NIGERIA: A HOLLOW POWER

 Nigeria is increasingly out of reckoning, contends Charles Onunaiju

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·         Abuja could not care less: it is habitually dug in a messy and chaotic power play essentially to feather the nest of the contending power elites with the working people featuring only as an electoral accessory to consolidate their grip and further their greed.

·         But no one is thoughtful enough to be concerned, that the unmistakable signs that the country with the largest concentration of the black people on earth, no longer matters in the scheme of global affairs. Not even the West, where it has orbited peripherally since the independence in the 1960s takes her serious anymore.

·         Though, a U.S and NATO orchestrated   theater, the vote to expel the Russian federation from the United Nations Human Rights Council which held recently was a telling tale of Nigeria’s incremental descent to a hollow power. Several other previous weighty developments have pointed in the direction.

·         At the recent UN Human Rights Council vote, 93 members voted to expel Russia. Twenty four voted against it with 58 abstaining. About 19 countries did not show up. From Africa, both Nigeria and South Africa voted to abstain, among other countries in the region.

·         But the next day, after the vote, Mr. Joe Biden, U.S President placed a call to President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa to express concerns that South Africa abstained from a vote Washington considered a morale booster in its proxy war with Moscow. 

·         Despite the content of their discussions, the fact that if there are concerns about where Africa stands on burning global issues and need to be called, it is not the “giant” of the continent and its natural leader, Nigeria but Pretoria.  After all, their understanding of national aggregates, which define a nation’s power and status is a growing and expanding middle class which makes domestic market attractive to foreign Investments, rule-based political process that is credible and predictable, sound fiscal and monetary measures that guarantees fair and level playing economic landscape, self-effacing governing elite that puts the country first. The Nigeria governing elites consider ballooning personal wealth and humongous property ownerships as preeminent measure of the country’s visibility. A former Nigerian President once urged the world to behold the number of private jets swarming the nation’s air space as a measure of its status despite that the country does not even have a national carrier.

·         When the idea of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) was first conceived in 2002, it was basically as part of economic modeling exercise to forecast global economic trends over the next 50 years from then, by Goldman Sachs, a leading global investment banking, security and management firm. The countries noted are strong emerging economies with prospects then to impact the global financial and economic architecture and they did.  In 2006, the countries formalized their membership and when it was time to outreach Africa, it admitted South Africa in 2010 to make it BRICS-Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. 

·         Abuja elites, only long on empty rhetoric about Nigeria’s global preeminence but avoiding any sacrifice that would make it real, could not care less, as long as their stranglehold over the people are assured and their bourgeoning personal wealth and property acquisition is proceeding apace and on a grand scale.

·          By 2014, the acronym MINT referring to Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey was coined by Fidelity Investments, a U.S based asset management firm and was brought to limelight by Mr. Jim O’Neill of the Goldman Sachs who has earlier created the term, BRIC.

·         The MINT was referred to as a group of countries with the potential to realize rapid economic growth based on vital geographic, demographic and economic factors. Though the MINT was never formalized into an organization like the BRICS, but three members of the MINT-Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey went on, to sit at the apex world top economic performers, the Group of 20 or G-20, which has all members of the BRICS, OECD and the group of Seven Industrialized Countries. Nigeria was the only member of the promising countries of the MINT that has no seat on the top Group of 20 economies that currently sets global economic rules and defines its trajectories. Abuja elites could care less. None of these stand in the way of its desperate and primitive accumulation of private wealth, after all by dint of charity and even religiosity, they have managed to set up a ministry of humanitarian affairs that distributes cash equivalent of about five U.S Dollars monthly to maintain just a fraction of Nigeria poorest people in poverty.

·         The President Buhari regime which was oversubscribed with massive electoral goodwill some seven years ago has come full circle, reeking in incompetence and inefficiency while swelling public offices and distributing it to cronies with no commensurate services rendered to the public, in whose name they are created and whose resources are inordinately expended to maintain them. Even as chaos evidently trails its gradual exit from office, the administration maintains an arrogant and inexplicable claim of service to the country. It touts infrastructure constructions. But the Abuja Central city rail intended to link up the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport and the Baro Port in Niger State, both commissioned with fanfare, sits idle and rots away, a testimony to the enduring poverty of ideas and visionless statesmanship that hounds the regime. It is no gainsaying, pointing out that infrastructure is not an autonomous economic category but essentially, an enabler.

·         Every country has the dark corners of its national politics, but there are also grand rules that are clear red lines to offend or transgress.  But none exists here. Reaching to the odious base level is considered the art of clever politicking. Even for the judiciary, interpreting the law especially as it relates to acquiring or losing power has become an art of legal craftsmanship and not in pursuit of the purpose of law which is to serve the orderly regulation of society.

·         Nigeria’s most existential dilemma is that while its fortunes are on a free fall with its international power perception and status incrementally growing hollow and her citizens increasing distraught and hopeless, the characteristic governing elite and their surrogates in business, religious organizations, professions, etc., cannot halt and spare a thought that to reverse the march to principle, there must be trade-offs, especially between their greed and the genuine need of the country.

·         Mr. Onunaiju is a director of research of an Abuja-based Think Tank

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