{"id":64675,"date":"2019-02-10T22:14:35","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T21:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=64675"},"modified":"2019-02-10T22:14:35","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T21:14:35","slug":"goodbye-to-illusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/articles-opinions\/goodbye-to-illusions\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye To Illusions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
By Sylvester Odion Akhaine<\/p>\n

In the course of the 2015 general elections, I travelled through the peril
\nof bad roads to Ekpoma to cast my vote in the presidential election.
\nTruly, I voted for Buhari. Despite the irregularities of the process, he
\nwon though with an implicit Carter clause, which is that though there were
\nobvious irregularities, they were not enough to warrant an annulment. Many
\nof us who were impatient with President Jonathan and the contradictions of
\nhis administration felt change was indeed required. One singular reason
\nthat made me vote for Buhari was the thinking that he would be
\nanti-imperialist and exercise national autonomy in key policies.<\/p>\n

Today, it has turned out that that I made a mistake. I apologise. The very
\nreason for voting for him was the first casualty. For him to be president
\nhe had to be sold to the Americans who bought his candidacy and who
\nsubsequently asked him to open the economy for foreign investment, a
\neuphemism for external control. Christine Lagarde, the Empress of IMF
\nvisited and gave the administration a cocktail of slave driving tools to
\nfurther impoverish Nigerians struggling to eke out a bare living. Her
\nrecipes were subsidy removal, flexible currency, increased value added tax
\nand stamp duty among others.<\/p>\n

Truly, the state of the nation pre-2015 was saddening and Nigerians truly
\ndeserved a lease from the overwhelming national problems. Jonathan
\nAdministration inherited a paralysed state structure even though he was
\nthe vice president to President Yar\u2019adua. The business of state took the
\nbackstage as a result of the illness of the president and its
\npoliticization. Jonathan did not understand the historical forces that
\nshaped events in the country. He felt obligated to the cabal of retired
\nmilitary generals whom he credited with ushering in democracy. Overwhelmed
\nby the problem of governance, he ran his government through committees
\nread as being a product of cluelessness than an act of inclusivity. He was
\nunable to tame the oil cabal and oil subsidy became a national scandal
\nwarranting a major inquisition by the National Assembly. Petroleum
\nproducts were short in supply and its prices were jerked up from N65 to
\nN141 thereby deepening the misery of the people, notwithstanding the
\nsubsequent reversals. Boko Haram intensified their activities and much of
\nthe north-east was under sect\u2019s occupation. While his government was
\nengaged with the insurgents and with mercenaries to boot, the war itself
\nspawned an armament profiteers who reportedly bought second rate weapons
\nfor the soldiers in ways that the war became an Automated Teller Machine
\n(ATM). Money ostensibly meant for purchase of arms was seized in far away
\nSouth Africa. The president was seen by the impatient public as slow and
\nweak. He did not help matters when he said he was not a general thereby
\neliciting the question of who he was\u2014 a Goliath or David?\u00a0 Nonetheless,
\nhis administration rebased the national economy upping the country to the
\nstatus of the biggest economy in the continent. Although, he privatised
\nthe Power Holding Company of Nigeria, he did not resolve the electricity
\nproblem and the country remained world importer of power generating set.
\nCorruption was widespread with varied free riders dotting his
\nadministration. His government embarked on various infrastructure
\nrehabilitation projects including airports and railway. To his credit, he
\nfulfilled aspect of the electoral reform and brought credibility to the
\nelectoral umpire. He secured the lid on the Niger\u2013Delta militants and
\nensured steady export of crude. He, however, squandered a historical
\nopportunity of restructuring the country after organizing a National
\nConference in 2014 by neglecting to action aspects of the report to
\nunbundle the over-centralised state. He did the unimaginable in a
\ncontinent in which incumbents do not organise elections to lose (apologies
\nto Pascal Lissouba of Congo Brazzaville).\u00a0 He handed over power to a
\nsuccessor and accepting the results of the presidential election before
\nthe final tally.<\/p>\n

Under the watch of President Buhari, economic misfortune is continuing
\nunder the slavish economic policies of neoliberalism\u2014those economic
\nprinciples that privilege the market and its integral privatisation
\nprogramme through divestment of the public sector.\u00a0 There are no economic
\nlaws that say that the private sector is superior to public sector. This
\nis not borne by historical records. Its current version being pursued by
\nthe Nigerian government is Medium Term Economic Framework (MTEF). It is
\nbeing implemented outside the rule book because the minders of the
\nNigerian state don\u2019t understand it and naturally it can\u2019t work in country
\nthat is badly divided without a common national creed. It is least
\nsurprising that the policies therefrom are hardly being contested despite
\ntheir deleterious effect on the national wellbeing. Indeed, they have
\nbecome normalised. Besides, economic mismanagement has led to a rapidly
\nincreasing debt burden. The country is already thrown back to pre-2006 era
\nof debt overhang with external debt hovering around $22 billion. As though
\nnothing is amiss, the state actors are still comforting themselves with an
\nelusive debt-to GDP ratio of 21 percent and a credit threshold of about 51
\npercent. They forgot that the country does not have a patriotic and
\ndiscipline elite that can utilise credit facilities for the purpose they
\nare meant for.\u00a0 The naira, its currency, weighted against that of many
\ndeveloping countries is worthless.<\/p>\n

