Rebuilding the North

      When a needle falls into a deep well, many people will look into the well, but few  will be ready to go down after it. African proverb. 

A survey of the causes and consequences of the systemic collapse of northern communities is a most depressing endeavour. There must be tons of high quality research in many libraries on a whole range of subjects dealing with the past, the decline and the collapse of communities that make up the territory that was colonised as Northern  Region of Nigeria, and is now fragmented into nineteen geo-political units that together generate positive or negative sentiments under the political term, North. This is the region with arguably  about 60% of the nation’s population, 70% of its land mass, 80% of its solid minerals, 70% of its food production,75% of its desperately poor and  95% of its Internally Displaced Persons.

 It houses most of the escalating conflicts that have taken thousands of lives, a  huge, young population that includes about 13 million children attending severely underdeveloped Islamic-type schools, millions  of other young people attending western-type schools that do not adequately  prepare them  for a productive future, a large percentage of a female population which exists entirely outside any type of a  productive economic activity,  and a predominantly peasant, agrarian economy without even a rudimentary agricultural industrial base. Its class structure has undergone massive change. Its previous political and economic elite has been supplanted and pauperized; its class formation processes weaken the growth of a strong middle class, and its lower classes are made up of  a peasantry and urban poor with tenuous relationships to the state and the economy. Its plural  ethnic and religious nature makes it vulnerable to divisive influences and conflicts from political and economic competition involving elites. This region currently faces multiple threats to its security, the most pronounced of which could fatally cripple the capacity of the state to survive and provide even the most minimal of service to citizens.

This is the region that is a liability to itself and the rest of the nation. It cannot survive all its weaknesses and liabilities in a incremental manner within a democratic process that increasingly weakens, rather than strengthens it. There are a number of fundamental prerequisites if it  must be salvaged, secured and placed on a path to  sustained recovery. Of these, the most significant is what  happens to the Nigerian state in the next decade. There are  serious threats to the continuous existence of the nation as one entity  from a combination of pervasive poor governance, widening regional differences in economic fortunes, absence of a strong political elite with a shared  view on the future, rising sentiments in support of balkanization and the sheer weight of bearing challenges that outweigh capacities to resolve. If Nigeria survives as one, it will be largely because its political system succeeds in creating major spaces for growth and development of parts of the nation at radically different paces and manageable but different directions. The nation will need to deepen economic interdependence and political inclusiveness, while it allows component parts to design  systems and processes that reflect their basic interests as Nigerians and people who have particular needs that are important to them.

There is a case to be made for the continued existence of Nigeria as a single united entity, but it should not,  and cannot be at the expense of any part. Balkanization will be messy and will not solve any of the  major problems of any parts of the country. Therefore, major structural issues which represent threats to unity and progress of all component parts need to be addressed. The North has the most to gain from a holistic review in the manner the nation is structured, and its elite and thinkers should begin to design options for a future that may involve negotiations with other elites and leaders and an outcome that will give the region a number of advantages. First, it may have an opportunity to re-design its political and social structures  to address the quality of governance, manage pluralism better and give space to its core values in the manner citizens live. Second, it will enjoy greater leverage in developing its human and economic resources for the benefit of its own people. Third, it will relate better with other parts of the nation, as a valuable partner that contributes to the development of the nation, and a region that is vital to the development of other parts of the country. Fourth, it will be better-placed to address its own security by designing more appropriate structures and processes for detection, management and resolution of conflicts.

The North needs to discover a means of engaging its multiple interests and groups in major and productive discussions first. The region is losing its cohesiveness and identity at an alarming rate, and the manner the political process operates does not help the vital goals of enhancing constructive pluralism and peaceful co-existence. The places of religion and ethnicity in particular have to be placed on the table and addressed openly and responsibly. No Muslim or Christian feels that current laws and local environments allows them full expression of their rights to live in accordance with their faith. Conflicts involving ethnic groups are basically about resources, and this will only be dealt with by a combination of real economic progress that benefits all groups, and governance that rests on pillars of justice and equity. Secular systems and the democratic process are creating huge pockets of frustration and conflicts, both because they are substantially isolated from basic values of a large section of the North, and because they create conditions that deepen religious and ethnic conflicts as elites compete by exploiting them. If the North cannot speak to itself, it cannot engage the rest of Nigeria from a position of strength, or at least a respected equal. As things stand, the rest of Nigeria thinks the North is weak, divided and poor enough to be exploited to serve their interests. This is not entirely incorrect, although the rest of Nigeria itself is not a shining example of unity and virtue.

