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. United Kingdom

                                                    patrickadelusi@jjassociates.org.uk

http://www.olufemiadelusi.blogspot.co.uk/

                                        www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-olufemi-adelusi-a2139a76

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I-               ABSTRACT

 

An article titled “Failed State 2030 Nigeria- A Case Study” was 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’ articles. 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 recognized 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 a deficit of infrastructures are hallmarks of a nation-state going through 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 into 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 a stereotype. 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 Postgraduate 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 putting out there their research findings on Nigeria. This has nothing to do with undermining the veracity of their findings but with 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 landslide.

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 lies in the fact that every other chapter of the article is very replete with everyday 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 undercurrents 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 in 1960. If a 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 deposits that as you move from the rain forest to the savannah and later arid desert, the 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 were rigged in favour of the North again, having confessed that the North was not ready for independence unless they lead. The British did not want either the Western Region by itself or the Eastern Region by itself nor cooperation between the Western and Eastern regions to rule Nigeria. A Country formed with the 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 has a democratic government. It is true, the resources are not coming in as they used to be. Crude petroleum sales slumped under this government. The government is forced to carry out choices that are unpleasant but developmental. The Nigerian population is 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 the Islamic religion. It is common knowledge now that both the North and the South have followers of the 8 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 – the rustling of cows. The rustling initially started within the Northern territory. It caused a lot of dislocation to the 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 terrorizing road users. A consensus has been reached that once the cows and the herdsmen are organized 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 a political instrument to send a 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 the 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. In 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 suit them best despite the colour of their traveling 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 recognized and are used for 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 directly to them without interference from the States as it used to be. Unknown to many people, each local government chairman can now budget for its territory and plans the 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 government, mainly the Legislative, the 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 in infrastructure. The tragedy is that those who compromised their opportunities to serve by corruptive influence have come to see what a non-corruptive government could achieve with meager resources. Change is very difficult to make. Beneficiaries of corruption and the corruptive system will always fight back or at the best fight to describe any other attempts at achievement as a failure.

There have also been demands for a restructuring of the Federation as an amendment to Nigeria’s constitution. The central issues calling for restructuring have 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 assist the Police in its security duties until a formal legal structure comes to be. 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 is 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 fulfills all the criteria enunciated in the definition of a failed state except for the last criterion. You may seem surprised! Domestic Terrorism made the 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 the 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 the 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 of 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 a historical rehash of Nigerian etymological, political, and social compositions which can be found in the 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, which 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 interlink, and finally, 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 socioeconomic elites to evolve a consensus on all issues of national importance while being supported by a patient international environment that is not too critical but supportive. This is a far cry from being a failed State.