The Problem With Nigeria: Consciousness, rule of law & state building, by Ibrahim T.M. Tumsah
Part I: Consciousness
The problem with Nigerians is we don’t actually want change, we just want something we can talk about as a past time in beer parlours, small gatherings and our offices as a way of small talk. If we actually wanted change we would have done something about our current political, economic and security concerns. Lets face it Nigerians love to talk about the problem with Nigeria without actually doing any work to change it. We just think things will change if we complain about it long enough.
Frantz Fanon writes; “ If culture is the manifestation of national consciousness, i will not hesitate to say.. that national consciousness is the most elaborate form of culture.” Nigerian culture is caught up in a sense to a confucian paradigm. What i mean by this is Nigeria has a culture where one’s moral obligations to one’s elders is paramount before anyone else or everything they do, including their spouse, children and relatives and their state (nation). Where failure to act respectfully towards one’s elders is severely frowned upon and in some cases even punished. Acts like bowing and prostrating when greeting elders or respected officials is very prevalent in both the Northern and Southern parts of nigeria. It is the universally accepted way to address a Nigerian Big Man.
I cannot speak for the south as i’m not very familiar with the intricacies of it’s cultures but the North’s majorly consists of a muslim population and a majority of the different cultures in the region are mostly homogenous in regards to language and religion with minute, but nuanced differences in some practices. Muslims follow the religion of Islam and the sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad. In this aspect it is not permissible in Islam to bow, bend or stand up for anybody regardless of his age or status in the community, that is only reserved for a higher Being; God. A hadith from the prophet (PBUH) as is narrated by al-Tirmidhi in regards to bowing when greeting someone; “They asked him about a man who meets his brother, can he bow to him? He said: “No.” And it is not permissible to bow or prostrate to anyone except Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, even though that may have been a form of greeting in other religions,…”. Muslim scholars agree that this practice is forbidden. The great Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah wrote; “with regard to lowering the head when meeting prominent figures such as shaykhs and so on, or kissing the ground and so on, these things concerning which there is no difference of opinion among imams that they are forbidden. in fact merely inclining the back to anyone other than Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, is forbidden…” Yet, this act is still practiced in muslim majority communities in the North regardless, shows the level of confucianism still entrenched in Nigeria.
One can be ostracized for going against one’s elders (Big Men) even if they are in the wrong or committing immoralities. The elders accuse them of lacking respect and that is the end of that. This is not to say one should abandon or disrespect his/her parents just because or that he shouldn’t afford them their due respect in regards to their wisdom and advice, but in some cases the disrespect is warranted especially if the elderly person has not earned such due accord or has abused such a privilege. For example Allah says in the Quran [2:170] (translated meaning); ”When it is said to them, “Follow what Allah has revealed,” they reply, “No! We only follow what we found our forefathers practicing.” Would they still do so even if their forefathers had absolutely no understanding or guidance?”. Anyone who is rightly guided or knows what goes against his morality should not follow the customs of his ancestors, parents, culture if it is not just or right or what is prescribed by God.
By all means one should not sever familial ties—that’s what binds us, DNA is shared between a child and their parents, the parents and their siblings, the siblings, to their tribesmen, the tribesmen with their ethnic group. The group shares it’s ties with other groups and tribes because they are bound by the same ancestors and soil. The individual has to balance these ties between his family and the state (nation), working for the greater good of all that cross their path. if everyone plays their part and co-operates, we then begin to build a greater nation for us, our offspring and generations to come, so they can admire the sacrifices we made for their benefit. That is how we should all be thinking because change does not just happen all at once, and we most likely wont see the fruits of our labour, but the next generation will and that should be satisfaction enough.
Part II: Rule Of Law
Unfortunately this is not the case with Nigerians, everyone only looks out for their own interests or that of their family. Our myopic view of our problems does not just fall on the political elites and institutions, but we as individuals are also guilty culprits of Nigeria’s dysfunction. Afterall no structure can stand firm when it rots from within, while no society can thrive without strong institutions. Nigeria’s inadequate political structure feeds into this complicated cycle because it has been flawed from the begining.
Nigeria’s system of government is a concept borrowed from the United States of America, with little consideration for the myriad of differences in Nigeria whether it be in regards to culture, religion, or practices– not to talk of the contrasting idiosyncrasies between Nigeria and the United States. What Nigeria needs is a different approach to our presidential system. A political structure that is designed to suit Nigeria’s political philosophy. A government structure that is split into 6 provinces, the South East, South West, South South, North East, North West and North Central zones. The idea is already there in the way the people and regions are classified. Every region should have it’s main governor and then under him are Premiers of the 36 states that constitute the totality of the geographical zones. Then above them is the President. The President cannot select the Governors of the 6 regions but can select his vice.
