Nigeria Content Online

Here is a riddle. I
board a plane in Lagos, Nigeria at 7.30am. Thirteen hours and two plane
changes later, I finally arrive at my destination tired and dirty but
glad that the journey is finally over. So which city in this wide world
am I visiting? Is it Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Doha, Dubai or some
far-flung exotic corner of the world? No, nothing like that, in fact my
plane hopping and many hours have not taken me beyond the West Africa
region. All of the travelling hours and the three plane rides have
taken me only as far as Bamako, Mali’s capital which is just some 900
miles or so from Lagos.

Anecdotal evidence
from friends had always suggested that travelling within the West
Africa region is a nightmare, but not having experienced it, I always
thought the stories were somewhat exaggerated; not anymore. In order to
visit Bamako, I first had to fly to Accra and wait a few hours, after
which I boarded another plane and made my way back, yes you read
correctly, back to Togo. Another four hours later, I was on another
plane heading to Niamey from which after a two-hour wait, I finally
embark on the final leg of my trip to Bamako.

This trip, if I were flying directly from Lagos to Bamako would have lasted no more than two hours.

The problem of a
lack of functioning infrastructure within the sub region is more than
an irritation; it comes with a heavy economic price, an inability to
maximise trade among the various countries in the sub region. Figures
available show that just 10 percent of total trade by Economic
Community of West Africa countries (ECOWAS) both imports and exports,
is to other West African nations.

Another example
that may bring home the seriousness of the problem is this, according
to EU figures ‘‘ Ghana sends less than 3% of its exports to neighboring
Benin (compared with 49% to the EU).

However, this is
not a problem that is peculiar to the sub-region, all across the
continent we are losing opportunities that can allow us to grow
economically because we lack the basic infrastructure to trade with
each other. Here is another example, this also taken from an EU
produced document, (sadly as with a lot of other things we rely on
others to tell us about ourselves) ‘‘ it costs as much to move a
container from Mombasa to Kampala as it does from Mombasa to Shanghai.’’

The total value of
trade between Africa and the EU in 2008 was EUR 278 billion; this is
for both imports and exports. Can you try and imagine the impact on the
continent if this level of trade was taking place among African
countries?

The wealth that will be created through job creation and other value added services would immediately transform our societies.

While it is true a
lot of unofficial trading takes place that is not captured by the
numbers, the informed consensus is that trade within African countries
is miniscule compared to trade with other regions.

It also pales in
significance when compared to the volume of trade among Western
European countries, which is 60 percent of their total trade.

The World Bank has
estimated that Africa has a population about 1 billion potential
consumers and says’’ it is a powerful engine for growth, employment and
intra-African trade, especially at a time when other markets are
contracting in the wake of the global financial crisis’’

But we are not
talking advantage of this. At various forums the obstacles to making
trade flourish have been identified and solutions proffered, yet we
seem to lack the will to implement the necessary measures.

The president of
Coca-Cola South Africa, William Egbe, is on the record as saying ‘‘ a
litany of measures aimed at curbing behind-the-border trade
constraints; improving trade facilitation and logistics and reforming
customs unions and other regional trade institutions continue to
languish in drawers, awaiting implementation’’.

This is tragic
because Africa does not need to look to any other place for the panacea
for poverty and many other ills. The solution is staring us in the
face. It is time to dust those documents that Mr. Egbe refers to and
begin to implement them, one item at a time. The difference this will
make will be immediate.

As for my arduous trip to Mali, it is

symptomatic of the
wider issues we face on this continent and these sorts of trips are
only one obstacle among many to flourishing trade among African
countries. If, however, we can start by tackling this one area by
making travel easy it would be a big first step. Let us build a decent
road/ rail network and encourage the setting up of airlines that will
offer cheap direct flights to major African cities. Sectors like
tourism would receive a boost. There are many like me who I am sure
would love to visit Mali if only to see the world heritage

sites in Timbuktu. As things stand, many won’t even be tempted to make the journey, as it is tedious and expensive.

Social development was in ascent across Africa,
when Europe and Arabia declared it fair game, and began a brutal
campaign, sanctioned by state and religion, to subjugate it. The
imperialists knew that leadership manifests in society through
institutions and went on to scrupulously undermine all existing social
structures in order to prevent the development of any form of
self-assured leadership, which could mobilise the local populations and
challenge the status quo. They poisoned the leadership gene pool, and
groomed a new subservient gentry, which has come to dominate the
political landscape.

The colonial social systems handed down at
Independence, were designed to evolve a debased leadership, alienated
from its own people, and beholden to the foreign powers that inspired
and installed it. 50 years after Independence, social institutions
across the continent are so degraded that the emergence of responsible,
institutionalised leadership appears unlikely for at least another
generation. It appears the imperialists have succeeded marvellously at
both colonising the African mind and appropriating Africa’s natural
resources.

Modern African states were at their inception,
little more than production camps, with the supporting evacuation
infrastructure. They were designed, primarily to serve the economic
interests of those who first conceived of them, and waged genocidal
wars to force them into existence. The invaders seized the most
valuable economic assets, and successive regimes have since not made
any serious attempt to find tangible connections between the imperial
impulse and the natural aspirations of ordinary African people. There
appears to be a permanent divide between the government and the people.
For these reasons, most of our governments lack political or moral
legitimacy, and require the most odious regimes of corruption to
sustain them.

Today, our children in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the
Niger Delta, Congo, and similar resource-rich places, have limited
access to education or healthcare. They starve, have their limbs
amputated, their mothers raped and their fathers dehumanised so that
the global elites can wear gold trinkets, use mobile phones, fuel their
SUVs, build nuclear reactors, go on safaris, drink designer coffee, and
eat gourmet chocolate. It may not be unfair to speculate on how many
African limbs have been chopped off so that the innocent Belgian child
can be guaranteed a dignified existence, or that some benighted bride
somewhere can wear her diamonds.

