NIGERIA A FAILED STATE OR A NATION-STATE
IN THE PANGS OF STATEHOOD? A REVIEW ARTICLE
BY
Patrick Olufemi Adelusi PhD
John & James
Associates (Bilingual Policy Scientists)
London.
I-
ABSTRACT
An
article titled “Failed State 2030 Nigeria- A Case Study” published as an
occasional paper No.67 in February 2011 by 5 Colonels of the United States Air
Force (USAF). Our study is majorly a review of these Colonels’ article. The
background for their research lies in the fact that Nigeria is one of the
topics that reflect long-term strategic thinking about technology and its
implications for US national security.
The concept of “Failed State” as used by the
researchers raised a lot of dust. Political Science scholars have a consensus
about what constitutes a State. A nation-State constitutes a State. A state
fails when it suffers “the loss of physical control of its territory; [its]
monopoly on the legitimate use of force; the erosion of [its] legitimate
authority to make collective decisions; an inability to provide reasonable
public services; and the inability to interact with other states as a full
member of the international community”. A country that is in the process of
nation-statehood is yet to be recognised as a State. If the United States with
political and economic growth of 230 years is regarded as a State. Nigeria with
60 years of political and economic growth is in the process of becoming a nation-State
and cannot qualify to be regarded as a State. If unstable political and
economic institutions, coupled with deficit of infrastructures are hall marks
of a nation-state going through of pangs of Statehood; then well-defined and
established political and economic institutions herald a State. Nigeria cannot
be described appropriately as a “failed State”. This statement is our working
tool for our review exercise. Our tasks will be divided along 5 sections,
namely, Section I-Abstracts, Section 2- Introduction, Section 3- Factors
undermining Nigeria’s statehood, Section 4-Failed Statehood: Nigeria and USA of
2015-2020, Section 5-Conclusion.
II-
INTRODUCTION
A study carried out in
2011 with a 2030 pessimistic futuristic vision on Nigeria could be described as
stereo type. Many of us studying political science in the 1980s were made to
swallow the Euro-American centricity views reflected in their academic publications.
The most notable one was the theory of Modernisation by David Apter. The
subject for the testing of this theory was Ghana, an African country. Until the
author repudiated this decades long theory inside our Post graduate visiting
lecturer conference held in Bordeaux, France sometime in 1987 or thereabout,
most of us budding scholars held on to this theory. The relevance of this is
that simple. Here we go again with 5 Colonels from the US Airforce put out
there their research findings on Nigeria. This has nothing to do with
undermining the veracity of their findings but putting us on alert about these
manipulations. If the world was not treated to a Trump administration 2016-2020
and with 25,000 lies, he fed the US citizens. 74 million still voted for him.
He then continued till his very end with a great lie of winning an election
which he lost by a land slide.
In this review article,
it is our intention to limit our appraisal to two aspects of the work, namely, Nigeria in context; Defining Failure; and secondly, Nigeria
in 2030: Paths to Failure. The main reason for restricting my appraisal to
these two aspects lie in the fact that, every other chapters of the article are
very replete with every day accounts of how an amalgamated entity has been
coping with pangs of nation-statehood on her way to becoming a State.