The aforementioned Governors of each region are tasked with reviewing the performance of the President at the halfway point of his term. And are expected to meet to decide whether this President can continue or call for an election should his performance prove to be unsatisfactory. These Governors are also reviewed by their constituency Premiers at midway points of their term, with similar duties of decisions and verdicts. This will help in the way Nigeria is governed and a more equitable and transparent allocation of its resources. The system proposed is not only to provide checks and balances to the government but also as a way to bring accountability from the top down as well as bottom up. Nigeria’s problem is not creating a new political system but maintaining it. What i mean by maintaining it is the system must be strictly adhered to through a strong legal code and stable institutions. A rule of law, that is enforced, fair and accepted by all. The President should have enough powers to oversee the elected Governors and review their performance but he cannot remove them from their positions, in the same manner he should also be given enough leeway to create institutions to facilitate state building and economic progress without their constant interference. This of course has to be within the breadth of the law. A strong constitution cannot be emphasized enough in this process. The House of Representatives and qualified court officials play a significant role in carrying out this mission and must be able to be flexible when some laws are outdated or need to be adapted to fit the overall views of the public opinions and cultural shifts in Nigeria to be able to withstand future scrutiny, but the law must also be rigid enough when it needs to be in certain circumstances especially when public opinion does not fit the national character or consciousness of the country.
The common citizens must be involved and consulted in this process. I do not subscribe to the doctrine of voting, but it is essential that the citizens must be able to vote for the premiers in their state and the governors of their zones. In this way they will elect an official who will be their voice in the government, who will look out for their interest and is accountable to them. Nigeria doesn’t need a destroyer or a totalitarian but a unifier, a reformer and a visionary. It isn’t limited to one person by all means one person can possess all these qualities, but everyone else must play their part. No structure can stand firm when it rots from within. I would go at lengths to emphasize the importance of concrete results of our efforts over just merely theorizing about it.
Nigeria must have a rule of law that checks and puts limits on the state’s powers. In this way the law can prevent state actors from doing things that would take advantage of their power not just privately, but in the interest of the society as a whole. Nigeria is characterized by its weak rule of law especially when it comes to the elites. The facilitation and enforcement of legal institutions should be paramount for Nigeria in the state building process. Substantial investments of money need to be used in training police officers, lawyers and judges so that they can enforce the rule of law. Nigeria is a free for all at the moment where, police officers take bribes to look the other way, judges evade paying taxes and government officials stash public funds for their own personal use in offshore shell accounts all over the world, without anyone to bring them to justice before the rule of law. Even politicians running for office bribe their way into power. In most cases elections are not decided by the charisma and vision of a political candidate, but the deepness of his pockets. Without rule of law there cannot be economic development. Anyone that tells you different benefits from the dysfunctional system. If general legal rules cannot be enforced on the elites and government officials, then there is no certainty about the security of a private entity or trade.
There also needs to be a separation of office and the officeholders. An officeholder should not be synonymous with his office, in this way they are separate entities.They are elected in that office due to their capacity and competence to do a job, not to make it their own private property. As is a regular occurrence in the Nigerian hierarchy of politics. The civil servant does not get to decide who gets to takeover from him when his tenure is over or make himself entrenched in the office for life. The state has to enforce laws to prevent this from happening.
We also need to make it clear that the rule of law will protect every citizen not just political actors or government citizens. If the law only protects certain citizens then the country is just “the justice of a band of robbers” as posited by Socrates in Plato’s Republic. The law should be able to give a citizen certainty and security; where he can leave his home in the morning and come back in the evening without fearing violent actors threatening his daily life. According to Austrian Economist Friedrich Hayek, “Only the existence of common rules makes the peaceful existence of individuals in society possible.” It should also be made clear that no individual or great mind can sit down and master the laws of failed states and come up with laws to prevent their nation from falling into the same mistakes. The bulk of knowledge of legal workings of societies with a strong rule of law did not come about through that, but through the local character of the whole society through years of gradually understanding what works for them and rejecting that which didn’t. No individual could master the art of predicting the effects of planned changes in attitudes towards certain legal rulings in certain periods in that nations contemporary times. Those changes in social order happened gradually through evolution. The law is an expression of a broad social consensus shared by a society wether it be from secular, traditional, customary or religious sources.