The failure of African nation-states is a
manifestation of the failure of the evolving international political
economy, which created them in the first place. Moreover, it is a
manifestation of the failure of the global leadership that system has
engendered. The recent financial meltdown is another bracing reminder
that the political economy itself is as flawed as the financial system
it has enabled. The inherent contradictions have only just been brought
painfully home to some of its most ardent beneficiaries and defenders.
Africans and other denizens of the so-called third world have been
bearing the brunt of the system for the past 500 years.

In clarifying the dysfunction of modern African
states, it is important to recall the established truism that whoever
controls the economy, controls the politics. It is politically
untenable that the most powerful economic institutions operating in any
territory have little interest there, beyond profit making. The
multinational businesses and the multilateral financial institutions
that control economic activities across our continent are so detached
from the realities of ordinary people that it is manifestly impossible
to evolve the kind of leadership that can be held accountable at the
grassroots.

These organisations do not have the kind of
symbiotic ties that bind Detroit, or Silicon Valley to the people and
the government of the United States. They do not have the same
political allegiances that bind the fortunes of Shell or TotalfinaElf
to that of Europe. They can only pretend to be, to African countries,
what Hyundai has been to South Korea or more recently what Huawei has
been to China.

Like most globalisation dummies sold to us, the
idea of a stateless multinational is a specious lie. The world has
entrenched an unfair system of international relations that shamelessly
exploits the poorest people. Even if it does so with the wilful
complicity of African elites, an international system that likes to
call itself civilised and equitable, and moralises shamelessly to
“rogue” states, cannot absolve itself of its own culpability in this
unremitting injustice.

We need to facilitate the development of our own home grown
multinationals. We need to do this as a matter of urgency, by
redirecting all our resources towards empowering our people
economically and politically. One good thing about the subsisting
political economy is that it compels us to dig in and solve our own
problems. We must begin to engage, with more confidence, the damage
done to our continent by the imperialist misadventure. We must also
reflect with contrition, on our own shameful complicity, in the
execution of the most heinous crimes against our own people. We must
participate more aggressively in the control and ownership of
productive economic activities across the continent. We must urgently
empower our selves and our local communities to take control of the
politics and the economy of this continent, which we call our own.

It caught many Nigerians by surprise: what one of this paper’s columnists rightly called “Jonathan’s subversive loophole.” Following the request from the Independent National Electoral Commission to postpone the 2011 general elections from January to April 2010, President Goodluck Jonathan sent an Executive Bill to the National Assembly proposing those amendments to the Electoral Act 2010.

But beyond the amendments, the president added his own changes – particularly those relating to Section 87(7) and (8) of the Electoral Act. And these provisions were dangerous, even fatal, to the conduct of credible elections.

Section 87(7) proposed that “A political party that adopts the system of indirect primaries for the choice of its candidates shall outline in its constitution or guideline:

Who shall be a delegate at the congress or convention”. In essence, that provision would allow parties change at will the rules governing procedures for primaries simply by issuing a new guideline.

This meant, in effect, that the procedures set out in the current 2010 Electoral Act imposing clear conditions for internal democracy, by stipulating that political parties nominate candidates only by elected party delegates, could be jettisoned. Political parties will be able to select delegates at will, the offensive idea of consensus candidates will be allowed to thrive, and the situation that led to litigation all around the country, most famous of which was current Rivers State governor Rotimi Amaechi’s, would be perpetuated. .

Even worse was the president’s proposal that Section 87(8) of the Electoral Act 2010 be deleted. The Section provides that: “No political appointee at any level shall be a voting delegate at the Convention or Congress of any political party for the purpose of nomination of candidates for any election.”

This section sought to prevent the president or governors flooding political party congresses with ministers, commissioners and others and to avoid the situation where a governor with about 1000 assistants (as obtains in Adamawa State) is able to skew the primaries heavily. Finally, it sought to give the leadership of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) the power to determine the sequence in which elections are held.

Thankfully, the Senate immediately resisted the president’s transparent plan to hijack the new Electoral law, rightly calling his proposals undemocratic and “toxic”. Last Wednesday, the Senate acted in a largely unified manner to shut down Mr. Jonathan’s attempt to reshape the 2010 Electoral Act. Their move was devoid of the political or ethnic sentiments that usually colour similar debates. They were determined to “kill the bill” and perhaps send a message to the presidency.

It can be assumed that Mr. Jonathan and his campaign team experienced something of a shock to the system from the Senate’s rejection. Of course it is possible that the Senate’s action was predicated on self-interest rather than commitment to the nation, since many of them were affected adversely by these kinds of provisions in the last election cycle. Still this was a laudable move.

At least, on this issue, we know that the National Assembly stands with the rest of Nigeria.

The question now is: where does Jonathan stand? He has spoken severally about giving Nigerians “free and fair elections”, but not only do his intentions signify a desperate man looking for loopholes to manipulate, they belie his stated commitment to improving the democracy in Nigeria. The unavoidable conclusion is that President Jonathan’s incumbency is following the predictable trend.

Unfortunately, this was no isolated incident. The president has shown a disappointing propensity to play politics with issues of national importance, and in this case he doesn’t seem to get the message that it’s him against the national interest. “We haven’t given up. We will go back and negotiate and ask questions,” said one of his campaign managers to NEXT last week. “There is not absolute victory or defeat.”

This is very worrying. President Jonathan fell into a deep, dangerous hole with his unholy move to circumvent reforms already agreed on. Right now, it is time for him to put the shovel down first, and stop digging.