Portrait of a country as a failed state

By Reuben Abati

WHY is there such a scarcity of good news in Nigeria? Bad leadership. Poverty. Ignorance. Impatience. Apathy. Alienation. Frustration. Wickedness. Hypocrisy.... And more. Many years ago, the buzz phrase in the original argument for a new world information order was that the reporting of Africa should focus more on the positive attributes and achievements of the people rather than the predictable stereotype of Africa as the world's worst basket case. We blamed the Western media for its racist mindset. We lamented the meanness of parachute journalists who jet into Africa for a few days, report all the dirty gutters, the bare-chested women, the fratricide and the poverty and present that to the rest of the world as the true face of Africa. Two or more trips later, and well-funded travels across African countries, some of those journalists ended up with tomes on Africa and became experts on African affairs!

Less indignant commentators asked for the development of local structures to deepen the capacity of local African media systems to compete in a world where information is all. I don't get to hear all of this now being trumpeted from the rooftops with the same ardour of old. At least in Nigeria, we may gradually be settling down to the cold fact that bad news may be all there is to tell in our public sphere. Yes, in the private sphere, people still organise weddings, loud funeral parties (after which the living tends to be worse off than the dead due to the weight of debts), house-warming parties (well, Nigerians like to warm/wash everything including the purchase of a used SUV four-wheel drive which Americans are shipping off due to high energy cost- we go wash am o), dedication of babies, birthdays, send forth parties: good news is made of such stuff in the privacy of individual lives.

Looked at closely, such good stories, so described, invariably point to one form of sadness or the other in private lives, and indeed the event may be a way of covering up other deficiencies, psychological and social. Never judge the goodness of the lives of Nigerians by the number of people who congregate at peppersoup joints every Friday evening (proclaiming Thank God, it is Friday) or the gaily dressed aso ebi crowd at weekend parties particularly in the South West whose Yoruba population has been described in one recent dictionary as "the fun-loving people of South-West Nigeria." They even hold wedding parties nowadays on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Lift the veil and look at the public sphere: bad news.

Democracy has not changed the tone of tnews in the public sphere. It is the same drone of dreariness and jeremiad, failures and aborted hopes. There is no point blaming the outsiders anymore. Foreign media channels have become favourite sources of expert commentary on the African, nay Nigerian condition. We quote Western journalists with such great concurrence. A negative comment on Nigeria on BBC or in the Economist, the Financial Times of London is immediately reproduced in the local media as gospel truth. Nobody is complaining about negative image and if there are some people still doing so, they are few indeed. Deep in their hearts, they know the truth that "this house has fallen," that the Nigerian state is in retreat, that all is not well here. In the age of the internet, and instant news, the apotheosis of the global village theory, Nigerians do not even have to worry so much about imbalance in the world information order, they are all over the internet and the blogosphere, lamenting the frustration in their lives. Nigerians curse, rave, rant, they abuse each other, they hold every other man responsible for their own woes. So much bile.

Reading the newspapers, sitting down at editorial discussions, engaging fellow compariots in debate, you wonder how so difficult it is to be a Nigerian, how so low life and living in Nigeria can be. It is a great wonder we are not all in psychiatric homes yet. It is three or four months to the end of the year, it is in vain that anyone can point to good news. Is it the endless strikes in the hospitals (which have resulted in needless deaths), or the strike by school teachers at all levels (which continue to disrupt the school calendar and the lives of students)? How about the lack of regular electricity and the high cost of diesel which has driven companies across the border or forced them to shut down, like the textile factories, resulting in job losses and greater social hardship? No end in sight to the Niger Delta crisis, with governments only managing to dance round the issues. Across the country, armed robbers, kidnappers, rapists and ritualists are on the prowl. Ten years ago we wrote on the bad state of Nigerian roads. The FRSC used to complain about the urgent need to revamp the roads in order to reduce carnage; last week, the FRSC said precisely the same thing, and yet in ten years, close to a trillion Naira has been spent on road audit, construction and maintenance. The roads are still bad. We are confronted with corporeal changelessness and worsening uncertainty.

