Nigeria in the next 60 years

There was something resonant and promising in the way the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, on October 1, 1960 at the Tinubu Square in Lagos, proclaimed, “Today is Independence Day.”

Perhaps it was something in his suave, baritone. After all, he was called ‘The Golden Voice of Africa’ for a reason. Or maybe it was something in the way he felt, the dream of a country he could see spread out before him.

In under five years from that day, that dream turned to nightmare for him and others when he was assassinated in a bloody coup that somehow managed to deepen the divide it claimed to want to heal.

In the last one week, there has been so much reflection on the last 60 years since the day Balewa made that proclamation in Lagos and the Union Jack was lowered for the last time, replaced by the simple, green and white of the Nigerian flag. A lot more has been written about the injury we have caused to ourselves over the last 60 years, about the many failed promises of that day in 1960. Yet not much has been said about what the next 60 years could be like and how the transference of the lessons of the last 60 could be a guide.

We have been notoriously bad at planning for the future. For instance, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, just as Nigeria was coming into oil money, the Republic of Korea was emerging from the debris of the Korean War that had decimated the country. Both countries were on similar income, but the Koreans were way ahead in terms of thinking. They planned an ambitious development project where they rebuilt almost all the villages in the country, with suitable accommodation and urban planning befitting this century.

General Gowon, the Nigerian president at the time was reported to have said, “Money is not the problem but how to spend it.”

The result of those two approaches to nation building is manifest in the level of development of both countries. Today, Korea, a country with no known natural resource, is one of the most advanced countries in the world while Nigeria, endowed with every natural resources imaginable, is languishing in squalor and is in line to become the world leader in open defecation in the next few years.

It is estimated that in the next 50 years, Nigeria’s population would triple. Already the seventh most populous country in the world with a population of 200 million people at the moment, this means that by the time we celebrate Nigeria’s 120th independence anniversary, our population would be well over 600 million.

What is alarming is not the sudden numbers, after all, in the mid-1990s our population was estimated at 88 million, which has exploded now to 200 million, but the poor rate of infrastructural development that means in the next 60 years, there simply would be too little infrastructure to cater for this population.

Already, health facilities are stretched, schools, where they exist, are overcrowded and still we have 12 million children out of school—one of the world’s highest numbers, public transport is non-existent and the little that is available cannot cater for 200 million people and we simply are not putting measures in place to expand them. Yes, we are building railway lines that as of yet cannot serve 5 percent of the population yet for some reason decided to expand this rail line to the Niger Republic.

The mistakes we have made in the last 60 years is specialising at creating excellent planning documents which have been miscarried with consistency.

No one doubts the quality of Abacha’s Vision 2010. It is 2020, yet the impact of that vision on Nigeria is nowhere to be seen. There was the Vision 20:2020 and we are still nowhere near the top 20 globally economies. Now we have a Vision 2050 in place.

As the Hausa say, the same stick used to chase the first wife will be used in chasing the second. The reasons for the failures of previous planning documents have not been taken into consideration and addressed before this new document was initiated.

And the problem here was that these documents were not structured around functional institutions but around personalities. When Abacha died, Vision 2010 died. With the current personality cult around the villa, it is hard to see how this vision will outlive this government. It is the nature of this country. Even if Buhari’s man were to succeed him in 2023, the likelihood is for the vision to be ignored to suffer a natural death. If a none-Buhari man were to take over, that vision will be scrapped, probed and beaten to death and replaced with a brand new one.

The fact that the government is not planning with this population explosion in mind is worrying, as worrying as the fact that there is no clear, thought-out idea to fight corruption and rid it from this country. Corruption is not something to be clamped down by arbitrary arrests of out-of-favour politicians and government officials, it starts with restructuring the education system and may take a generation. (I will expand on this in a future article) but there is no magic wand or body language that would wipe out corruption overnight, but the sooner the long process begins, the sooner we are likely to get results.

The lack of continuity in government planning does not look likely to change, which means the foundation of a truly happy 120th Independence celebration, is not being laid.

And this troubling mindset is our undoing.

In November 2015, before the euphoria of Nigerians voting out an incumbent president for the first time quickly turned to disappointment, Governor Nasiru El-Rufai, a close ally of President Buhari, made an appearance at the Ake Art and Book Festival in Abeokuta and was asked about global warming.

To my surprise, the governor, candid as ever, said that was not something he worries about because it is not a problem for him. He was already into his 50s and didn’t expect to live to see the clear manifestation of global warming. And this was a problem for future generations to worry about. His words not mine.

He made it clear his concern was solely the next four years of his administration and trusted that future generation would find a solution to their problem.

That coming from someone of El-Rufai’s foresight was shocking. And eye opening as well. I am sure his outlook on such issues have changed over the years but the shocking thing was that a man of his vision dropped the ball on something as significant as that. It also explains the thinking of a good number of people in leadership positions in this country. That for those who intend to leave behind a legacy, they are not concerned about generations that would follow and planning well in advance. So they rush to build shabby health care centres that will be outdated before construction works are finished.

This maybe explains why we are not in a mad rush to build the schools which will serve the now and still be useful to the exploding population of the country in the next 60 years, to make sure that the 12 million out of school children we have today don’t become 36 or 80 million-strong army of angry Nigerians looking for ways to apply themselves.

When we build roads, and railways, schools and hospitals, we need to take into consideration that we are not just building for today.

That is how legacies are built.