Nigeria is in dire straits. That is no longer news. It is not even news anymore that Nigerians are going through the worst economic crisis of their lives. The very lean Structural Adjustment Programme years – the SAP years – may not even compare. I have been told that the kind of desperation seen now in Nigeria is apocalyptic. It is strange and foreboding. An eerie and very fatalistic despondence gnaws at the very core of the Nigerian psyche.
For many of us growing up in Nigeria from the late 80s and the 1990s, Nigeria had turned into something of an economic dustbowl. Many middle class folks suddenly found themselves thrown down the scale. Many families were destroyed because of the stress on family life and income. I came home one holiday in 1986 from University of Jos, and asked for jam, and nearly got kicked off the dining table by my enraged father who thought my request both insensitive and unintelligent.
Many people began to “Andrew-out,”and these formed the first postcolonial Diaspora of Africans, many of them Nigerians, who began to settle after their studies in the US, UK and Canada, because they could see nothing left for them to return to in Nigeria. Only hardship awaited them on return. In the past, it used to be drummers and a colorful train of family, friends, and well- wishers, who came to the airport and wharves to welcome, and to celebrate their return from “ yonder.” The remarkable Francis Ngwaba, who taught us the African novel, had introduced us to the Ghanaian novelist, Ayi Kwei Armah’s Why Are We So Blest, which made mockery of the “Cargo Mentality.” We made mockery of Cargo Mentality and disdained unctuous materialism. But it was not long before many of us began to travel and lug-in all sorts of things because, indeed, deeply impoverished Nigeria had become even more severely captive to the cargo-cult.
Poverty leads to mental and spiritual collapse. That is precisely what happened to Nigeria under the rule of the Generals. Then we fought. Many of us spent our youth fighting to throw the soldiers out of government and establish civil rule and the republic. The pro-democracy movement, which began on the campuses of the Nigerian universities in the 1980s and 1990s, fought on the premise that a return to democracy will fundamentally change the trajectory of Nigeria. We had seen the collapse of Yugoslavia, and then the Soviet Union.Anew Thing Had Gripped the imagination of the world: it was liberal democracy. A return to democratic rule, we said, will clean our mess, and return Nigeria on to the path of rectitude. We Fought,and fought fiercely. As students we organised undergrounds. We were active pamphleteers both on campus and in the cities. We organised students’ elections as well as defiant campaigns against the military dictatorship. We organised nation-wide campaigns, the most famous being the huge, nation-wide “Ango-Must Go,” and the anti- SAP campaign. It was ENDSARS before ENDSARS.
Many students paid with their lives. Many lost their minds. Many disappeared. Then June 12 happened. Then Abacha. Then in May 1999, Nigeria was returned to what they called “Democracy.” Obasanjo, one- time military leader, became president at the beginning of this so-called 4th Republic. But let me now say, Nigeria turned democracy into a lie. What has happened in Nigeria since May 1999 was never democracy. It was state capture.
The first attack on the trajectory of this republic was made the National Assembly from its inception. Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, a complex man, no doubt, but a real democrat and philosopher of the Republic, tried to establish an independent parliament, in spite of the “banana peels” politics of Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo, who fought and fought, until the legislature was weakened and compromised, and Chuba Okadigbo was removed. That was the end of the Senate.
Obasanjo had strategically defanged the National Assembly. Obasanjo administration’s corruption of the National Assembly set the precedence for the current situation of the National Assembly of Nigeria. It became a paradox, and a rubber stamp parliament from the inception of the 4th Republic. The National Assembly, since 1999, has not risen to its duties to protect the republic, reform and strengthen its institutions, and hold the executive leadership accountable. Obasanjo administration did so much for which the president should have been impeached by the National Assembly. A number of strange deaths, including political assassinations, took place under the administration. The National Assembly ignored it all. They very literally dropped the ball when the Attorney General of the Federation, Bola Ige, was assassinated in his own house in Bodija, Ibadan.
The National Assembly failed to use its investigative power to subpoena all law enforcement institutions, and open an independent inquiry into the gangland execution of the Attorney General of the Federation before all the trails went cold. The inability of the Assembly to intervene, including stopping the spread of terror, and more so the deadly use of state terror, led inexorably to the current state of anomie in Nigeria. Yar ‘Adua and Ebele Jonathan were neither saints nor villains, in the larger scheme of things.
But if Obasanjo administration ran an arbitrary presidency, the Muhammadu Buhari government turned the presidency of Nigeria into a criminal enterprise. This is not a joke. Among the young men I met at the University of Jos in the 1980s was a law student, Okoi Ofem Okoi, as we knew him then, but today’s Okoi Obono Obla. He was a passionate activist, a passionate debater and a passionate Nigerian. Very Rugged Too. Was a little startled when Okoi suddenly appeared as a spokesman for the Buhari government. He had been appointed Special Adviser to the President on Anti-Corruption Matters. Okoi went to town and swung the axe left, right and center. He was bold. He was decisive. He went in blindly. He might have been a tad bit over- dramatic. But he went on the business of anti-corruption like a hound dog. Many people in fact called him out as Buhari’s attack dog. Well, he is certainly not a lubber. But then, Okoi cut too close home. Dangerously close. He began to ferret out the messy business of key regime actors, and would not heed warnings to step away. Then they went after him: framed him and persecuted him. They kicked him out of his job and accused him of forgery.
Very recently, in a series of interviews, Okoi Obono Obla has been making statements about the extent of thievery in the Buhari administration which he alleged has been covered up. Once again, the National Assembly is playing possum. The allegations of corruption reeled out by Mr. Obla requires the National Assembly to invite him, and open up investigations into the alleged deep, treasonable economic sabotage conducted by the last administration. Muhammadu Buhari needs to be investigated. There are too many allegations about the dangerous levels of the lootings of public resources, which allegedly had the authority of Mr. Buhari behind it.
The various allegations are too damning and cannot be singly and individually listed. But key regime figures must be thoroughly investigated over too many things, including huge, unpaid dividends of Nigeria’s oil revenue, which this former President allegedly salted away, and has never accounted to Nigerians. To leave Buhari and his men be, is to kill Nigeria, because everything has been looted. Nigeria is in a terrifying economic state.
With all the deficits that are going to be experienced in the next economic quarter, and with very little response by this current government which not only inherited Buhari’s malfeasance, but has continued on its own, people are going to start dropping like flies on the Nigerian streets. Muhammadu Buhari and his team have severely damaged, impoverished and pulverised Nigeria into what might now be a permanent Talakawa state. His economic and political policy seems clear now: it clearly aimed to reduce everyone in Nigeria, North, South, and Center, to the state of equal poverty and misery. It seems like a very deliberate policy. Yes. And it is true that the National Assembly has a history of distinct complicity with the likes of Buhari to harm Nigerians over the years.
But this National Assembly must commence very broad investigations of the Buhari regime. We need to recover every penny of Nigeria’s resources allegedly stolen under him – including from the alleged looting of the National Alleviation Fund! From oil revenue to funds recovered from other looters, all disappeared in a dark hole allegedly created by the administration. Now, Nigeria is broke. The business of government is in jeopardy. Last week, Nigerians saw what happened in Kenya, where fearless citizens stormed their Parliament.
The Nigerian National Assembly should be wary, because, with the current mood in Nigeria, where many are dying of hunger, running mad from despondence, and growing sick of government inabilities, something bigger than ENDSARS may be brewing. The National Assembly will not be safe for those who refuse to do their jobs: open investigations on the Buhari regime for possible economic crimes against the federation of Nigeria.
Credit: Obi Nwakanma