"Nigeria's dysfunction is hugely profitable for some. Its moribund power grid allows importers of generators and diesel to make immense sums; dilapidated refineries leave Africa's top oil producer dependent on imported petrol that has made billionaires of a handful of tycoons."
—Tim Cocks, British journalist
The year, 2012, was, by most accounts, a year of lost opportunities, of sheer, monumental waste of human and natural resources for the Nigerian state and nation. Commenting on the magnitude of raids on the collective wealth resulting in scandal after scandal, The Guardian of London warned that "countries just coming into great resource wealth – such as Ghana or Kenya – take note, this (Nigeria's management of its oil wealth) is how not to do it." In other words, no right-thinking nation should allow its wealth to be so mindlessly mismanaged and depleted by thieving cabals while the majority of citizens go from one level of poverty to another.
Are we exaggerating the out-of-joint nature of the polity in the past year, the depth of dysfunction and Nigeria's arrested development and drift? Three international reports on the year provide an illuminating perspective. The 2012 Failed States Index published by the United States based Foreign Policy Journal in its annual ranking of 177 countries placed Nigeria in the 144th position and only a step away from the worst cases of state failure; Transparency International rated the country in its 2012 report as the 139th most corrupt country out of a sample of 176 countries confirming a bottom league showing dating several years back. A final witness comes from the United Nations' Human Development Index, which measures quality of life as expressed in access to safe water, life expectancy, health and educational infrastructure; Nigeria was rated in 2012 as 159th out of 172 countries polled.
A large chunk of the explanation for our collective distress lies in the failure of our national institutions; their capture by cynical groups who maximise their fortunes through dysfunction, and their pronounced incapacity to deliver minimal benefits such as security, good roads, power supply as well as health and educational services. Institutions, conceived as the rules of the game as well as decision-making bodies are in sorry disrepair in the country and our leaders carry on with the illusion that they can bring about meaningful changes without addressing the comprehensive rot in our public institutions. Take some random examples: Which mobile phone user in Nigeria has not often wondered if anyone is in charge of regulating sharply deteriorating performance of service providers given the woes of consumers? Yet, the rule book says that the Nigerian Communications Commission is supposed to regulate and set performance standards! How about the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the octopus in charge of the oil industry?
Leaning on a recent edition of the influential Economist magazine, The PUNCH informs in its editorial of December 28, 2012 that "The NNPC is one of the world's most closed oil companies". For "closed", please substitute "utterly lacking in transparency". The editorial went on to cite a joint report by the Transparency International and the Revenue Watch Institute of New York which "judged the NNPC to have the worst record of the 44 national and foreign companies it examined. It is accountable to no one and operates as a slush fund for the government". This damning international indictment is, of course, corroborated by the now abandoned report of the House Committee on the subsidy racket which tells us that "had the staff of the various agencies and government officials not compromised and colluded with certain marketers, the level of corruption would have been minimal. The Committee believes that if the PSF scheme was properly managed the sum of 1.07 trillion naira would have been available to the three tiers of government for budget enhancement". How about the Power Holding Company of Nigeria which after much hue and cry and several promises of upgrade supplies to Nigeria only one fifth of what is available to South Africa with a population less than one fourth of Nigeria? What we have therefore, in our badly malfunctioning institutions, is a phenomenon described by Prof. Banji Oyeyinka of the UN-Habitat, in a recently released book, "Rich Country, Poor People: Nigeria's Paradox of Plenty in the Midst of Penury", as 'regulatory capture by consensual crime'.
Discomfiting, no less is the diagnosis of the problem by President Goodluck Jonathan and his cabinet. Speaking at the funeral of Gen Owoye Azazi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Jonathan said that 80 per cent of what Nigerians call corruption, including cases of scandalous abuse, currently handled by his government are in fact not corruption. Won't it have been more helpful if Jonathan made clear his definition of corruption? The President went on to say: "Corruption is not the cause of our problem. Nigeria has more institutions to fight corruption. Most of the issues we talk about are not corruption". Doesn't this smack of entrenching denial as an approach to governance? In other words, if Jonathan's promise to do better in 2013 is to be realized, then he must show a proper appreciation of the magnitude of the problem as it touches on corruption which is a primary driver of institutional dysfunction. For, it is the systemic capture of our institutions by predatory elites who have turned them into avenues of self-enrichment on a scale never witnessed before in our history that is responsible for their ineffectiveness in delivering welfare goods.
It is of interest that a transformation programme has been proclaimed by this administration but if this is not to end up as another abandoned project, then the agenda must first be properly conceptualised and articulated in such a way that it can mobilise the energies of the populace around core objectives and goals. Obviously, no genuine transformation can take place without a structural overhaul of our decrepit institutions which are expected to be the engine room and the dynamo of any such agenda. The administration must first be ready to lead by example by cultivating a less ostentatious and less self-interested lifestyle than it has hitherto done. Leaders who are looking after themselves and minding their comforts in lavish style will not be taken seriously when they call on the citizenry to make sacrifices in the collective interest. To reverse the rot in our institutions, there must be a careful audit of their current performance with a view to understanding the patterns and the depth of dysfunction. We must also do away with the entrenched practice of rewarding political cronies with the headship of institutions about which they know very little; while cases of proven abuse must be promptly dealt with in order to show that the administration means business in its loudly advertised but poorly implemented anti-corruption programme.
It is when our institutions are in proper or at least passable shape that the journey to national transformation can be said to have begun in the New Year.