The North is a fascinating paradox. Even on its own, it has the potential to be one of the most developed countries in Africa, but it has to address the roots of its decaying social values and structures, crippling and widespread poverty and widespread insecurity. It is poor in many critical areas, the most damaging being its poverty of leadership. Its elected officials have all the power to make a difference, but they lack capacity, respect of the people and the integrity to lead genuine quality change. The rest of its shrinking elite has retreated into indifference and lamentation  in the face of bitter political competition that take no prisoners. The North needs a new brand of leaders that will lead with competence and an understanding of the fundamentals of integrating deeply-rooted traditional values and structures that have been weakened with processes, and systems that are needed to create a modern economy and society in the North. It needs the space to allow governance that thrives on the values of justice and respect for leadership. It must expand the political space if democracy is to have any future in the region. It needs leaders who will plan for a future, and will not be tied to four- year circles spent on pillaging resources and fighting off opposition desperate to do the same.

For the North, time means everything. Even if the Buhari administration will break the back of the Boko Haram insurgency and bring an end to multiple threats that exploit the absence of effective governance (and this is unlikely given the current disposition of the President and the tendency to punish criminals and security forces with slaps on the wrist), rebuilding social and economic structures and undertaking difficult and comprehensive political engineering that will give the region a new lease of life will need the involvement of people currently outside the power loop. Northerners who are pained at the predictable decline of the North need to get involved in the political process, not to replace current leaders, but as catalysts for genuine and long-term change

Time and tide for Buhari

Truth and morning become light with time. African proverb.

Watching President Muhammadu Buhari deliver an address on the brand new Democracy Day, you will not be alone if you experience a twinge of sympathy for him. The image of a tired-looking and aged President laboriously reading a prepared speech that attempts to capture achievements in five years of leadership at a time much of the nation is looking elsewhere and engrossed in matters far removed from celebrating democracy was sad. There must have been nuggets of solid achievements somewhere in those scores of paragraphs, but they would have been smothered in moods and other contemporary matters which made beating the drums an unattractive or even a hazardous venture in most parts of the country. Those who dragged themselves away from other burdening concerns to give him an ear came with a shopping list, and they duly noted what he said that is fiction, what he should have  said but did not, and what should not have been said, but was.

Time, records and circumstances had combined to make the President's Democracy Day speech a thoroughly forgettable event, unless you are the type that bears grievances beyond their expiry dates. First, Nigerians had disagreed with each other so passionately over the change of Democracy Day from 29th of May to 12th of June,  that  many feel it had lost much of the shine it has garnered for close to 20 years. A political gamble to court an ambivalent political constituency had further alienated another support base  and offended traditional opponents who have ready-made  criticisms long before Buhari even contemplates a decision. Then, many elements combined to make it difficult to switch on the celebratory mood.COVID-19 is settling down to the role of the major facilitator of a new normal, particularly at a time when the federal government had handed the population to States, which in turn has handed the fates of citizens to themselves.

The outlines of its damage to the economy are being felt around, with dire doom and gloom being let out more to make excuses for the government than to trigger a momentum to create a less painful transition into a pandemic economy. Millions of citizens are counting the values of lockdowns and restrictions against permanent losses and setbacks in their livelihoods. People hear of juggled figures that are sold as revised budgets to be funded with  huge borrowed deficits, and they wonder what is new in the entire response of the federal  government to an unprecedented crisis. There are some answers in  hints that government is revisiting questionable advise to lay off thousands of workers, but jumbo pays and privileges of public office holders will remain intact. A private sector with chronic split identity is feeling its way around contexts that make planning beyond the certainty that recovery will be painful and long-term recovery difficult to manage. Millions of people whose livelihoods in the informal sector have been severely disrupted or wiped out will move from the marginal to the desperate category.

As President Buhari pored over a long speech on the achievements of his administration, rural folks in many parts of the North who had stood by him twice during challenging elections were being slaughtered, robbed, raped and displaced by bandits, rustlers and kidnappers. There was a paragraph or two on security of citizens and the state, but it is doubtful if villagers in Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna and Borno had heard him claim near-total victory over Boko Haram, and his firm resolve to eliminate the terrible blight that really came to life under his watch. If they had stopped running away or paused from burying their dead to listen to a man they thought could do no wrong, they were more likely to be even more dismayed. There were mentions of sympathy for them, but the President’s speechwriters appear to be running out of adjectives to describe what Buhari wants done with bandits, if they are caught. In his home state, youth take their angst to highways, stopping traffic until everyone hears their complaints and invocations to God over what  they want done to the President. If bandits paused from celebrating victories over defenceless and undefended villagers  to listen to a President with a past that could be summarized by one word, tough, they may have had a hearty laugh at promises to unleash the might of the air force, army and police against them.

