Reflections on the Nigerian centenary (2)

Over the next centenary, we must become a more open and transparent society. Government must become more open to citizens. This will drive accountability of the managers of state resources to the people on whose behest they are supposed to hold their jobs. A more open society also implies a Nigerian state where the people can enforce their right to know and can freely debate the actions of their government. It implies also a strong press, the modern equivalent of the classic Roman forum, where the people can debate or challenge the actions of the state and its managers. We must consolidate on the gains of our chequered history of press freedom and get the Freedom of Information Act to truly work. Current efforts to use the Freedom of Information Act to enforce better government transparency have not been very successful suggesting that while we need good laws, we will also need strong judicial institutions to get a good law to fulfil its purpose. A more open society will also engender better trust between government and citizens rather than the cynics that citizens have become of government. A more open society is also a critical ingredient for active citizenship which is critical to building strong accountable public institutions.

A more open and accountable society also implies that the incentive to join politics will gradually change from “intent to corner public funds” to true public service. Our electoral choices will increasingly be based on ideas and perspectives of better public service and delivery of public good. This coupled with the strengthening of judicial institutions that sanction corruption and criminal behaviour in governance will drive a better incentive for our politicians to become true statesmen who serve only for the common good. We must build a more active citizenship where the people believe in their capacity to determine how they are governed. A people who believe that their vote does not count, who live in extreme poverty and misery, will probably sell their vote for a bag of rice. This further compounds their poverty and misery as their so-called elected representative becomes more irresponsible knowing that it is not performance but a bag of rice that will win him the next election. And the people in this reinforcing feedback loop fall further and further into despair becoming more and more passive as citizens. We must cut this negative reinforcing feedback loop of irresponsible governance and passive citizenship by ensuring that votes begin to count in free and fair elections. That is one more reason why the recommendations of the Uwais panel on electoral reform must be implemented, especially at this historic turn of another Nigerian centenary.

The plural and diverse nature of the Nigerian state, the need to build a strong unity in diversity, and the constant political rancour over presidential succession make it imperative that we must strengthen our federalism. Current political arrangement with a near balkanisation of the old regions into largely economically unviable states has turned our intended federalism upon its head to make the political centre so strong and the federating states so weak. Hence the struggle to control the centre has become a constant do-or-die affair. What will be our solution to this unintended consequence of our peculiar federalism? How would we build stronger federating states within the nation? Should the current state structure remain what it is or would we need to reconsolidate the states to more economically viable units? All questions as such must be put on the table in a sober introspection on Nigeria’s peculiar federalism over the last century. We must also arrest the increasing astronomical cost of governance. In a next century that will be far more competitive among nation states, where Nigeria will need to play a catch-up for the missed opportunities of the last century, we cannot afford to have governance structures whose costs will weigh down our national development.

With no Nigerian university among the top 5,000 in the world at our national centenary, we must rectify this national embarrassment immediately. There are no great societies without great citadels of learning. Nigeria will not be an exception to this history. Our universities before the decay that started in the late 1980s used to boast of some of the best professors in the world. And professors were so much appreciated and respected. It is no longer so as our disdain for knowledge has become enthroned and we have become a nation that celebrates mediocrity. At this turn of our national centenary, we must restore the pride and honour of higher education while ensuring that it becomes more relevant to our national development. We must develop a public-private partnership model to fund higher education including a small taxation on foreign education remittance to fund our universities. We must also incentivise science and technology training including related vocational education much better as it is far more critical to our national development than other disciplines of higher education.

We conclude our centenary reflections on the challenge of building strong national institutions. We must strengthen the institutions that will enforce the contracts, rule of law and sanction the pervasive impunity in society. At the back of our weak democratic system is the sheer impunity that elections can be rigged, electoral laws can be broken and you can get away with it with the right connections. Elite impunity is also the reason why economic crimes and corruption are committed in public and private sectors because the institutions to enforce sanctions for wrong behaviour are weak or have been captured by a narrow cream of elite in their self-interest. To arrest and tame impunity in society, we will need to make the judiciary and law enforcement institutions independent of the executive and the politicians. The constitutional proposal to separate the office of attorney-general from minister of justice should be adopted at federal and state levels. While the inspector general of police should report to the president administratively, he/she should be appointed independently of the executive for a fixed tenure by the National Judicial Council. The Police Service Commission should also report independently of the executive to a special arm of the judiciary. Corruption must be purged on the bench to ensure that only men and women of honour sit in our hallowed chambers of justice.

We must also have a stronger, truly independent and more active parliament that proactively makes good governing laws for our institutions, while holding them transparently accountable for the delivery of their social charter on behalf of the people. All that is necessary should be done to promote active citizenship beyond the good civil society and human right organisations in the nation. They must hold elected officials accountable for their performance along with a vibrant press institution for free, unimpeded public debate on social governance. Such active citizenship that we had during the Occupy Nigeria movement and petroleum subsidy debate must be revamped and sustained as a critical platform for public accountability and inclusive institution building. Institutional leaders must also adopt a new value system of character, honour and common good as the fibre of new institutional cultures along with the emergence of a non-partisan core of elder statesmen who will serve as moral guardians of society’s value and conscience.

A national centenary is a very serious matter, especially when the history of the nation is a litany of missed opportunities and unfulfilled potentials. We need to introspect deeply and change the current paradigm of the celebration to capture the serious historic nature of the occasion. While there should be march pasts and gala nights, there should also be more serious active citizen debate on what we must do to ensure that Nigeria’s next centenary will be more positively different and take real actions to make it happen. Then future generations would look at us with kindness that we recognised our place in history and that we fulfilled our historic mission of laying a foundation for a better next centenary.

Akanmu writes from Lagos.

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