What to think of the chores ahead
The determination to restore hope to Nigeria’s outlook rests itself on the hope that one day we may start to think seriously about these things.
At the heart of these mutually reinforcing dilemmas…is a conceptual error. Ahead of her victory in 1979, Margaret Thatcher forced a conversation on British politics and people on the role of the state and the private sector, and agreement on the tools for negotiating the transition from an economy led by the former to one led by the latter. Whereas no one suggests Thatcherism as our template for economic reforms, it matters that we are seemingly unable to have these discussions.
Writing a weekly newspaper column in these parts is such an unrewarding chore. It does not pay well for sure. That is if it pays at all. Besides, the cost of inputs ― newspaper/journal subscriptions, pleasant/informed company, and the serene ambience without which all manner of writing is but an insurrectionary act ― rise relentlessly. But that is the least of the problems your columnist faces here.
There is a cyclical, vertiginous even, quality to much of what one may properly hold an opinion on in Nigeria. Like Sisyphus struggling to roll that boulder uphill and finally succeeding just before sunset ― only to have to begin rolling it again by sunrise the next morning ― or that indeterminable space between Tantalus’ lips and the bounties of the fruit tree and lake of water, the commentator on domestic affairs here has only to work at it for five years before his/her pieces start going over familiar territory ― ad infinitum.
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A vicious cycle? A traumatising temporal loop with no known exits? Simply lost, without a GPS-enabled device? Or worse, stranded like Hansel and Gretel, and denied comfort from the trail of bread crumbs by those pesky birds? If nothing else, the last eight years of the Buhari administration have exacerbated this feeling of being stuck in a never-ending carousel. Somehow, managers of the domestic economy contrive to leave the populace feeling that “we have been here before”. Only this time, the disorientation is more severe than the last time.
How much justification is there, then, in the hope that the forthcoming change of government will reset our national coordinates (social, political and economic)? For without a factory reset, chances are that we are doomed to repeat yesterday’s failures all over again. With the caveat that every reiteration turns more farcical in places where the previous ones were tragic.
The feeling of hopelessness derives naturally from the new evidence of horse trading that has been underway since the verdict was given on the outcome of the poll for president. It is not so much that our politics is redolent of a marketplace. It is the nature of goods and services on offer (loyalty, past-due political debts, rather than competence and a commitment to consumer wellbeing) that is worrying.
In the run-up to the inauguration of the new federal government on 29th May, no combination of words has summed up my sentiments on Nigeria’s near- to medium-term outlook (the longer-term outlook is when the Devil is allowed to do what he wills with the last man) than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s suggestion of the possibility that “One should…be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.”
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The feeling of hopelessness derives naturally from the new evidence of horse trading that has been underway since the verdict was given on the outcome of the poll for president. It is not so much that our politics is redolent of a marketplace. It is the nature of goods and services on offer (loyalty, past-due political debts, rather than competence and a commitment to consumer wellbeing) that is worrying. However, in this respect, this is only reminiscent of previous such transitions. It matters, too, that the frantic negotiations currently underway to fill key political offices remain completely ignorant or uncaring of the enormous mountains ahead of the country.
These latter obstacles include the external threat to the country’s security from the slow-motion unravelling of its Sahelian neighbours. Similar threats from within include from forces persuaded that the current organisation of the state is both inefficient because it has never been equitable, and thus needs to be violently re-purposed. The more immediate threat, though, is that to its people’s wellbeing from the damage done by the original (if scatterbrained) economic policies that have been inflicted on the economy over the last two electoral cycles.
Were government finances to get better ― we seem to be producing more crude oil, and while the price of our benchmark blend is lower than it was all of last year, it is better than we have benefitted from in almost two years ― we would in all likelihood be back where the Buhari government left off. In this sense, the determination to restore hope to Nigeria’s outlook rests itself on the hope that one day we may start to think seriously about these things.
At the heart of these mutually reinforcing dilemmas (which, in turn, explain the nation’s continuing failure) is a conceptual error. Ahead of her victory in 1979, Margaret Thatcher forced a conversation on British politics and people on the role of the state and the private sector, and agreement on the tools for negotiating the transition from an economy led by the former to one led by the latter. Whereas no one suggests Thatcherism as our template for economic reforms, it matters that we are seemingly unable to have these discussions. Or better still, to move them from marginal private conversation spaces (where consensus increasingly seems to favour smaller more competent government) to active policy principles.
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This is why debate on the need for domestic reforms continues to be premised on government’s poor finances ― that is why we must dispense with the subsidy on petrol prices and the multiple exchange rate regime. Were government finances to get better ― we seem to be producing more crude oil, and while the price of our benchmark blend is lower than it was all of last year, it is better than we have benefitted from in almost two years ― we would in all likelihood be back where the Buhari government left off. In this sense, the determination to restore hope to Nigeria’s outlook rests itself on the hope that one day we may start to think seriously about these things.