All in all, things are not looking up for President Buhari’s leadership and the nation. In one week when it was planned  that the nation was to put on its best and dance around  a porous  democratic system, the mood was deeply mournful and uncertain. Excuses have lost their potency a long time ago, and most Nigerians cannot even remember a Jonathan era marked by bombs and barbarism of Boko Haram and loud incompetence in governance. President Buhari of old will flinch at the remotest attempt to compare his records with Jonathan’s. Now he may not even stir at accusations from northern peasants facing a Buhari-era menace that the Jonathan-era was golden in comparison. Powerful politicians looking for additional angles to beat opponents now understand that President Buhari will not lift presidential fingers to save them or the party from major setbacks. The melodrama in his party being played out in Edo State says a lot to suggest that when he said at his inauguration that he belonged to nobody, and he belongs to all, what he really meant was that no one should bother him with their problems.

These comments are painful, but they are not unfair. The President does  not help himself with his preference for insularity,  possibly a personal trait that makes him retreat into obscurity when things go wrong, unless photographs are involved, and to leave tired spokesmen and speechwriters  fighting way below  their weight to assume responsibility for explaining away realities, unwittingly creating the impression that President Buhari  really prefers not to know what is wrong in the country. How else does one make sense of the response of one his spokesmen to the scathing criticism of the Northern Elders Forum over the failure of the President to secure northern rural communities, a response that says more about the people entrusted by the President to help him run the country than critics who are raising voices to new heights? Another spokesman defends the woeful record of the administration by relocating blame on community leaders of victims.

Cultural norms and propriety dictate that we should allow family heads to lead their families, and to allow respectable distances between us and the manner they do this. When you are President, however, this courtesy is difficult to extend, particularly when the management of the household spills into the realm of governance and says a lot about crisis management capacities of the leader. When Patience Jonathan held court in the Villa complete with media coverage to harass government employees from Borno State into telling her whether Chibok girls really were abducted, or someone was trying to make her husband look bad, the nation marked the tragicomedy as a new low. Even making allowances that First Ladies are difficult to keep at their corners, the public outings of the President’s wife on issues relating to his choice of aides, relationships with extended family and grey areas in public policy represent genuine subjects of study in the manner powerful leaders manage difficult domestic matters, so that they do not become public and attract attention to strengths and weaknesses. The latest altercation involving his family members and the police, and the decision he took days thereafter to cause for an investigation are a most unflattering testimony to the President’s willingness to nip problems in the bud. There are parallels between managing your home and running a country.

There could still be time for President Buhari to turn things around, but he has to use every minute outside his comfort zone to make a difference. His strongest asset was a huge chunk of the population that had an amazing faith that he could stop rots and change their lives for the better. Those who are close enough, should let him know that those people are walking away from him.

Buhari Presidency: A Comment

"All well-governed states and wise princes have taken care not to reduce the nobility to despair, nor the people to discontent". N. Machiavelli,1469-1526.

How does one provide a fair assessment of five years of the Buhari presidency? A fair answer to this question is likely to be: one does not. The idea that you could undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of an administration and put it out there as a verdict that should be applauded by a large section of the public as a great balancing act is  popular, but simplistic. Yet it is undertaken with such enthusiasm that you have to wonder what its objectives are. It certainly does not impress the administration if your assessment punches large holes on its record. Its opponents will not tolerate attempts to give credit even where it is patently deserved. There is an audience out there that may be the target of all the effort to evaluate the quality of life in a country  for a period of five years, but this audience would have made up it mind long before it is lambasted with figures,  facts and fiction from all sides. Listening to the President’s side make his case, you get the impression that he believes that almost all criticisms are unfair and predictable partisan propaganda, and , more significantly, the nation should actually be grateful for the favour of a Buhari leadership.

This is not a contribution for or against the administration, and no apologies are offered if it appears otherwise. It is an attempt to make the case for the nation to move beyond lamentations and opportunistic quarrels and for the leadership to assume its role with greater sense of responsibility and sincerity, or the country will sink deeper into uncertainty and  insecurity by 2023. Part of the problem here is that President Buhari is not given to shifting ground. The impression is created that he genuinely believes he has largely vindicated the faith of Nigerian voters with the two elections he won, and if there are shortfalls, they should be accounted for by  a democratic system that holds him back from repeating his  performance when he overthrew a democratically-elected government and acquired his reputation for fighting corruption without gloves. He may have won his first election (and defeated an incumbent) with just that image, but not until three attempts during which the nation was driven nearer to where the appeal for leadership without a  stain of corruption was what was needed to win an election.His second term was more a verdict on his opposition than an endorsement of his record during his first term.