III-
FACTORS UNDERMINING NIGERIA’S
STATEHOOD
With regards to the first
aspect, Nigeria in context: Defining Failure, reference was made to Nigeria’s
History dubbed foundations for failure. The British colonization and the spread
of Islam. There are two under currents about British colonization of Nigeria
which these 5 authors did not capture in their analysis. How the amalgamated
North and the South regions evolved to become Nigeria first in 1914 and later
1960. If 1914 mistake? continued till 1960 flag independence, where do we put
reports coming out of the British archives both spoken by elderly civil
servants that were involved in carrying out first rigging of the Census in
favour of the North. This author once worked and lived in the North, he also
read geography, on many of his journeys from the South to the North, his
knowledge of geography that deposits that as you move from the rain forest to
the savannah and later arid desert, population is expected to decrease. What we
later felt released was the truth that geographic truth remains true, but the
British falsified the census to turn geographic truth on its head. The
elections that heralded the first government of Nigeria, where the NPC came on
top was rigged in favour
of the North again, having confessed that the North was not ready for the
independence unless they lead. The British did not want either the Western
Region by itself, nor the Eastern Region by itself nor cooperation between the
Western and Eastern regions to rule Nigeria. A Country formed with foundation
of lies cannot be celebrated as a State going into failure. A pregnant lady has
9 months before giving birth, after which the baby needs attention. Nigeria
with her 350 or so multi-ethnic groupings went through a civil war for 3 years
and now having democratic government. It is true, the resources are not coming
in as it used to be. Crude petroleum sales slumped under this government. The
government is forced to carry out choices that are unpleasant but
developmental. Nigerian population are being made to begin to make scales of
preference and budgeting. With dwindling resources, demands are more than
supply, old buried animosities are rearing their heads.
Another point raised was
the role of and the spread of Islamic religion. It is common knowledge now that
both the North and the South has followers of Islamic faith. There was no
spread of Islam as a religion. Terrorist Islamic fundamentalism yes!! has been
tearing the Northern states apart. There is no monolithic North again. Instead
of this apocalyptic spread of Islamic religion, what we are observing is the prevalence
of rogues under the clothes of herdsmen – rustling of cows. The rustling
initially started within the Northern territory. It caused a lot of dislocation
to security of local inhabitants and death with kidnappings. Katsina State, the
home State of Nigeria’s President is not spared. Most of the Southern non-Moslem States are
not been attacked under one herdsmen attack or another. In some proven cases as
reported by security operatives, armed robbers who may or not be Fulani are now
terrorising road users. A consensus has been reached that once the cows and the
herdsmen are organised into ranches in the Northern States, their home base,
the insecurity linked to herdsmen would be over. There is however a suspicion
that there are some designs to employ the herdsmen attacks as political
instrument to send warning to opposing and rival parties on the need to maintain
the status quo with having a Northern President. This has not been confirmed.
IV-
FAILED STATEHOOD: NIGERIA
AND USA OF 2015-2020
Let me start my review of
this 2011 paper on this theme of Failed Statehood by quoting their definition
that, A state fails when it suffers “the loss of physical control of its
territory; [its] monopoly on the legitimate use of force; the erosion of [its]
legitimate authority to make collective decisions; an inability to provide
reasonable public services; and the inability to interact with other states as
a full member of the international community.” The 2007 Failed State Index,
compiled by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine, identified these
indicators of a failed state. At the US end, with many Nigerian-Americans doing
well in all aspects of the US economy and science, a study like this lays
credence to a narrative that there must indeed be the failure of Nigerian
statehood for these Nigerians to have left in a mass exodus to the US. I am not
comparing British and the Australian Americans to their Nigerian-Americans, one
thing is certain, people will move to places that suits them best despite the
colour of their travelling passports.
The Nigerian constitution
of 1999 is not a perfect constitution. It desires to be reviewed from time to
time. Democratic experiments are still going on using this constitution. The
levels of Political governance continue to be deepened. The States and the Federal
Government are recognised and are used to independent budgetary allocations and
development planning. During the operation of this constitution, A President
widened the powers of the local government authorities by sending allocations
due to that level of government direct to them without interference from the
States as it used to be. Unknown to many people, each local government chairman
can now budgets for its territory and plans development of the territory. While
this was a great step, another giant stride came in the form of separate
budgetary systems for the three main organs of governments, mainly the
Legislative, Judiciary and the Executive. The implication of this is that a
Legislature cannot be tied to the apron strings of the Executive. Please kindly
note that what you have just read were aspects of the political growth taking
place in Nigeria that some 5 Colonels saw as a failed State.
