Nigeria, We Fail Thee…

It is five years this week that Muhammadu Buhari said that his ruling APC would lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years. 

That was on the inaugural “Democracy Day,” the anniversary of which his successor, Mr. Bola Tinubu, will celebrate on Wednesday.

Buhari declared: “Our Government elected by the people in 2015 and re-elected in March has been mapping out policies, measures and laws to maintain our unity and at the same time lift the bulk of our people out of poverty and onto the road to prosperity.”

Trying to fend off questions, he cited three important countries that had achieved the feat: China, India, Indonesia.

“These are all countries characterized by huge burdens of population,” he said.  “China and Indonesia succeeded under authoritarian regimes. India succeeded in a democratic setting. We can do it.”

Buhari then outlined the one condition under which the vision would materialize:  Leadership and a sense of purpose.

“With leadership and a sense of purpose, we can lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years,” he said.

He added: “In my first term, we put Nigeria back on its feet. We are working again despite a difficult environment in oil on which we depend too much for our exports. We encountered huge resistance from vested interests who do not want CHANGE, But CHANGE has come, we now must move to the NEXT LEVEL.”

As some of us pointed out at the time, it was unclear what Buhari was referring to: CHANGE, as a concept, had become meaningless in his administration and ‘NEXT LEVEL’ was simply the latest cliché in the party.  Nigeria was traveling backwards, becoming far more corrupt, insecure, and unworkable.

Which was why it was immediately clear: not only would there be no onslaught on poverty, but he would instead commence new propaganda.  Consider, therefore, that just 24 months later, he was falsely declaring that he had already lifted 10.5 out.

“In the last two years we lifted 10.5 million people out of poverty – farmers, small-scale traders, artisans, market women and the like,” he said in the 2021 Democracy Day speech.

The mass media was quick to demonstrate that, on the contrary, at least that same number had at his hands been lost to poverty.

In other words, instead of the Nigeria leader seriously getting to work in the same way that the leaders of China, India and Indonesia had done to achieve the results that Buhari praised before Nigerians, he had already failed his own principal measure of hope: leadership and a sense of purpose.

Still, at that time he had had two years left of his tenure to prove his mettle, and to set an inspiring pace for his successor to ensure that the objective was achieved.

He did not.  He could not.

Buhari did not know that neither leadership nor a sense of purpose consist of reading bland speeches penned by others.  He left office last year with Nigerians deeply destitute and desperate, the democracy and hope that he had inherited in 2015 clearly on life support.

In 2023, so weak was the experience of Nigerians at the hands of Buhari that hope required a new colour: the colour of renewal.

That is how we got “renewed hope.”  Just how dismal is the substance of “renewed hope” became clear quite quickly, culminating last month in Nigerians waking up one morning to find that an old national anthem had become the law again.

How in the world does the adoption of a new anthem restore—or renew—hope?  It does not; that was simply a cynical photo-capture of the political desperation of the Tinubu administration to place items on a ledger of “achievements.”  It is ironic that in a wasteland of hope, younger Nigerians now must learn a new anthem on empty stomachs, often in dark homes and sweaty classrooms.

Where to now, hope?

As I wrote on this page in the weeks before the 2023 elections, Nigerians had a clear choice to make.  The realities of this moment are no accident, and the pains may only just be starting.

Sharing his reflections on democracy at a public lecture in celebration of his 65th birthday in Abuja in August 2006, former military president Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida observed that the ‘new’ democracies of Africa especially were faced with a many-sided challenge, as opposed to the established democracies which seek to project democracy as an instrument of international power and global economic advantage.

“If there is any nation today that embodies these contradictory demands and mutually reinforcing imperatives in a very stark form, that nation is Nigeria,” he said, adding that the Nigerian experience, particularly since 1999, had thrown up the major issues and problems of democratic transformation in modern Africa.

“Issues that had long been presumed resolved have once again come to the fore with greater clarity and compelling stridency. Minority rights are being expressed and pressed with increased militancy. Primordial cleavages have resurfaced and sometimes threaten the foundations of national cohesion. Faith and creed, long held as belonging in the realm of private experience, have resurfaced to make public claims on the loyalty of citizens sometimes competing with loyalty to the state and constituted authority. Ideas and views long suppressed and even held as taboo are now being openly canvassed as previously silent sections of the national community have found new voices and fresh impetus. Advancements in information technology and communication have provided the highway for the delivery and dissemination of new ideas and the sharing of experiences.”

Babangida, one of Nigeria’s three surviving former military officers who have impacted Nigeria’s political terrain the most since the Second Republic–the others being Olusegun Obasanjo and Buhari— demonstrates one of the two most profound evils of the military-political block.

The first is the hollow and egotistical belief that having ruled Nigeria, they are no longer a part of the problem.  The second: that they have a relevance other than to offer perpetual apologies.  The truth is that to these three men is owed the tragedy that is the lack of leadership of modern Nigeria.

It is leadership that never speaks of enduring triumphs or patriotic achievement, a cabal that is indifferent to failure and celebrates farce.  This is why, instead of working to demonstrate the 10.5 million Buhari said in 2021 he had liberated from poverty, he enthroned a successor for whom success is consistent 100-car convoys, not a child in school or 24 hours without power failure or four weeks free of adverse security reports months.

But the Nigerian conundrum is only partly a failure of leadership.  It is of Nigerian citizens having fallen into a certain stupor: the magic of religion.  We are a worshipping people, and if a man has power, or money, or influence—no matter how he acquired it—we are willing to lie on the highway for him to drive over us or on his driveway for him to urinate on our heads.

To be fair to him, Tinubu only said it was his “turn.”  He did not say it was his turn to serve, or to lead by example.