Middle income trap, coordination failure and rising poverty in Nigeria

I do not write on politics because I do not have special skills in that field. However, I would like to give an opinion on an issue that I found deserving of a comment. Therefore, before I address the object of my column today, let me by way of an obiter dicta, comment on what I consider an undistinguished conduct of some Nigerian leaders that is sure to further the ethnic and regional divides in the country.

Nigeria is facing an election whose outcome at all levels is likely to be on a tinder box with a potential to hurt everyone if handled improperly. Clearly, it appears that whatever the results may be, even winners have to be very careful in picking up their victory. That may sound familiar. The stakes have become higher because the opportunity to steal from the treasury is near; and since nobody gets jailed in Nigeria for stealing public funds, the battle for political office is not only attracting more vicious contenders but becoming more epic. The signs are everywhere. Even mere party congresses are now battles. Such a time calls for caution if truly we dislike the travails into which our country has been plunged over the past several years. I was therefore shocked to see some of those we project as our father scalling for unity along ethnic lines, rather than party and national lines. I expected APC leaders everywhere to call for unity of APC members against PDP and the other parties, and vice versa. To call Northerners or Southerners to unite for 2019 against the rest of the country was a shock to me.

Elections are fought along party lines while civil wars are fought along regional or tribal lines. Is the 2019 election a declaration of war between the regions of Nigeria? Granted that politics is about interests and conspiracies, I thought the interest is that of the members of one party against others. I find it improper for otherwise “respectable national leaders”, especially those who have had the privilege of ruling the country to preach sectional unity in a country that needs harmony and integrationmore than any other on earth.

Nigeria has 36 states that should work together for its development but what one sees is a concerted effort by those who ought to know better, calling for the unity of one section against the other as if the election is a contest between parts of the country. It is hypocrisy when we do this and turn round to tell politicians to put national unity above their personal interest. If we have political parties that cut across the country, how then can one call on one’s clan, region or zone, as if they all belong to one party, to unite against the rest of the country

Clearly, the call for regional or ethnic unity to win elections is evidence that the absence of party ideologies is part of our national problem.Otherwise, it would have been senseless for anyone to call on an entire region or tribe or clan to drop their ideologies and unite along other lines for 2019.Tribe and clan will surely thrive where there is no ideology. I leave it to political science experts to dissect. We should show more love to Nigeria because that is where our future is.

Now to the things am comfortable to talk about – economics and development. It is common to hear many people say, with every vehemence, that economic theories proven to be efficacious everywhere else in the world, do not work in Nigeria.They say it with a sense of finality that chokes off any zeal for intellectual discovery and search for solutions to our many problems. That view is wide-spread, not just among the illiterate but even among the well-educated but not so knowledgeable vocal people thatusually make the first “expert” comment on every economic issues. That wrong notion could pass, if it were presented from the point of view of Nigeria’s many inherent disabilities. Unfortunately, it is not. Those holding that view almost always present it as a weakness of economic theory itself. And that seems to kill the zeal for research. Granted that Nigeria has many “home-grown” problems, patently designed for and peculiar to her, it should not preclude the use of other peoples’ experiences to resolve our domestic challenges.

So let me share some thought on one economic theory I think is at work in our national development failures.It relates to the performance of institutions and suggests that incompetence in one public institution tends to breed incompetence in others, and ultimately policy failure. It is premised on the notion that public institutions are often complementary to one another, in the sense that the action of one induces action, in the same direction and not the opposite,in other public institutions. What this says,in simple terms,is that incompetence or non-performance in one public institution, for whatever reason, has the tendency to induce non-performance in others. It proposes that the inability of economic agents to make optimal choices would invariably lead to a situation in which all economic agents gravitate to an equilibrium position that undermines their capacity – they underperform.This underperformance then manifests in the inability of government to meet societal needs.

Ultimately, government, as a result of the failures dished out from multiple channels of its administrative machinery, fails to coordinate its policies or account for the resources utilized. This is why incompetence should not be tolerated in any form by a country in a hurry to develop. Doing so is a recipe for underperformance of government and invitation to poverty and the progressivelyimmiserating conditionof the people witnessed in many developing countries, including Nigeria.

It is no wonder that the rate of poverty, though exacerbated by insurgency and warped reward system, has continued to rise despite several policy measures against it. Nigeria is one of the countries currently struggling in the quagmire called Middle Income Trap. Countries in the Middle Income category have Gross Domestic Income of between $1005 and $12235 per capita. Nigeria is not only in the lower category of this group (Lower Middle Income) it is also caught in the Middle Income Trap. This is a characterization for countries that grew rapidly, as Nigeria did in the 1980s, reached middle income but failed consistently to get past that level.

As the search for true national identity and leadership continues, Nigeria needs to return to the ideals of institution building. The subjugation of national institution to the whims of the strong men that run them guarantees the suboptimal performance of our institutions and the propagation of incompetence in the country. Economic theory predicts that the result will be mass poverty of the sort with which we currently grapple. Accordingly, policy design and application must anticipate and prevent the democratization of incompetence transmitted by weak institutions run by incompetent but very strong men.

Emeka Osuji