presidential trip to China that his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, took in his first year.
Buhari returned from Beijing bragging that he had secured $6bin in new investments, including:
$478,657,941.28 for the construction of a 300 MW solar system in Shiroro.
$55m for the construction and equipping of a granite mining plant.
$1bn for the development of a brand-new expressway between Abuja and Lagos.
$250mf or an ultra-modern 27-storey high-rise complex.
$363 million for a comprehensive farm and downstream industrial park in Kogi State.
Raise your hand if you know where any of these projects were undertaken.
The truth is that Buhari’s trip clearly yielded Chinese contempt for his leadership because they did not think he knew what he was doing. And Buhari did not know the meaning of governance.
This week, the same Chinese will receive Tinubu. No guesses as to whether they respect him more than they did Buhari.
Coincidentally, three years after Beijing, Buhari was swearing that his APC would lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.
“With leadership and a sense of purpose, we can lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years,” he said.
Half of that time span has already passed, with Nigerians far poorer than they were in 2019, thanks to the Buhari and Tinubu tag team.
The reason is clear: if government is about “leadership and a sense of purpose,” the kind that has been demonstrated by APC in the past nine years can only yield a nightmare. Nigeria is that nightmare.
The 79th General Assembly of the United Nations opens next week and its general debate is on September 24th. I presume that Tinubu will conquer New York in his new jet. The irony is that while insecurity, poverty, and hunger have triumphed in Nigeria since he spoke at the Assembly last September, he has said nothing about the war against hunger for which he signed up.
No, greed and good government cannot co-exist. You cannot feed another if you are never full.
And—consider this—how long can you keep turmoil and turbulence away if you can only see your own stomach?
