NOT BY GOVERNMENT ALONE

Sonnie Ekwowusi argues for the strengthening of values

Now that new governments have been inaugurated at the federal and state levels the expectation is that the new governments should easily translate to a new lease of life. I beg to disagree. To begin with, the so-called new governments, in the strict sense, are not new government. What has happened is that the same whitewashed political parasites have either returned to power themselves or through their proxies. And as you know very well, an old wine poured inside a new wineskin still remains an old wine. So the Nigerian political landscape has remained unchanged despite the feverish readjustments of some political seats recently. In any case, the presence of government alone in a country is not enough to improve the wellbeing of the people otherwise Nigeria would have been a paradise on earth. Government and government activities are not synonymous with economic prosperity. In fact government can be a curse on the people. In his epic essay: “Common Sense,” Tom Paine maintained that the English government was evil. “Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness: the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is patron, the other punisher”, he opined.

Obviously Paine was reacting to the peculiar political situation of his time. But we are still in the times of Paine. Government dominates public discourses in Nigeria especially on Facebook, twitter, instagram, WhatsApp platforms, in beer parlours, in churches, mosques, stadia, market places and so forth but government is a big failure in Nigeria. In Nigeria governments boast and

pretend that they can do everything when in actual fact they constitute the roadblocks that inhibit the citizens from reaching their potential or creating wealth for themselves. The truth of the matter however is that many states in Nigeria are ungovernable. For example, since political independence, the Northern region has produced a powerful prime minister, powerful heads of state and presidents yet many Northern states are ungovernable. Today Muhammadu Buhari, a Northerner, is the President of Nigeria. Most political appointments are skewed in favour of North to the disadvantage of the South (South-East enjoys only about 12 appointments; South-South 17, South-West 16, North-Central 16 while North-West enjoys 34 and North-East 25 appointments) yet Northern Nigeria is still defined by poverty and hopelessness. Notwithstanding the constant inflow of huge revenues to the high number of local government areas in the North, grinding poverty is fast grinding the North to a halt. For instance, the North-West is the poverty capital of Nigeria. It is writhing in pains at the moment with about 75% poverty rate followed by North-East with 72% poverty rate. Despite the fact that virtually all our service chiefs are Northerners and despite the deployment of heavy army troops, army generals and army chieftains in the North, Boko Haram insurgents, Fulani herdsmen terrorists, noon-day kidnappers and bandits are continuously maiming and murdering their victims in the North. Today most residents in the North live in perpetual fear. They sleep at night with one eye open for fear that bandits and kidnappers might knock at their doors any time. The Abuja-Kaduna expressway is now encumbered by kidnappers and bandits waiting for whom to devour. The increasing insecurity of lives and property in the North is so scaring that if nothing is not done urgently to tackle it the average northerner might end up fleeing the North to seek succour somewhere else.

Apart from Northern states, some Southern states are equally ungovernable. I have just returned from visiting some parts of Imo and Abia States. I will tell you that Owerri and Umuahia are just like abandoned rickety Igbo villages. On arrival in Owerri, the lady in front of the commercial vehicle I boarded started cursing Rochas Okorocha and the day he was born. The lady was hell bent on convincing us that Rochas is a thief, and, that his only achievement as Imo State governor was the erection of the statues of Zuma, Idi Amin, Sani Abacha, Buhari and others in Owerri. In Umuahia, apart from the beautiful roadside billboards where Dr. Theodore Orji and his son are advertising their faces, there is no other beautiful thing in Umuahia. Any student of history in either Edo State or Delta State will tell you that since the glorious era of Samuel Ogbemudia in the old Midwestern region no governor has achieved anything worthwhile in that region. We can go on discussing failed states in Nigeria but that is not the thrust of this piece.

The thrust of this piece is that it is suicidal putting our destiny in the hands of a few political office holders who have managed to capture the state in order to advance their foolish interests. The Nigerian people should begin to explore their capacity to defend their lives and property against, say, Fulani herdsmen killers or bandits or kidnappers. They should also explore their capacity to create wealth for themselves instead of waiting for the so-called messianic government that will never come. In fact a time has come for the Nigerian civil society to take up important roles in the Nigerian democratic experiments. You will recall that under the governments of Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama, the American political landscape was reshaped to accommodate the work of the traditional and civil organizations and NGOs. That eventually paid off in America. It can also yield fruits in Nigeria if given a try. Considering that most governments in Nigeria have failed, NGOs, churches, mosques, voluntary organizations, etc., should come to their rescue especially in the education and health sectors where governments have woefully failed.

Man does not live by government alone. No nation has survived under a barren government. At the get-together with some Lagos professionals last Sunday, Professor Pat Utomi reiterated Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s idea of cultural pathology, that is, his thesis that culture not politics is what determines the success of any society. Prof Utomi said something which struck his listeners. He said that the Nigerian state is now perceived abroad as a criminal enterprise. Why? Because of lack of character. Because of lack of character foreign companies are no longer investing in Nigeria. The members of international community prefer dealing with other African countries to dealing with Nigeria. I agree completely. The first thing is culture and at the heart of culture are values. No government in which its political actors are fraudulent can save a nation. Therefore if we want to survive as a nation we must first of all strengthen the communally-binding values because the latter are what give rise to the former. Without imbibing and living those binding values which make society tick we are bound to continue drifting.