Nigeria: What hope for 2017?

By the end of 2015, I’d lost all hope that the Buhari administration will bring about any positive economic change in the country. Not that I had much hope in the regime anyway. The Buhari I know from history is an economic disaster, and the only hope some of us harboured was of the possibility of the President getting experts and smart people to run the economy. But that didn’t happen. Instead, we discovered the hard way that the President had an atavistic attachment to the disastrous and antiquated policies he rolled out during his first advent as military head of state some thirty years ago.  He clearly had no interest in history. But like patterns that run in a dreary circle, history did nothing but repeat itself. Then, just like now, the policies not only failed woefully, but also engendered serious economic suffering and dislocations in forms of forex scarcity, economic recession, and galloping inflation and unemployment rates.

The only thing that gave me a glimmer of hope for 2016 was the administration’s fight or war against corruption.  History has not been very clear on that aspect of the President and I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt.  Early on and going by the President’s famous body language and even his speeches, the war on corruption was going to dominate 2016. While being cautiously optimistic on the prospects of the government really fighting corruption this time, I had worried that given the personal disposition of the president, the war will just be about throwing people into jail and recovery of stolen assets –  as good as those are – and that the president will likely resort to extra-legal means to achieve his aim. I had feared that the manner the war will be fought will further weaken, if not, destroy state institutions.  I therefore counselled that the emphasis should be on building and strengthening state institutions since their absence or weakness is at the root of corruption.

But my hopes were misplaced. It turned out those who had accused the president of being temperamentally unfit to fight corruption were correct.  To him, only his political opponents are corrupt. His party members, kitchen cabinet or even family members cannot be corrupt. That is why despite firm and undeniable proofs of corruption by the Chief of Army Staff, Gen Tukur Burutai and interior minister, Abdulrahman Dambazzau, the strong accusation that his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, accepted a N500, 000 million bribe from MTN, that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir David Lawal diverted funds from the Presidential Initiatives in the North East and awarded phony contracts to his company, and that Rotimi Amaechi, his transport minister attempting to bribe judges, the president has continued to look the other way and even defend their innocence. Those close to the President, according to Farook Kperogi, a US-based scholar, avers that he places undue premium on personal loyalty which causes him to ignore, excuse, and even defend the corruption of his close associates.

But evidences of this terrible kind of sentiments abound in history. Buhari as a military ruler so detested stories about corruption in government that he forbad journalists, via the infamous decree 4, from reporting anything that could embarrass the regime, even if it were true. Stories also abound of the mind-boggling corruption of his close aids that were swept under the carpet when he was Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF). These, coupled with his invidious and clannish style of rule that tends to favour some sections of the country more than others, completes the tale of a president who will only deepen the problem of corruption rather than eradicating it as he promised Nigerians.

What then should Nigerians expect in the coming year? Not much I will say. Not even the proposed cabinet reshuffle will inspire hope because the president and his antiquated beliefs and policies ultimately will stand in the way of genuine reforms. But what the minders of the government can do to help the country is to prevent the President and agencies from destroying Nigeria’s already fragile and weak institutions. They are the main building blocs for success and Nigeria will be grateful if the president leaves the institutions they way they are rather than weaken or destroy them.

To be sure, institutions are established laws or practices and are a sine qua non for societal progress and sustainable development. In fact, for Francis Fukuyama, the development of a capable state that is accountable and ruled by law is one of the crowning achievements of human civilisation. It is the absence or weakness of institutions or, more appropriately, a capable state that is at the root of corruption. In Nigeria and other developing countries, corruption serves largely to grease the wheels of inefficient bureaucratic government machines leading to efficient outcomes. Common sense therefore dictates that the first step towards the development of society is the strengthening of state institutions.

This, however, is not the case with Nigeria. Under the guise of fighting corruption, the government and its agencies take liberty to weaken or even destroy established state institutions. From Obasanjo to Yar’Adua, to Jonathan and now Buhari, the stories have been the same. But at no time has any government shown absolute contempt for the rule of law and order and state institutions like Buhari is doing now. The courts, the central bank and other agencies that were guaranteed independence by the constitution have suddenly woke up to find their independence usurped by an overbearing president who claims superiority of knowledge over everyone just on the basis of winning an election. But like it happened in 1985, he may wake up to realise that all he succeeded in doing was to create the environment for corruption and impunity to thrive in the country.

Christopher Akor