For example, the contemporary French Republic parliament inherited its laws from from a monarchy that was a pioneer state builder that laid the foundations for governments all over the world. England evolved from roving tribal moots to the monarchy’s court of common law to having a constitutional monarchy consisting of parliamentary members from different class backgrounds. Japan went from a military warring class of Samurai to a monarchy and then finally into the constitutional monarchy forced on it by the United States after World War II. None of these aforementioned states started off as they are today. They all went through different gradual stages of triumphs and disasters in regards to state building to get to where they are now.
Take England as an example, Francis Fukuyama elucidated in The Origins Of Political Order, the inner workings of the formation of modern politics in England. After the fall of the Roman Empire, England came to be a society made up of organized, but divided tribal factions; consisting of the Angles, West Saxons, Jutes, Celts and others, ruled by Kings who could not enforce a rule of law. The monarch did not have a monopoly of violence over these tribal groups so naturally their was mistrust among them. Since it’s advent in the 6th century, Christianity began to gradually undermine the organization of these tribal units and continued to prevail through the dark centuries of war in Europe in the following centuries. Due to this there were suspicions among the tribal units of each other even though they maintained kinship and trust amongst themselves. Naturally justice and rule of law became the de facto way of settling disputes between the relationships of these tribal units through an institution called Moots. Modern courts trace their origins to these moots, they were independent bodies made up of inter clan assemblies used to adjudicate conflicts between these clans. They helped mediate the appropriate compensation between the persecutor and defendant. These institutions were obviously still primitive and didn’t have the same authority to enforce the laws of their verdicts as is present in todays courts.
The influence of Christianity gradually waned during these times and the King’s courts known as common law came to be the English state’s vehicle for state power and its eventual dominance. The common law was very much an exclusive administration only reserved for the king wherever he went in his empire to judge disputes, but eventually it needed man power to carry out these laws universally in the land. So as time passed more legal specialist were trained to be a able to be appointed in the king’s court across the monarch’s realm. These judges had a network that was more systematic and formed than the preceding customary laws that prevailed, so it became universally accepted and common laws were built upon the rules of customary laws. Common law became a single centralized powerful source of authority. The parliament came to reflect and represent the interests of the different members of English society from different classes, such as the aristocracy, clergymen, property owners, commoners and local townspeople and was able to stifle the King when he attempted to exploit them by raising taxes and break the common law without their approval. They raised an army an defeated King Charles I, and appointed a foreign monarch of their own choosing, William of Orange. This made the king accountable to the body of the parliament and respect the rule of law. This monumental watershed historical event came to be known as the Glorious Revolution.
Part III: State Building
This example of the English political changes is to stress the importance of solidarity among the different classes of Nigerian citizens as vital in our fight against all corruption, oppression and injustice that we face in Nigeria. When we all struggle, including the elites who are sympathetic to the cause against our exploitation, that is when it is most effective. Cooperation from the top to the bottom of the social hierarchy to bring our goals to fruition. Isolated efforts from individuals or groups will only prove futile, everybody needs to work together in unison for us to achieve our objectives. Our individual cultures are important to us, but it is important to set aside our differences if not for social reasons then for political ones to unite us in our shared visions for a better Nigeria. After all, the people at the top know how to do this very well when it comes to their interest and know how to use our differences to divide us along those lines to create chaos and exploit our weaknesses. The rule of law rests on the law, its procedures and the institutions entrusted to administer it such as courts, judges, lawyers, police officers etc. the power of rule of law is not that the individuals in a society fear punishment, but that they believe the laws are fair and because they believe they morally have to follow it for the greater good of the nation. Otherwise they wouldn’t follow it if it were unjust or they saw the elites breaking it without going through the due process for rule breaking. It must be enforced evenly for everyone.
It is important to learn from foreign experiences and implement them when they are practical and useful. This is not to say that Nigeria needs to adopt European methods of rule of law. This is to emphasize the importance of an organic state building process where a collective conscious effort is essential for the advancement of the nation we would all like to see. No Nigerian had a hand in the formation of Nigeria. But it is paramount that we make due with with the cards that we have been dealt, not to fold our arms and blame the colonialists. Since Nigeria gained her independence, there have been five military coups. The ideology underlying them being the right to rule of one tribe over the others. We are suspicious of our neighbours and attribute only goodness for our tribes while magnifying the mischief of another, even when in most cases the deeds were not carried out in the name of the tribe they were born into. We only want to see things in black and white. We never seek to investigate the root cause of why that individual acted in such a manner. We never stop to consider that maybe, that person was affected by bad governance, poverty, inadequate healthcare, neglect, fear, starvation and a myriad of other problems that afflict ordinary citizens everyday. Before you point the finger, remember that four other fingers are pointing right back at you. Nigeria’s history since it’s independence has been bloody with no advancement, rather it has gone in circles, just running in place; the same players from the same generation have been playing musical chairs with our futures with no regard for our consent while giving us the illusion of our required input in a system in which they designed the rules.
