Nigeria marked sixty years of independence with pomp and ceremony despite a Covid-19 pandemic two weeks ago and as Goddy Ikeh writes, Africa’s most populous country is still an undivided country despite punching below its weight.
At independence on October 1, 1960, Nigerians were full of expectations that the new nation will meet their basic needs of shelter, education and economic prosperity and even extend its abundant mineral and agricultural resources to the other less endowed African countries.
Although some of these lofty missions were achieved, others are yet to be realised thanks to the 1966 political crisis in the south-west, the military coups that followed and the three-year civil war with the bloody secessionist Biafra that lasted from 1967 to 1970 and killed millions of people.
Politics
Believers in Nigeria as a country elect to see the bright side.
They say it is in itself a huge achievement that Nigeria has remained a united political entity despite the multiple existential threats which exposed serious cultural, religious and social fault lines.
There were times during the first few years of independence when the country seemed to be tottering on the brink of disintegration.
Threats to its cohesion remain to this day but who would have thought that Nigeria would remain undivided as it clocked 60 in this day and age when the fault lines have grown wider, says one Nigerian who had seen it all – from colonialism to independence, the separatist civil war, the oil boom, intermittent military rule, a return to democracy and a violent insurgency in the northeast.
Nigeria has used its mammoth diplomatic and military weight in a turbulent West Africa where various forms of interventions have helped restore normalcy in troubled states such as Liberia, Sierra Leone and most recently The Gambia.
Nigeria has almost single-handedly transformed Ecowas into an effective bloc worthy of emulation by other regional groupings around Africa.
In the wider world, Nigerians and their successive governments have contributed handsomely to the international resolution of disputes and crises and helped shape global science and technology, and positively impact cultural diversities and popular culture.
Nigeria landed Africa’s first gold in an Olympic football tournament during a period when the country produced some of the world’s most illustrious and best admired sportsmen and women.
Since the late 1990s Nigerian music and cinema have been taking the world by storm, leaving these two industries the country’s finest contribution to global popular culture.
Nigeria’s multi ethnicity has shown that diversity can work despite obvious challenges.
Economy
This country of close to 200 million people is still a work in progress especially from an economic perspective.
Its economic development efforts and outcomes since independence have been a mixed bag of fortune from time to time and recent studies on the economy have revealed the effects of salient political and economic policy landmarks and anti-development syndromes such as poor leadership, widespread corruption, political cultism, dominant external influence, high cost of governance and security challenges.
The studies observed that although Nigeria is politically independent it has not been free to harness its resources and lift its citizens from staggering poverty to a elevated level of socio-economic development.
In general, the correlation between available resources and development outcomes in Nigeria has been perverse.
Market fundamentalists pressurized the country to abandon its planning strategy, while at the same time discouraging the necessary capital investment to ensure sustainable growth and development.
Accordingly, the situation was exacerbated by military interventions which aggravated political instability undermined democratic governance and stymied economic growth stability.
But since 1999 when this aberration was put in abeyance together with its stressful and corruption-ridden neo-liberal economic management system, opportunities have been created for economic emancipation and sustained growth.
The outcome was an emerging economy with a relatively stable exchange rate, fairly predictable macroeconomic environment and good prospects for growth.
The GDP growth rate which was only 1.1 percent in 1999 recorded an average growth of 5.4 percent between 2000 and 2004 and rose to 6.9 percent in 2005.
Value added in manufacturing grew at an average of 8.8 percent between 2000 and 2004.
Capacity utilisation rose from about 34 percent in 1999 to over 53 percent in 2007.
Furthermore, corruption Nigeria’s perenial nemesis is being vigorously tackled with an intensity never witnessed before.
By 2013, Nigeria was named the largest economy in Africa with GDP of over US$500 billion.
It was also the continent’s biggest oil exporter with huge oil and gas reserves.
The economy recorded considerable acceleration in growth; real GDP grew by 6.3 percent, 7.6 percent, and 7.4 percent in 2009, 2010, and 2011 respectively.
Despite these figures, poverty remains persistently high, and the structure of the economy is that of a typically underdeveloped country.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was worth 448.10 billion US dollars in 2019, according to official data from the World Bank and projections from Trading Economics.
It speaks volumes about Nigeria punching below its economic weight that its GDP value represents just 0.37 percent of the world’s economy.
In 2016, the Nigerian economy slipped into recession and was able to recover a year later.
However, Nigeria’s pioneer and foremost chamber of Commerce, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) had in its medium term outlook for June, 2020, predicted a bleak short medium term for the country due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy.
The President of the LCCI, Mrs. Toki Mabogunje said last June that the pandemic had resulted to an unprecedented collapse in commodity prices, capital flight, turmoil in the capital market, supply chain disruption across sectors, and destabilisation of commercial and economic activities.
“Hence, we resonate with the International Monetary Fund’s position on a looming severe contraction of the economy by year end 2020,” she said.
However, according to her, the current COVID-19 experience presents ample opportunity for the government and policymakers to pursue structural reforms and put in place home-grown policies to engender a rebound of the economy.
Insecurity
The worsening security situation in Nigeria has never been so bad in its 60 years as an independent nation.
But what is disturbing to many Nigerians is the failure of the federal government to listen to the cries of the people to rework the security architecture and make a clean sweep of its current service chiefs, who have over the last five years failed to make the desired difference in the war against the Boko Haram insurgency and rescue the traumatised nation.
Many Nigerians believe that the country has become more insecure than at any other time in its bittersweet history.
Aside from the ongoing insurgency, the marauding activities of herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers leaving a heavy toll on lives in the North-central and North-west of the country.
Against all expectations, it is taking ages to deal with the question of insecurity by a military which in itself is hamstrung.
Conclusion
Perhaps nothing sums up the situation in Nigeria better than President Muhammadu Buhari’s own words during a speech marking the 60th independence anniversary.
“The underlying cause of most of the problems we have faced as a nation is our consistent harping on artificially contrived fault-lines that we have harboured and allowed unnecessarily to fester”.
He added: “We need to begin a sincere process of national healing and this anniversary presents a genuine opportunity to eliminate old and outworn perceptions that are always put to test in the lie they always are.”
|
|
|
|
GIK/APA