Nigeria: Good times and bad times 

By Levi Obijiofor 

Friday, 18 July 2008 

I ran into a young American woman – an anaesthetist to be precise – two weeks ago. Our meeting appeared to have been pre-determined to occur.  I was in hospital for a pre-operation appointment. She was the anaesthetist assigned to interview me days ahead of a scheduled appointment to repair an umbilical hernia. As soon as she opened my file, the woman asked politely whether I was from Nigeria. I didn’t know whether to respond or ignore the question. I wondered what my country of origin had to do with my hospital appointment. In hindsight, it was good that I answered her question because my response triggered off an insightful narration of the good and bad times in Nigeria from the perspective of a foreigner.  

The woman said she was born in Nigeria and spent her childhood years in Lagos. She recalled with nostalgia the glorious years her family lived and worked in Nigeria. She spoke about her passion for “suya” and she asked whether the “suya” spots that illuminated evening life in various parts of Lagos still operated in light of growing insecurity in Nigeria. Her father, she mentioned, worked for Shell oil company for more than 20 years. And then came the hard part of our discussion.  

I was inundated with soul-searching questions. “What has happened to Nigeria? Why did a country so blessed squander so much wealth and gamble away many opportunities in so short a time? Why did Nigeria spit out a great opportunity to become a world leader?” She narrated how her father, now in retirement in the United States, sheds tears whenever he reads reports of instability, abductions, armed robbery, and growing poverty in Nigeria.   

As she spoke, you could see in her eyes the pains and the search for answers about the problems with Nigeria – opportunities lost, gross misappropriation of national wealth, endemic corruption, failure by national leaders to make a positive impact on the lives of the people, and endless competition by the upper class to plunder national resources.  

The image of Nigeria as it exists in her mind today, she said, looks like a fictional account of a jungle where only the fittest survived. What she knows about Nigeria today represents the exact opposite of what she experienced in the country just three decades ago. It was sad listening to this narrative about the social, economic and political disintegration of the entity we refer to as Nigeria. As I waited for her to end, she launched into nostalgic stories about the good times in Nigeria.  

I couldn’t resist but listen further. In the history of any nation, there are good times and bad times. In Nigeria, it seems we are more familiar with the bad times. Here’s an opportunity for me to hear a foreigner’s account of the good times in Nigeria. Introspectively, the American woman said the good times in Nigeria in the 1970s were driven by the unprecedented oil wealth and other factors. She identified two major events that impacted on the international image of Nigeria, including the lives of the citizens in the 1970s. The Festival of African Arts and Culture (“FESTAC 77”) and the Udoji award stand out in her recollections.  

For those too young to know, the Udoji Award was a decision made by the Yakubu Gowon’s federal government to award civil servants unprecedented salary increases in 1974/1975 following the recommendations made by a panel headed by a man named Jerome Udoji. FESTAC 77, as it was known and as we were informed by the military leaders of the time, was celebrated to showcase black and African arts, civilisation and culture. Although it is more than 30 years since the two events were marked, debate persists in Nigeria on whether FESTAC 1977 and the Udoji Award of 1974/1975 helped to improve or impoverish the lives of the people and how the world perceives the nation.  

In the true spirit of Eldorado that pervaded Nigeria in the 1970s, Yakubu Gowon, as Head of State, decided it was time for civil servants to be rewarded with a special salary increment. In January 1975 the Federal Government endorsed and implemented the salary increment which was a part of the recommendations made by the Jerome Udoji panel that examined “Public Service Organisation, Management and Remuneration” in Nigeria. .  

When workers received their salary increment, the nation was in a celebration mood. It marked the beginning of our love for acquisition of household electronics, entertainment gadgets and non-stop weekend street parties. Civil servants spent a lot of money on luxury goods and they still had a lot left in their bank accounts. Remember the popular refrain, somewhat exaggerated but nevertheless attributed to Gowon: money was not Nigeria’s problem but what to do with the national wealth was the main problem. If national leaders knew anything about economics, they would have understood that bad financial management, whether it comes in the form of an unparalleled salary increase, is never the best way to manage an economy. Thirty three years after the Udoji Award, the nation’s problems have multiplied rather than eased. Do our leaders ever listen?  

Two years after the Udoji Award, FESTAC was celebrated in 1977 with so much fanfare and passion. Lagos and other major cities bustled with a large influx of visitors from across the globe. The streets were adorned with FESTAC symbol and special buses were imported in large numbers to improve transportation. The airwaves were filled with radio jingles about FESTAC 77. A FESTAC village was built in Lagos, in that part of the city now referred to as Festac Town. Leading and budding artistes, entertainers and intellectuals came from across the world to celebrate with a nation. It did not matter that the country was under military dictatorship. The world had not yet warmed up to the evil effects of military rule in Africa or elsewhere for that matter.  

Nigeria had oil money. Everything went alright for the country. Poverty was not a term that international financial institutions associated with Nigeria. The local currency enjoyed a measure of recognition across western Europe and North America. In Paris, London, Frankfurt and other European cities, international exchange rates favoured anyone with a pocketful of naira. The country had so much money that it could afford to host the entire world and still remain economically buoyant. When you have so much money (it doesn’t matter whether that wealth was derived from one source – oil), the world tends to listen to, and respect, you.  

The good times affected every aspect of Nigeria and the Nigerian life. Other than pockets of armed robbery incidents and the usual pickpockets that operated in popular bus stops, violent crime was not much of a problem. There was no need for the police to create a special unit -- “Operation Fire for Fire”, for example -- to tackle violent crimes. Even the architecture of residential homes and apartments reflected the mood of the time.  

Doors and windows in many homes were not strengthened with heavy metal to forestall forced entry by armed robbers. People did not build houses that looked like fortresses because there was no need to do so. In the 1970s Nigeria was in a carnival mood or so it seemed. You didn’t go to sleep at night with one eye open and wads of naira note under your pillow, in anticipation of that dreaded knock on your door by armed robbers, as is the case today. 

But good times don’t last forever, the American woman reminded me. Nigeria, she suggested, has changed for the worst. Compare life in Nigeria in the 1970s to life in Nigeria in the first decade of the 21^st century. The difference is clear, she concluded.  

As the woman rounded up her reflections on Nigeria, she returned again to the three questions she posed at the beginning. What has happened to Nigeria? Why did a nation so blessed squander so much wealth and gamble away many opportunities in so short a time? Why did Nigeria spit out a great opportunity to become a world leader? She looked at me straight in the eyes for an answer, as if I held the answers somewhere in my shirt pocket. I told her that if she needed frank and unexpurgated answers to the questions, she must confront Nigerian military and political leaders, including everyone who has held positions of responsibility since the attainment of independence in 1960.