We will not change this country unless we first look at ourselves.. Are you nice to your neighbours? Do you care about the welfare of the many people below you in status that you see all over Nigeria? The media, student groups, business entities, trade unions and most importantly women groups must corporate. Women groups are very important in advancing our societies because we need to empower our women. Women’s rights is an issue that often gets neglected when we talk about progress in Nigeria. Women make up half the population of Nigeria yet are barely involved in the decision making process. From the education of youth to their employment, we need to carry the women along in each step. Neglecting them is neglecting our future.
It is imperative that we do not become impatient when our efforts do prove successful—as we will not see the results right away. Oftentimes radical change in society takes years to set in. Let’s not be agitated and revert back to old ways. Patience is a virtue. It pains me to say this due to Nigeria’s bloody history but sometimes when entrenched self interest lasts for a long period of time the only solution is violence. because violence is the surest way of displacing those embedded into the dysfunction of the system. The fear of violent death is the strongest emotion for humans even above personal and material gain; and it is proven to change behaviour and break political deadlocks.
There is linkage between good governance and economic growth; consider Nigeria and South Korea. After the korean war in 1954, south korea’s GDP was less than Nigeria’s when Nigeria gained its independence in 1960. South Korea’s per capita GDP grew at 7-9% between 1975 and 1995 before the asian financial crisis, while Nigeria’s per capita GDP declined in this same period despite Nigeria earning over 300 billion in oil revenue. South korea grew to become the 12th largest economy in the world, while Nigeria due to bad governance is still struggling to catch up. South korea put institutions inplace and rapidly industrialized. it changed dramatically from an agrarian society to a modern economy in a span of a generation, even though it still had political instability and a military dictatorship in its early years. This hypothetical development of Nigeria that i speak of is assuming that the country evolves organically without external influences from institutions such as the UN, World Bank, transnational oil companies, IMF and the like.
We must not entrench ourselves in these trying times of selfish interests that only serve the few and their acolytes. Political and social change must come if not from dialogue and peaceful arbitration then if all peaceful means are exhausted we must therefore go through violent uprisings, but this should only be as a last resort. We must accept that those ruling us are bankrupt morally, intellectually and spiritually. They offer us nothing but the bare minimum. When we fight our neighbours, we don’t realize that we are fighting over scraps while they cooperate with each other to keep the status quo. Social solidarity in this cause is therefore not only important, but crucial in upsetting the uneven equilibrium of the Nigerian republic. We must depart from the legacy left on us by our colonial masters. Just because things have always been the way they are doesn’t mean it should remain so. History is not destiny. The future belongs to the one who can decide his own destiny, through proactive means and keeping God in mind in whatever they do.
Nigerians believe that Nigeria can’t change because the powers that be wont allow it to. This is a fair assessment, but it is also fatalistic. We can agree that Nigerians have a strong resolve and a belief in their abilities as a people to withstand adversity. There is no liberation without struggle in the same breath there is no national identity without national struggle. Nigeria as it is is running on fumes and massive debt, the people living in the country know the realities of living in Nigeria, where you’re one mishap away from losing your livelihood. The country as it is cannot continue in this trajectory forever without God forbid the Nigerian state breaking. Nigeria as country is as resilient as rubber but under high temperatures of heat even rubber has a breaking point. The great revolutionary from Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara once said in an interview; “ i would like to have behind me the conviction that if we maintain a certain amount of caution and organization we deserve victory. You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. in this case non conformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen.. We must dare to invent the future.” Our movement is the ambition to achieve what is thought to be impossible.
Maybe the revolution that we’re looking for in our dear country wont happen in our lifetime, maybe not the next generation, but it will definitely happen, regardless of whatever sentiments we may hold for what dreams the country might have sold us. The question that every Nigerian has to answer is, will you take action and demand your country to make good on its promise for radical change or will you wait and let Nigeria happen to you?
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