Add up. The consequence of a disarticulated economy is the acceleration of
\nsocial vices, namely, kidnapping, ritually killings, 419, armed robbery,
\nkillings by security forces, bribe\u2013taking, misappropriation of resources,
\nsubsidy scam, vending of fake products, prostitution and illegal migration
\nacross the Sahara desert to Libya enroute to Europe. These combined with
\nstructural violence such as the hike in prices of petroleum products,
\nmultiple taxes and attacks on the rule of of law have aggravated the
\nmisery of the Nigerian people.<\/p>\n

Blood-letting has become the order of the day. The entire Middle-belt has
\nbecome the open killing field of land-grabbing Fulani herdsmen whose
\nmurderous activities are countenanced by current wielders of state power.
\nWe are all living witnesses to the spectacle of mass burial in Benue state
\nand plateau. Historians say it is a repetition of the massacres of the
\nTivs in the riots of the early 1960s. The statistics are chilling and
\nsimultaneously infuriating. Figures from Christian Solidarity Worldwide
\n(CSW) put the number of persons killed by Fulani militias in the Middle
\nBelt in the first quarter of 2018 at 1,061. In its survey, Amnesty
\nInternational put the number of deaths across 17 states since the
\nbeginning of the 2018 at 1, 8143. In a summing up covering June 2015- to
\ndate, US Council on Foreign Relations earlier put the figure of those
\nkilled\u00a0 at 19, 890. About\u00a0 \u00a054,595 lives were lost due to the activities
\nof the insurgents between 2011 and 2018. These figures don\u2019t tell the
\nwhole story. Add the gory tales of Fulani herdsmen activities in your
\nrespective states; you have a sense of scale.\u00a0 These killings earned the
\ncountry a non-enviable third place ranking in the 2018 Global Index on
\nTerrorism (GIT).\u00a0 Any one not disgusted by the shedding of innocent blood
\ncross the country most probably has lost his or her humanity. These days,
\nthe perception outside the country which is the truth is that Nigeria is a
\nwar zone.<\/p>\n

In about 2000, at the turn of the century, the economist of London
\nobserved that, Nigeria was badly divided as a country. It noted further
\nthat the football team, the only entity that momentarily unites the
\npeople, despite the talent of individual player; do not play as a team.
\nIf that was the perception in 2000, now the unity does not exist, as the
\nincumbent administration has completely eroded it mainstreaming the
\ndomination of a tiny migrant community over the rest component parts of
\nthe country. Happy with its temporal hegemony, it is impervious to the
\nlogic of restructuring the country.\u00a0 Indeed, we are at the crossroads
\nreached by the makers of July 1966 counter-coup with the conclusion that
\nthere is no basis for unity.<\/p>\n

Under the current administration whose leadership the insurgents were
\nready to choose as a mediator while he was yet to be elected into office
\nis unable to handle the insurgents that have now grown into a hydra-headed
\nmonster. The daring attacks on national security formations are
\ndebilitating. Need we search for the logic of reversal? The security
\nforces of the country are not cohesive as it is divided by ethnic
\nappointments in which of over 75 percent of leadership positions are
\noccupied by a single ethnic nationality in a multinational country;
\ndeployment of men to frontline is also ethnically skewed while there is a
\nloud absence of a coordinating national security agency where intelligence
\nis sieved for the benefit of national wellbeing. This is as a result of
\nunbridled incompetence and hegemonic delusion. In a rather intriguing way,
\nthe country is being encircled by insurgents. Carnage is on-going in
\nZamfara; Sokoto was breached by jihadists labeled by the outgone Inspector
\nGeneral of Police as Malian herdsmen. This is certainly not the country of
\nour dream.<\/p>\n

The above problems require solutions. On the contrary, President Buhari
\nand his team have reinforced them weaving into the complex a benumbing
\nhopelessness. The litany is endless and saddening: 87 million living in
\nextreme poverty (Brookings institution, 2018) and 13.2 million out of
\nschool, highest globally.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the resolution of these sundry crises of the Nigerian state is
\nbeyond the current president. Weakened by ill-health, devoid of vision and
\nintellectual capacity to navigate the wide field of our national problems,
\nhe cannot provide solutions. However, the president has failed to read the
\nnational mood and understand the lie of the state. Browbeating his party
\ninto nominating him as the presidential candidate instead of paving way
\nfor a brand new candidate within his party reeks of ego and spiritual
\npoverty. I can only wish Mr President good luck. I should note that it is
\nhis right as a Nigerian citizen to vote and be voted for.\u00a0 But what the
\npresidential chat has revealed is that country is drifting and the extant
\nleadership can only endure in a banana republic which Nigeria has become.
\nShould he force himself on Nigerians through a corrupt use of the security
\nforces and manipulation of the electoral process, a reality already being
\nforeshadowed by signals from these vital institutions of state, it will be
\nunacceptable. Indeed the leadership of the country has become a major
\ncontradiction to be resolved at least for now through the ballot.
\nNigerians may be slow in acting, but they can never be taken for granted.
\nI refuse to be a bondsman in my fatherland. For me, my choice is clear: it
\nis goodbye to illusions.<\/p>\n

Akhaine, an Associate Professor with the Lagos State University is a
\nVisiting member of the Guardian Editorial Board.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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