Nigeria Content Online

It is difficult to remain unnerved by the
realisation that, in the manner in which restaurants display a “menu of
the day”, Nigeria has grown accustomed to unleashing, with clinical
efficiency, a “crisis of the moment.”

A quick excursion into the recent past would
confirm this. The 2007 elections loom large, arguably the worst in our
recent history, in the words of local and international observers
alike. In the light of Nigeria’s predilection for post-electoral
violence, it is a wonder that the 2007 elections did not replay 1993,
or 1983.

Then there was – and still is – the Niger Delta
crisis, which nearly paralysed the nation’s oil industry, allowing
Angola to temporarily overtake us as Africa’s biggest exporter of crude
oil. The fear, in and out of Nigeria, was that Nigeria’s Delta region
had fallen into the arms of armed militants, and had become another
Somalia.

In the north, intermittent religious violence
raised another set of fears that the country was going to become
another sub-Saharan hub for terrorism. While that was going on
President Yar’Adua’s illness swiftly degenerated into one of the most
potentially explosive – and at the same time farcical – moments ever in
the history of this country.

On the whole it is not a pretty picture. Any
observer would be tempted to assume that Nigeria is a country being run
by brigands – kidnappers in the southeast, militants in the Delta,
religious fundamentalists in the north, and corrupt politicians in
Abuja, and state capitals across the country – and they would not be
totally wrong.

One clear conclusion from the above is that we
have grown accustomed to tottering on the edge of disaster. It appears
there is a perverse pleasure to be derived from (to borrow the title of
a forthcoming book on Nigeria, by a former American diplomat) “dancing
on the brink”.

We seem to regard it as a game: we create the
conditions for national calamity, wallow in it while a watching world
grows queasy, and then take a short break while we cook up the next
calamity. In the background to this ‘game’ is a ‘soundtrack’ that
replays the words “God forbid!” – taking into account what is a
national consciousness that believes that a divine power is always
waiting in the wings to clear up our self-inflicted mess.

The latest crisis-of-the-moment is the set of
bombings that took place in Abuja during the 50th independence
anniversary celebrations two Fridays ago. As before, the loudest voices
amidst the din were the unreasonable ones, leaders and so-called elder
statesmen manufacturing accusations, counter-accusations, and
conspiracy theories. Those who should have been proclaiming the unity
and indivisibility of the Nigerian state quickly split up into
sectional camps, threatening, raging, and sowing confusion, putting
their political ambitions ahead of Nigeria’s wellbeing.

And so, instead of focusing on the most important
questions of all – for example, how do we build a security apparatus
that Nigerians can confidence that it will not only protect them, but
also ensure that perpetrators of crime and violence are brought to
justice – the only preoccupation of the various political camps has
been how to exploit the confusion to smear their opponents and to
advance their own interests.

It is bad enough that we have allowed national
crises to become as much of a fixture on our calendar as public
holidays are. It is even worse when we do not seem to learn any lessons
from previous crises.

President Jonathan it was who said on his Facebook
page during the week: “Nigeria is bigger than any individual or any
collection of individuals. Nobody can hold a country of 150 million
people to ransom any more. The interests of a few conceited,
ill-motivated individuals cannot be bigger than our national
aspirations.”

Already Nigeria stands light-years behind (in
terms of development and standard-of-living indices) countries like
Indonesia and Singapore, with whom she left the starting blocks five
decades ago.

We have also failed to meet any of the many
targets we have set for ourselves in the course of fifty years: the
National Development Plans, the Health and Housing and Education for
All by 2000 plan, and Vision 2010. Time is fast running out regarding
the 2015 Millennium Development Goals, and it appears only a miracle
will make us one of the top 20 economies in the world by 2020. Our
illiteracy, maternal mortality, child mortality and poverty indices
currently look like numbers borrowed from an 18th century statistics
book.

It is a tragedy that at fifty, instead of
consolidating on the successes of the past, and summoning the strength
to march confidently into the next fifty years, we are more preoccupied
with the basic task of trying to ensure that Nigeria does not fall
apart. It is impossible to be trapped in that kind of task and still be
able to find the energy or motivation to forge ahead.

Caught up in blame games, in repeating the excesses of the past, and
in expending our energies on trying to prevent the country from tipping
off the edge, no one seems to remember that the future is what we make
of it today, and that ‘Godspeed’ — not ‘God-forbid!’ — is what ought
to define the national mood, if we are serious about creating a country
that the rest of the world will take, seriously.