Surprise: every Nigerian knows what is wrong. We don't need to wait for media headlines. We climb over each other to articulate the best solutions. A thinks he is wiser than B. C suspects D because he or she is of a different ethnic extraction or religious persuasion. The land has been overtaken by assassins at all levels; some carry daggers and guns, they complain about election results or religion and then kill others, the so-called educated ones engage in such bitter fights that make them no better than the Boko Haram zealots. The people blame their leaders. The leaders blame their followers. Even public officials go on television to complain that they are overwhelmed.

Every year, we say the same things: leadership is the problem, civil society should wake up, the Constitution must be reviewed, Nigeria is a failed state, it needs a revolution (yeah!), institutions need to be re-built, economic reform must focus on drivers of growth, proper federalism must be adopted, the Niger Delta question must be addressed. Let's line up all our leaders and give them the Rawlings treatment (yeah, yeah!). We look at the achievements of other countries and we draw parallels wondering why Nigeria is behaving like an imbecile. We ask the media to do better. We ask that the development process must be pro-poor... we shout, we scream...And we put it all down to the lack of political will to do anything. Find that will, and all else will improve. We insist further that those who have looted the treasury should be guillotined. We say it. We scream it... In due course an important foreigner visits the country and comments on our failings and we all talk about how profound that is.

Of course there is the praying and fasting crowd. They fast during Lent. They fast during Ramadan. They can quote the Quran or the Bible with the facility of a parrot. They claim to know God. They go to umrah, hajj or they visit the Vatican and take photographs with the Pope! Many unemployed graduates have learnt to short-circuit the system: either set up a private business, or engage in internet scam (the most amusing being the case of one fellow who says he makes the fantasies of lonely old white women come true through phone and internet messages, and he soon fleeces them), or become an armed robber, or better still, a spiritualist (claim you have been called by God: Nothing impresses Nigerians more than claims of ability to see into the future and identify the enemies debarring your progress- every Nigerian is waging a war against enemies- real and imagined). Even the ones abroad occasionally flee from the enemies in the Western world: credit crunch, hunger, unemployment, terrible bills, humiliation, hopelessness, they return home only to be confronted by bigger enemies. Some of them stay back and join the struggle with enemies, but many return abroad, drifting from one uncertainty to the other, hoping that some day, Nigeria will become a country where they and their children and their own children can have a true sense of home.

And then in the midst of it all, one Nigerian suddenly wins an international award, and while some people applaud, others would sneer, and the event leads inexorably to the evil of comparison: he couldn't have excelled if he was still in Nigeria, and so the good news is pushed offshore. Football used to make us happy too, but now we can't even put a team together and we are not sure of anything with our over-aged players and unhappy coaches.

The months come and go, the year ends. Yar'Adua asks the MDAs to return their unspent budgets. We all go to the church, the mosque, and we wish each other a happy new year. The new year is a copy of the old. And we start all over. We search afresh for the missing political will...for the magic wand that will make our society efficient in the age of efficiency ...there are no life-threatening monsoons, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunami, or wild fires stopping us, only madmen and specialists.. We argue, we scream -all over again...we rationalise. And life continues.

Robot  # 1 | 04.09.2009 07:21

...Read the full article.

nallanah  # 2 | 04.09.2009 07:52

...Vintage Abati!! There is surely, very little to add here. .......Despondent, I am. Nigeria,...God help us.

FoxCatcher  # 3 | 04.09.2009 08:39

Dr. Abati, Well spoken. Nevertheless.... we cannot give up; Nevertheless, we cannot lose hope; we must not stop speaking, or writing. Nevertheless, all cannot migrate or abandon ship. We have no choice but to believe that after the darkness must come light. For many, it is only hope that remains; take that from them and they have nothing to live for. That hope may take varied forms; as long as it lives it ensures survival. Ciao

Gladiator  # 4 | 04.09.2009 11:27

The status quo indeed! It is Game, Set, and Match to the hijackers and pretenders; to put it simply they have won!

akuluouno  # 5 | 04.09.2009 11:48

Dear RA, Please let us remain the way we are for now. Look at attempts by Sanusi and Oransaye to sanitise the banks and reform the civil service respectively and the mischief that greeted these efforts. I believe that the sofly sofly catch monkey approach works well in Nigeria given the multitude of mischief but the question is can it sustain the country in this digital century and in case we face these challenges you outlined hereunder ...there are no life-threatening monsoons, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunami, or wild fires stopping us, only madmen and specialists.. We argue, we scream -all over again...we rationalise. And life continues.

machiavelli  # 6 | 04.09.2009 12:22

... And all the newspaper columnists, social commentators - your excellency, Dr. Abati inclusive - continue to write the same meaningless articles that are not different from the one you wrote last year, the year before and the year before ...

