Once every few years, I host a conference with the aim of bringing together great minds to dialog on specific social problems that are Africa’s bane. Our last conference – attended by citizens of 8 countries – was headlined by Professor Godwin Ohiwerei, a highly reputed American Sociologist of Nigerian descent. Our mission at that conference was to take a look at the problem of corruption in Africa. He opened his keynote address with the following words delivered in a very clear, stern and deliberate tone: “Nigeria is a failed state”. With those words, he sent a very strong message that his mission over the next hour and fifteen minutes was not to make anyone comfortable. Instead, he was ready to tell it exactly as he saw it. I was personally shocked for two reasons. First, I felt that, by making that claim, Professor Ohiwerei had just stepped on a land mine. Second, that is not the way that keynote addresses usually begin. But then, he is a sociologist and the best of them do not beat around the bush and they are as good as anyone at backing up their claims – and Professor Ohiwerei is one of the best. Take, for example, Douglass Massey & Nancy Denton’s work titled American Apartheid: Segregation and The Making of An Underclass. Most people would agree that the term apartheid is not one they would consider to be synonymous with American ideals and values. Yet, I would like to see that individual who would not be moved in some way (either in the direction of consent or intense disagreement) after reading this work that examines the historical, social, political and economic realities of the housing system famously known as “the projects”. Regardless of the place where one falls in relation to this work, it is impossible to argue that this work does not provoke a re-examination of personal and group thought.
Nigeria has been independent for just over 54 years but one wouldn’t know it from the current state of the nation. For several years, I suggested in lectures and private conversations that Nigeria’s problems could be explained as part of the growing pains that lined the path of nation building and development. I did that because I believed what I was saying but I was also somewhat aspirational about Nigeria, believing that it was a matter of time before the country was led in a different, more positive direction. But the Nigeria that I defended and advocated for was the oil-rich nation that had a significant history of positive accomplishments; the Nigeria in which some political leaders were adults who may have enriched themselves through the offices that they held but also actually worked on issues such as education, understood questions of war and peace, potential concerns about religious intolerance, and paid some attention to social problems that had the capacity of derailing even the most seemingly stable communities in a heterogeneous nation like Nigeria. In those days, Nigerians travelled out of the country to be educated only in the most respectable nations in the world. After that, they returned home proudly, determined to play their part in the development of the country that they called home. Those who chose not to return took up residence in the countries where they had studied, or in other countries, but their hearts were never far removed from home. Not very long ago, Nigeria was an exporter of such talented skill that there was major concern about the potential of irreversible brain drain out of the country.
Time was when Nigeria provided financial and technical aid, and even supplied electricity, to many African countries. Nigeria’s role was even crucial to the eventual demise of apartheid in South Africa. But that was then, and this is now. As tends to happen under weak, irresponsible, careless and non-caring leadership, Nigeria is now a shattered country that no longer exports the resources from which it once derived respectability. Instead, Nigeria has become a country that exports fear and death through terrorism to its neighbors. Having cowered and conquered the will of the Nigerian government headed by President Goodluck Jonathan and his ill-equipped and historically corrupt military, Boko Haram began to feel powerful and courageous enough to extend their reach beyond Nigeria’s borders. Kidnapping hundreds of children, killing thousands of Nigeria’s citizens and taking control over large portions of Nigeria’s North were insufficient for Boko Haram, especially as the country’s President allowed them to operate at will. So they began to launch attacks in Cameroon in September 2014 that continue to result in the deaths of innocent people. While Cameroon continues to struggle and lose at the hands of Nigeria’s new export, Nigeria’s President campaigns for re-election without as much as a mention of Boko Haram’s atrocities. While citizens of his country are increasingly fleeing in large numbers and becoming refugees in the neighboring countries of Chad and Niger, the government of Nigeria seems content with the quality of its new export. Just last week, as many as 2000 people were reported killed in Baga – a town in Northern Nigeria. Over a week later, President Jonathan was still being urged to end his silence on the massacre. Rather than act, the Nigerian government has engaged in a losing argument that 150, not 2000, people were killed in Baga – as if a lower number makes it right. Released satellite pictures of Baga before and after the massacre now show that the number of people that were viciously murdered was most certainly in the thousands.
This article is not about the incompetence of the President of Nigeria or about Nigeria’s politics. It is instead about the direction in which Nigeria has been led by people to whom the responsibility of leadership was handed by the people that they were supposed to protect, nurture and respect. When a country that once exuded respectability and stability and exported talent and goodness begins to sow disappointment in its citizens and exports fear and death to its neighbors, it can hardly anymore argue that it is not a failed state because that is what a failed state looks like.