Tony Abolo
Complain as much as we may of the present Nigerian condition, the 32.7% inflation rate as at September 2024, according to the National Bureau of statistics (NBS), recorded the drop in GDP per capita from a high of $3,201 in 2014 to $1,621 today, four times collapse of the national grid, policy inertia, our overreliance on oil, and no attempts at diversification in the economy, the “lost decade” chant. The shrinking purchasing power due to the twin policy of fuel subsidy removal and the floatation of the exchange rate, the significant drop in FDI, the lack of an industrial policy, the flip-flop in the PMS pricing and the eternal bric bat between NNPCL and Dangote Refinery, the huge infrastructural deficit, the suffering of numerous households, the rising poverty levels, the lack of transparency and accountabilities in governance at all levels, the monumental corruption levels, the lack of clear communication around fiscal policies, the total hands off of governments, over the years and the total unwillingness of focus to enable Nigeria to achieve its manifest destiny will be a question of confusing the “trees for the forest”.
It is lame duck to think the loci is ImF/World Bank directives. Perhaps to begin to think it is in the new language, state capture, judicial capture, legislative capture and state institutional capture, Nigerians may be getting closer to the mark. Plainly put, Nigerians are being driven by the political class through a Muslim philosophical ideology. This is the major trap and the elephant in the room, which we cannot see clearly through our unending crises.
All because, we are overwhelmed by the myriad of consequences of a directive of State management policy which unknown to the majority of the less discerning, is driven by an ideology that predates even the birth of Nigeria. We are unable to extricate ourselves from the vicious conundrum, because it is the net that has captured us all and we are being led forward like sheep to the slaughter.
How does it all manifest, and how did all start? We have to think back to the Ottoman Empire and the Crusades and the society they built. How did the society frame then? And where were the leadership driving the society to? Those, they say, who fail to learn from history, are condemned to make the same mistakes.
In the Arab Ottoman Empire, it was a macho world, men rule ok and there was less emphasis on the women. In the Arab muslim world, women were humiliated from birth. The boys learn that they can hit their sisters, old or younger with impunity. The sisters do not have to defend themselves. It was mace opinion and behaviour that mattered. (The men ran the show). And their unanimous sense of superiority, was little affected by occasional feminist challenges.
But come to think of it, the economic implication of gender discriminations are most serious. To deny women is to deprive a country of labour and talent. A like they say, the best clue to a nation’s growth and progress potential, is the status and the role ascribed to women.
The Elite in the society we are describing have a penchant of being predators and opportunists; vultures of a kind especially the relatives (and annexes of the ruling family or party) soak up the black gravy (petroleum or the richest treasure of the land) and waste it on high living. There was as at then, just like now, opulence and great demand of taxes and such similar burdens on the populace. There was no looking back on coercion and the case of military and police on the subjects, who were more like serfs and chattels. Above all, there was an abiding desire to control and demand obeisance.
Any attempt by the people for any respite called for severe pushbacks and naked land grabs (Think Coastal High Way and the Badagry – Sokoto Highway) come to think of all we have enumerated and you can clearly see parallels and more patent on control and grab in their clearly brazen desire to make the entire land an APC land with every arsenal of coercion – poverty to make the people (serfs supine).
In certain sectors we are set for capture, vote buying, now brazen at their so called fake elections.So what we call a ‘democracy’, is merely a charade and a parody. It is democracy of the type like was practiced and is practiced in the Arab land, where ‘democracy’ as many who misread the contradictions in the Nigeria polity tend to understand it, is no more than despotism.
The parallels of the old Ottoman empire and what we run as Nigerian ‘unitary Federation’ is eerily striking as history an a replay. In that culture, it does not generate on informed and capable workforce.
It continued to mistrust and reject new techniques and all ideas of the opposition (then the West) (but read it as anyone not in government) as an enemy. It had a scandalously high rate of illiteracy, which was much higher in women than in men.
There was so much sense of in-secureness amongst the elite; as wealth sleeps badly in a poverty. And when a few farsighted observers like low civil society and media do warn on the need for overhaul and reforms, there was no effect of response.
Intense research, learning and progressive ideas, then as at now, were always regarded as “haram”. Such moves were regarded as potential instrument of sacrilege and heresies. Little wonder there are no progressive ideas from either the intellectuals or enlightened and visionary members of society to push us out of this lethargic darkness. You may wonder as much as you can, when will this nightmare and darkness in Nigeria blow off? It is as we say in sociology, a structural issue. Are we designed for now, to fail and never to progress? You now know better that it is a pernicious outdated ideology, that is the driving strategy for our kind of democracy. Very very dangerous. Very very sad. And when the two main leaders are of the same faith, it destroys our social consciousness and makes national cohesion, and new envisioning of a renewed society, near impossible.
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