Many observers and
citizens know that Nigeria has a great deficit of infrastructure. The tragedy
is that those who compromised their opportunities to serve by corruptive
influence has come to see what a non-corruptive government could achieve with
meagre resources. Change is very difficult to make. Beneficiaries of corruption
and corruptive system will always fight back or at best fight to describe any
other attempts at achievement as failure.
There has also been
demands for restructuring of the Federation as an amendment to Nigeria’s
constitution. The central issues calling for restructuring has to do with State
and Local Police, having to do with security. Nigeria is under policed.
Attempts have been made by regions to have paramilitary outfits to assist the
Police in its security duties until a formal legal structure comes to being.
There are over 68 items that are under the Federal government which could as
well have been delegated to the States and the Local governments.
All these issues are
those grounding the around efforts at moving to a Nation-State. Nigeria is yet
to be a State. She aspires to be a State, with recent democratic practices. The
US is a State. She has practiced democracy for more than 200 years. She has
ethnic tensions, but it is more of white supremacist racism. All her Political,
Economic and Social institutions are strong and well tested. Infrastructure are
well defined and developed though there is talk of maintenance and rebuilding.
Nigeria has just taken a bold step of linking her South Western and Eastern
regional cities by rail network in 2021. What was inherited was North -South rail
links for produce from the North to the seaports in the South. Can such a
country be described as failing? Such a country is climbing the ropes to
becoming a Nation-State before being graded.
Can Nigeria be accused of
not having the ability to interact with other states as a full member of the
international community? Nigeria has participated in many UN sponsored police
activities, observer status in areas of conflict. Nigeria has also assumed the Presidency
of the International court of Justice at Hague. Recently, a Nigerian supported
female has just been appointed as the Director General of the World Trade
Organisation to mention but a few.
Where do we place the US
of 2015-2020? The US is a State. She fulfils all the criteria enunciated in the
definition of a failed state except for the last criterion. You may seem
surprised! Domestic Terrorism made US to momentarily have the loss of physical
control of its territory; [its] monopoly on the legitimate use of force; the
erosion of [its] legitimate authority to make collective decisions; Let us look
at them briefly, to our amazement, with a sitting President who swore to an
oath to defend the territory of the US, an important branch of the Federal
government lost its legitimate authority to make collective decisions at the
Capitol because of invasion of the Congress building by thugs, terrorists
orchestrated by her sitting President Donald Trump. With that incident until
the new President takes oath of office, the US lost both the physical control of
her territory as most state capitals are under security watch for domestic
terrorism and she also lost her monopoly of legitimate use of force too.
Looking for a failed State demands that one recognizes a State in her full
functions and when she slides from such, will qualify her for the label a
failed State.
V-
CONCLUSION
Two aspects of the main
article titled “Failed State 2030 Nigeria- A Case Study” published as an
occasional paper No.67 in February 2011 by 5 Colonels of the United States Air
Force (USAF) were picked as highlights of our review. This is because what
remains of the research paper can be best described as historical rehash of
Nigerian etymological, political, and social compositions which can be found in
public domain already. Going over them will not add any new thing to our
discussion. These two areas are Nigeria in context: Defining Failure; and
secondly, Nigeria in 2030: Paths to Failure. We draw the lines under what makes
Nigeria a developing State, that is a country undergoing phases of nation
building. What the citizens are going through are all pangs of this exercise.
That the Democratic Institutions are not strong nor pervasive, the socio
economic and commerce sectors still struggling to inter link and finally, that
Nigeria needs time to evolve from an amalgamated 350 multi-ethnic groups,
rigged census, rigged elections foundations to a Nation-State. How many years
do we have to wait for this to happen? The answer to this can only be found in
a conscious internal effort by the political and socio-economic elites evolving
a consensus on all issues of national importance while been supported by a
patient international environment that is not too critical but supportive. This
is a far cry from being a failed State.
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