Dapxin  # 7 | 04.09.2009 12:46

One, two, three,....they all give up...that the fraud of a nation may remain the same, or be thrown into shreds. goodnight Nigeria.

ariteni  # 8 | 04.09.2009 18:00

Good job!!!!!! MR Sambalat. And ALL you Tobiases above: repent!!!

emj  # 9 | 05.09.2009 12:14

Less indignant commentators asked for the development of local structures to deepen the capacity of local African media systems to compete in a world where information is all. I don't get to hear all of this now being trumpeted from the rooftops with the same ardour of old. At least in Nigeria, we may gradually be settling down to the cold fact that bad news may be all there is to tell in our public sphere. Yes, in the private sphere, people still organise weddings, loud funeral parties (after which the living tends to be worse off than the dead due to the weight of debts), house-warming parties (well, Nigerians like to warm/wash everything including the purchase of a used SUV four-wheel drive which Americans are shipping off due to high energy cost- we go wash am o), dedication of babies, birthdays, send forth parties: good news is made of such stuff in the privacy of individual lives. eherm, Reuby, how about all the Suvs on recall? Most made their way to africa and mostly nigeria...meanwhile the auto makers have them on their recall list...:p Deep in their hearts, they know the truth that "this house has fallen," that the Nigerian state is in retreat, that all is not well here. In the age of the internet, and instant news, the apotheosis of the global village theory, Nigerians do not even have to worry so much about imbalance in the world information order, they are all over the internet and the blogosphere, lamenting the frustration in their lives. Nigerians curse, rave, rant, they abuse each other, they hold every other man responsible for their own woes. So much bile. Ojare, blame it on everybody else but ourselves....can even blame it on the alcohol, or devil. We search afresh for the missing political will...for the magic wand that will make our society efficient in the age of efficiency ...there are no life-threatening monsoons, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunami, or wild fires stopping us, only madmen and specialists.. We argue, we scream -all over again...we rationalize. And life continues. Only madmen and specialist gan na...too many cooks in the kitchen...do away with the huge crowd of pharisees in the upper and lower houses and state house of assembly.....they are nothing but slackers...all brood of vipers.:eek:

changingourmindset  # 10 | 06.09.2009 07:42

Well written as always…. However I want to challenge you as well as other well meaning Nigerians to look for the good oranges among the bad. It is so easy to keep bashing ourselves and our country…Nigerians are the best at doing this. The main topic of discussion at any gathering of Nigerians both at home and abroad is always about how bad the country is, how things are going from bad to worse, how there is no hope…and so on and so forth. The truth is that this constant self bashing and self loathing can only fuel the cycle of hopelessness and despair. Permit me to pick on a couple of your comments to emphasize my point. First, you indicated that we as Nigerians all know what the problems are … Bad leadership. Poverty. Ignorance. Impatience. Apathy. Alienation. Frustration. Wickedness. Hypocrisy....just to name a few, why keep flogging what is already common knowledge? Is that going to create any new awareness or make us sink further into despair and despondence? If you have an imbecile child and you continuously tell that child he is bad, can never amount to anything, over time those facts will sink into the child’s subconscious and that is exactly what will happen. That is what we are doing with our country Nigeria. The good news I see is that it is those celebrations in the private lives of Nigerians that keep us from the psychiatric homes you aptly mentioned. It is our rich culture and resilience that keeps us connected and happy despite all the bad news. Can you imagine what the suicide rate in Nigeria would be if we did not have a strong family culture? In the Western world (of which we are all ardent admirers) where there’s every comfort imaginable, people (young and old) take their own lives for reasons as flimsy as being ditched by a boy/girlfriend. You also highlighted the fact that we had no natural disasters to boast about. Thank God we don’t. The lives and property that could be lost to a major earthquake or tornado and the suffering that could ensue would make the current suffering of some Nigerians child’s play in comparison. My point… Let’s keep focused on the good things that we have, let’s count our blessings, let’s keep our hope up, we can not afford to be overwhelmed by despair. Let’s start by infusing some optimism into our future.

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