Parody of absurdities: Nigeria, nation of great potentials (1)

The key issues in coming to terms with the two principles of this topic, vide Parody and Absurdities are satirical or comic imitations of the challenges of irrational­ity, unreasonableness, incoherence of the Nigerian society, with its failure to attain the greatness that it potentially possesses. This is further manifest in socio-spiritual, disconnectedness and irrationality that have characterized the social reality of our na­tion-state, especially since political independence.

When these are applied to society; the Nigerian society, especially in the key areas of national concerns in contemporary Nigeria, the salient departments of urgent concern will be as follows: political stability or democratic sustainability; the economy and its adjunctive elements such as poverty eradication, unemployment and job cre­ation; the great impediment to economic growth, namely corruption and the battle against it; secu­rity and the crusade against insecurity, terrorism and counter-terrorism/insurgency and counter-insurgency. What political institutions, practices and policies have Nigeria had to imitate and be influenced by in a way that appears unseemly, ir­rational and absurd?

From about the 15th century, the entire world has been engulfed in protracted warfare; political/ physical wars and, more importantly, economic warfare. It is important to note that the two Impe­rialist Wars, commonly and mis-normally chris­tened World Wars, were perpetrated and ignited by the global economic competitions. These Wars were themselves followed by the more subtle but no less ferocious war—the ideological war called the Cold War between the capitalist West and the socialist/communist East. After the termination of that war, or more appropriately, after the disinte­gration of the Eastern bloc, came the dissolution of the world into an economic village, via Global­ization or neo-liberalization of the world, what has resulted in the shrinking of the Globe into a McLu­han’s Global village. All of these battles have car­ried the inherent and absurd contradictions—or simply absurdities which the developing nations have had to parody or imitate in ways that have adorned the garment and embroidery, not just of humour but also of grotesque and grave tragedies.

Let us develop temporary amnesia or death of memory to the human savagery and decimaliza­tion of the black and oriental spheres of the world through the heinous human traffic called the trans- Atlantic and trans-Saharan slave trades and zero in on the outcome of colonialism with the resul­tant events of post-colonialism and nations attain­ments, in whatever manner, of independence. Yet, contemporary struggle today is based on global institutions through which new forms of colonial­ism are inflicted on poor, so-called developing na­tions and countries.

Nigeria is a country of great potentials and possibilities and these make it a great nation that can become the envy of all—a fifth of all black population in the world, the seventh most popu­lous and the seventh biggest producers of oil. The expectation from this topic is how we can shed the present absurdities that have overtaken our nation today and explore how we can truly transform the nation’s economy by growing new visions, dreaming new dreams at a time when the nation’s economy is in a serious distress, laboring, disin­genuously, under an oil mono-culture, to the crim­inal neglect of the nations rich endowments with numerous cultural, material and human resources.

Every society, Nigeria inclusive, must have a national economic vision, and the objectives and strategies for achieving that vision. No democra­cy can be said to be enduring and sustainable if it does not fulfill the economic requisites and expec­tations of its electorate. Professor Charles Soludo (2005) former Governor of the Central Bank es­poused the inextricable link between democracy and economy thus: ‘the state of the economy is the determinant of enduring democracy; but de­mocracy is a key pre-requisite for sustainable economic transformation… economic prosperity sustains democracy whereas widespread poverty and ignorance undermine it.’ Issues fundamen­tal to democracy, such as human rights and the various freedoms and liberties, are concrete and meaningful only if the basic freedom from want, poverty and fear of survival are guaranteed. What is the quality of my freedom of expression if I can abuse the President at the Tafawa Balewa Square (renamed Gani Fawehinmi Square) in Lagos or in the press, while my children cannot go to school because I cannot pay their fees? The Nigerian economy is fraught with visional and structural incoherence. It is difficult for the ordinary Ni­gerian to outline, or explain to himself what the cardinal principles of the Nigerian economy are. What is the character and structure of the Nige­rian economy? If we care to reflect on the obtuse and absurd nature of the Nigerian economy since independence, we will find that it is characterized by decay and formlessness.

It is an economic system in which no substan­tial benefit has accrued, through governance, to the people from the abundant natural resources with which the nation is amply endowed. In a na­tion where mono-culturalism (total dependence on a product, oil) is the inviolable economic or­der, there has been no industrialization, invest­ment or a dependable measure of public sector revenue generation/derivation. There is dismal over-government and an excessive dependence on government. It is a government by patronage, what Soludo again calls a ‘rented-entrepreneurial elite’ of big men without any productive source of livelihood, what the late juju maestro, I.K. Dairo, referred to in a very castigative musical rendition, if rendered in its original Yoruba form, as ‘Direc­tors without office, without work-place

It is an economy in which government is the sole source of (un) productive livelihood and (un) employment. From the Federation Account, where the revenue derived from oil sales flows, sharing goes on without let. There is no provision for capital growth, as no facilitating environment has been provided for business, whatsoever. Em­ployment growth is stifled and revenue generation for government is near-zero This is the absurd state of our comatose social economy, over which a growth agenda has been proposed by the current government, and upon which hope abounds, in huge quantum, in our country presently.

What has become manifest in Africa and Nige­ria in particular is that, while our counterparts in the developing world-China, India, Brazil, and so on, have taken giant strides to mount conscious resistance against the ‘imposition of Western global financial institutions, such as International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Orga­nizations, etc., Nigeria and a number of African countries have stoically resigned to a self-imposed fate and destiny of accepting the Western finance institutions through globalization as fait accompli, with all its absurdities and grotesqueness. Not stopping there, we have perfected the absurdities as the real character of our economy, core values and strategies of existence. As my friend, Mahdi (2014) has observed, rather than comprehending the nature of our under-development or un-devel­opment developing stature and forming alliances with our other developing nations, we are simu­lating and imitating the fact of being a developed nation. Mahdi averred thus; ‘Instead of allying with other developing countries like China and India to resist the imposition of global financial institutions, it (Nigeria) has chosen to collaborate with Northern countries, for example, by willingly accepting Breton Woods Institutions…which have been largely geared towards promoting Western interests’. Mahdi further revealed that ‘while some other developing countries have opted for other alternative development strategies, Nigeria has stuck to development strategies fashioned out by developed Western countries. What is the out­come of our option of latching onto the West?

Developing nations, which held Nigeria in ut­most envy in the late fifties and early sixties – na­tions of the Asia and South-East Asia and Latin America—have moved on to become truly and genuinely developed while we parody, absurdly and retrogressively on. History captures the absur­dity of the reality of our situation and the failure of becoming what our potentials in the 1950s lead the world to expect of us.

• This series, in two installments, is an excerpt from a Lecture Delivered on the Occasion of the Commemoration of Mrs. Oluranti Odutola’s Re­tirement from Lagos State Public Service at Sher­aton Hotel on September 23, 2015.