So, in spite of registered failures to translate an  image into substance, it was still good enough to win him his second term. This is not to suggest that he does not recognize problems and challenges, but the challenges that got him to stress and strain were mainly related to being elected President. His governance style is entirely shaped by personality of an extreme conservative, the type that believes changing styles or pace is unnecessary and a sign of weakness. This fundamental contradiction around a basically conservative person who acquires power on the back of deep, popular yearning for real change is one of those peculiarities of our politics. Clues for understanding it may lie in the deep recesses of the historic injustice which the poor have borne from past leaders and elites; the yearning for genuinely honest leadership by most Nigerians; as well the outlines of the influence of region and religion in the manner we approach political issues.

Is there enough fight left in President Buhari to reduce the gap between what the nation requires to be done, and where he appears to be content to draw lines? The nation had better hope there is, because the popular narrative that Buhari has three years to leave the Villa is misleading. In real political time, he has less than two years to  resist the alarming slide into pervasive and endemic insecurity, respond to the challenges to a receding economy made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, improve the bonds that hold the nation together and restore hope that the democratic process that gave him the power he worked hard for can actually address needs that go beyond those of leaders. The democratic process will lose many roots if the Buhari's presidency comes to an end leaving majority of Nigerians thinking that it does not yield  leaders who can improve lives.

Those who think recording achievements and looking for clues for legacies are important should note that at this stage, President Buhari’s legacy is being written in blood and tears of innocent villagers by bandits and insurgents. Most of the people who die  or are severely distressed by  organized criminals are the same people who showed  the highest degrees of affection and faith in the person and leadership of President Buhari. Villagers from Niger, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna, Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, Plateau and Nassarawa States do not understand the intricacies and challenges of providing them with security against organized criminals and each other, but they do understand that they have a president whose responsibility it is to do so. They did not wake up one tragic morning to find their lives and livelihood entirely at the mercy of criminals. Some had lived with it before 2015, but had believed that President Buhari would put an end to it immediately and permanently.Many others knew real tragedy only under a President with the reputation for being tough on all matters that affect the weak and the poor.

He did sweep insurgents that bombed mosques and churches and triggered long military checkpoints from towns and cities, but the insurgency drew lines around total defeat  and continues to feed off its resistance against a state under the leadership of a former military general. Others had watched a creeping threat from bandits, kidnappers, rustlers and ethnic militias from the distance until it reached them. Today thousands of villagers are living as internally displaced people in areas that had known no violence for close to a century. They are farmers with no farms to cultivate. Now they are just a burden that cannot be borne by any level of authority, and no one is in a position to say if or when they can resume normal lives of feeding themselves and a nation that relies heavily on what they produce.

There is something the Buhari administration can do that will improve the quality of its legacy. This is to operate with one overarching philosophy  behind everything it does henceforth: damage control. There is  the inherent damage on the nation by a hugely expensive and wasteful political system  that is incredibly easy to abuse.To leave the basic framework the way he found it will be a great disservice to a nation that gave him mandates twice to change systems and processes.He should attempt to reduce the damage that the administration inherited, particularly endemic corruption and weakening institutions of the state.Not  to do so will be registered by history as his biggest failure.He has to address  damage caused by his administration’s  avoidable inertia, complacency around decision-making and failure to explore the more responsive elements of a democratic process that will not be easily reduced to the personal conveniences of a president. Then he has to address damage from opportunistic elements and tendencies that now threaten national security and political cohesion.A weakened and insecure nation will provide ample grounds for those who believe their fortunes lie outside it.The 2023 elections will test the resilience of the polity, but threats to it can be reduced by deliberately taking on those irritants that could make winning or losing the next elections less attractive motives for threatening national co-existence.

It is important that President Buhari understands his place in history very clearly. Right now, the mystique around him has faded thin, and simple folk who thought there was nothing he could not do are bitter that they either over-rated him, or he has badly let them down deliberately. His enemies may rejoice at the demystification of a man and the nation’s loss of eight years, but majority of Nigerians will hope that he will not be overwhelmed by the state of our existence today to resign to  waiting out his time. Countries do not stand still. They improve, regress or decay. If President Buhari cannot turn  the tide, he should work towards slowing it.