Phenomenon of the year
Every year since 2003, I have published my selection of the person of the year, someone who in my opinion, whether for good or bad (though usually for good) had significantly impacted the Nigerian economy, polity or society in an out-gone year. My nominees have usually been individuals though I have also recognised teams and projects.As I reflected on 2016 I didn’t find much that was positive to celebrate and it didn’t too long before I realised that the year was dominated not by individuals, but by phenomena, unfortunately mostly of which were of a negative hue. Accordingly my nominations this year are for these phenomena, though I may name some individuals who typified their occurrence.
My list of ten phenomena that dominated conversations in Nigeria in 2016 are, in reverse order of importance-success in sports, Treasury Single Account (TSA), war against boko haram, war against corruption, inconclusive elections, Fulani herdsmen, resistance, repression, FX scarcity and recession. Readers will notice that quite a few if not most of these were negative events!
Nigeria did not record many successes in 2016. Some of the few however were in the field of sports. The nation’s women football team, Super Falcons, won the African Women Championships for the eighth time in Cameroun in December. Several individuals also excelled during the year – Victor Moses at Chelsea; Kelechi Iheanacho at Manchester City; Nigerian extract Dele Alli at Tottenham Hotspurs; Odion Ighalo at Watford; and female superstar Asisat Oshoala at Arsenal Women. The Super Eagles led by John Mikel Obi salvaged Nigeria’s desired Olympic campaign with a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics in Brazil; and Rangers International of Enugu staged a remarkable comeback after 32 years, winning the local league. Nevertheless, the country’s sports administration remained in shambles with the rot vividly demonstrated on the global stage as our Olympic team was stranded in the USA and only made it to Rio for their opening game by the grace of Delta Airlines and other sympathizers!
The Treasury Single Account (TSA) remained an-almost mythical innovation for the “wonders” it was performing in Nigeria’s public financial management system with billions of Naira allegedly in the account and corruption reportedly vanquished by the heroic intervention of TSA. The reality remained more nuanced-government may not have prepared sufficiently for its rushed implementation and administrative, IT and infrastructure requirements to ensure efficient execution may not be fully in place. The wisdom of accelerated removal of liquidity from the banking system and the economy as recession approached remains at best, debatable and a moot point is whether TSA was not a contribution to recession!
The government sustained its war against boko haram in 2016 and without doubt recorded some successes, with the year ending with government proclaiming the terrorist group vanquished and expelled from the dreaded “Sambisa Forest”. It is not clear how to situate government current proclamation of victory against its earlier claim towards the end of 2015 that Boko Haram had been “technically defeated” and held no more territory. Whatever the case, realists may be wise to not fully discount continued terrorist operations as events in the first 10 days of 2017 have shown.
The government’s most famous war in 2016 however was the one against corruption. Sceptics continue to note that while the propaganda around the “war” remains quite elevated, actual convictions remain illusory and the charges on the pages of newspapers by the EFCC, DSS and the regime’s spokesmen against sundry corrupt persons are consistently stronger that the evidence marshalled in the courts! The other point sceptics’ often note is the apparent defacto immunity granted to ruling party politicians (and defectors thereto!) against trials for corruption. This latter point was made stark by the summary exonerations granted to regime officials – Army Chief General Buratai, Chief of Staff Abba Kyari, Internal Affairs Minister General Dambazau and Secretary to the Government of the Federation David Babachir Lawal, against what seemed like credible allegations of corruption. The year closed with the supposed General Officer Commanding the anti-corruption forces, EFCC Chairman Ibrahim Magu battling to save his job! There has also been no attention given to the massive corruption inherent in the current foreign exchange markets and the arbitrage opportunities created by the central bank. Nevertheless most Nigerians are pleased that there is some accountability for past corruption and hope that those with immunity today may yet have their own days in court under different future contexts.
The trend towards “Inconclusive” elections dominated the conduct of the state and federal re-run elections under the new INEC constituted by President Muhammadu Buhari under Professor Mahmud Yakubu. Apart from lack of conclusion, the other trait associated with recent votes have been extreme violence and increasing partisan involvement of electoral and security agencies including INEC, Police, Department of State Security and even the army! INEC’s report card in 2016 is dismal – political gerrymandering in Kogi; rampant violence in Bayelsa; inconclusive parliamentary re-run elections in multiple cases; and most notoriously the electoral “civil war” we saw recently in Rivers state.
The so-called “Fulani herdsmen” wrecked havoc in 2016 all across the country, but more so in Nigeria’s North Central (or Middle Belt) regions. The alleged herdsmen, who may more accurately be called terrorists or armed militants, have killed scores, if not hundreds of people in Agatu and other parts of Benue state, and in Plateau, Taraba, Enugu, Nasarawa and Kaduna. The evidence is so gross as to suggest that the scale of the killings, particularly in Benue, Nasarawa and the shocking recent murders and arson in Kaduna state rise to the standard of ethnic and religious cleansing, as they are obviously mostly targeted at Christian and non-Hausa/Fulani populations in Northern Nigeria. The fact that state and federal government have appeared either complicit or at least willing to condone these killings suggests the necessity for international involvement!
The increasing tendency towards state-sponsored or tolerated violence, beyond the specific cases involving so-called herdsmen, have produced the two broader phenomena I outline – repression and in response resistance. In 2016, several communities in Nigeria became officially (and globally acknowledged) victims of brutal repression by the state. The murder of at least 300 Shiites by Nigerian soldiers in Zaria is now a legal and historical fact and more Shiites have subsequently been killed in multiple locations across Northern Nigeria. The state government in Kaduna State has attempted an official proscription of the sect and some other state governments in the North have followed suit, if not in words but by deeds. Unarmed “Biafrans” demonstrated in Eastern Nigeria have been killed and imprisoned on several occasions and until it became evident that our military was unprepared, at least yet, for the Niger-Delta terrain, that population may also have been brutally repressed.
On the other hand, some individuals and politicians have emerged to resist what increasingly resembles a direction towards a totalitarian dictatorship – Femi Fani Kayode, Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state and for a while (his differences with the government appear to have been prepared over), Senate President Bukola Saraki. But for these persons, in 2016, voices of dissent may have been completely quietened!
The last two phenomenon that dominated 2016 are economic and interconnected – The acute scarcity of foreign currency, due initially to the global collapse of oil prices and then worsened by the set of policies implemented by the Central Bank of Nigeria. I have written extensively on this topic and may add no more than to note , sadly that for how government and CBN appears determined to double down on its unsuccessful policy choices.
Without doubt however the phenomenon that dominated 2016 was economic recession. It was on every lip, everywhere. It characterised the whole year – with negative growth of -0.36%, -2.06% and -2.22% recorded in the first three quarters of the year. Even as we await NBS data for Q4, there is little doubt that it will also reveal negative economic growth. The consequences have been tragic for Nigerians – higher unemployment, rising poverty, increasing crime and insecurity, struggling businesses and economic sectors, increased migration domestically and internationally, and rising socio-economic and political risk. Nigeria’s most important policy challenge in 2017 is taking the economy out of recession. The phenomenon of 2016 was recession.
Opeyemi Agbaje