The Debt We Owe Nigeria
That so many of our professionals are leaving Nigeria for societies where things work and where they believe their families can be assured of a secure means of livelihood is a normal human aspiration. I understand the frustrations arising from government failings and dwindling opportunities pushing this drift, especially for our young men and women. But I fail to understand why members of my generation and those before us would join the chorus that we owe Nigeria nothing. That is not true.
It is important we deal with this transferred aggression against a country that has been serially raped and disdained by those to whom it provided a ladder of opportunity. Even our young people, especially those born with privileges and second passports, are perhaps where they are today because of what Nigeria gave their parents. My appreciation of this fact was fired by a tweet last week from an American, Lacy M. Johnson, professor and founder @FloodMuseum who wrote: “When I left grad school in 2008, I owed $70k in federal student loans. (A poor choice I wouldn’t make again). For the past 11 years, I’ve been making payments (except for a period of under employment), totaling about $60,000 in payments. Guess how much I still owe: $70,000.”
That opened a floodgate of revelations by other Americans. The first respondent commented: “I graduated from law school in 1978 at the age of 27. I don’t remember the sum total of the loans (7 years’ worth) but I remember making my last payment at age 39, some 12 years later. I cannot imagine doing it in today’s world. This has to repaid the country for its largesse? change.” Next came Liv Covfefe who tweeted In a nation where public officials excel only from @liddlemocovfefe handle: “Have two at lamentations, the Minister of Labour and bachelors and a law degree. Actual tuition was Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, said on Tuesday in the neighbourhood of $100K for all three. I that no fewer than 100 million Nigerians are owe close to $200k now. It’ll never be paid off without decent jobs. “Nigeria is over 200 million unless I win a lottery.” And then @saturnineba: and about 60 percent are youths who need “Started out owing $120k. 7 years, never missed employment. Unfortunately, only 10 percent have a payment, got it all the way down to $137k!” decent jobs.” Despite this pathetic picture, our
Until perhaps two decades ago when we began public officials continue their binge spending. establishing private universities, all universities in With the approval of his $29.96 billion loan Nigeria were publicly-owned and tuition-free. Many request, President Muhammadu Buhari has in of today’s big men and women were products of return approved a whopping sum of N37 billion these universities. In fact, those who graduated (more than $100 million) for the renovation of the before my generation were even fed free of charge! National Assembly. That is about 4% of the debt So, since independence, Nigeria has produced being procured, just to renovate one government university graduates who paid nothing for their edifice! And with money involved, whether they education, yet feel no sense of obligation to the are APC or PDP, our lawmakers in Abuja speak public purse from which it was funded. If we the same language and worship the same god; did, Nigeria would not be what it is today. Sadly, they are altogether, moving to the Next Level! the more some politicians savage Nigeria—even Yet these examples do not even compare to if they contributed to the rot—the more popular the waste of subsidy payments that continue to their opinion, because of the erroneous assumption gulp trillions of Naira every year or the madness that whichever government happens to be in that goes in the name of governance in many of power at a particular time is to blame. the states. With almost a million children out of
Meanwhile, the implication of the thread on school, Jigawa government yesterday prioritised student loans in the United States is that were the construction of 95 mosques across the state we to be born in those countries we all admire so above everything else. All these are choices made much, our opportunities might have been limited by human beings for which we blame ‘Nigeria’. by the prevailing circumstance concerning the Following the killings of 39 persons by bandits in funding of university education there. According Tabanni, Allikiru, Gaidan Kare, Kursa, Dankilawa, to a report, “more than 44 million Americans have Ruwan Tsamiya and Gidan Barebari villages in outstanding student loan debt, which has become Rabah Local Government of Sokoto in July last one of the biggest consumer debt categories” while year, I visited the state. In my trip to the affected all student debt in the United States “now totals area, I was accompanied by Mallam Abubakar more than $1.5 trillion.” In the United Kingdom Shekara, the Director-General, Media and Public where more than £16 billion is loaned to students Affairs to Governor Aminu Tambuwal. As I each year, outstanding loans at the end of March marveled at how kind nature has been to us 2019 reached £121 billion while the government as a country and agonised over mismanaged forecasts the value to be around £450 billion by opportunities, Shekara shared with me a story the middle of this century. The question to ask is, that is worth recalling. After God had created if our society is not working, should we blame the world, according to Shekara, “He sent an it on ‘Nigeria’ that at least gave its leadership angel to carry resources to different parts. In elite free university education? How have we America, God told the angel to drop a lot of
THISDAY Newspapers Limited. resources because people from different parts of the world would congregate there. In Asia, God also directed the angel to drop a lot of resources because the inhabitants would be very industrious. The same pattern continued until the angel got to Africa and he had not even expended half the resources he carried. But upon entering the continent, the angel stumbled and spilled all the resources. As he tried to pack them God told him: ‘Don’t bother, just watch. The people will not use them’.”
You can interchange Africa with Nigeria. But since no one accepts responsibility for anything, almost everyone points fingers, oblivious to the fact that Nigeria did not degenerate to this abysmal level in one day. Therefore, cursing Nigeria, speaking ill of her and throwing tantrums, especially on social media, may appeal to the mob but that is not the way other societies were built. Nigeria is what it is today because of the poor choices that were made over the past six decades by generations of leaders at practically all levels; and in all sectors, public and private. Changing the narrative of our country requires more than moaning about our challenges or putting the blame only on those we do not like.
As I once wrote on this page, nothing perhaps best illustrates our situation than the embedded message in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” which is regarded as one of the best works of literature regarding ethics and society.
Published in 1974 by Ursula K. Le Guin as a short story in her collection, “The Wind’s Twelve Quarters”, it is about a beautifully constructed utopian society called Omelas where the prosperity of the people came at the expense of one deprived child locked in a dingy small room. At the coming of age, every citizen of Omelas is confronted with the condition of the child and no matter how well the matter was explained to them, “these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations...Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives....”
A major theme in this story, popular in leadership courses, is morality and how different people within a given society react to situations around them. While the citizens of Omelas were quite aware of the child’s deplorable condition, they did nothing. Apparently because their happiness was dependent on his deprivation. Omelas is a good metaphor for our country today: To every dysfunction, there are beneficiaries. The challenge of course is that the option taken by the residents of Omelas offers no solution to the what ails us as a country. We must confront our own demons.
There are two critical issues in the foregoing. The first is our collective sense of entitlement to free university education which we must, at some point, interrogate in light of our current reality. Since we have a way of subverting everything, Nigeria is the only country I know where university education is far cheaper than primary or secondary education and we can see the result in the standards. The second is our culture of unpatriotic self-flagellation. While each valid issue can stand on its own burning urgency, the tragedy is that Nigerians have perfected the art of detaching themselves from the nation as a shared patrimony. The standard refrain: “Nigeria is a useless country”. It is understandable. When we exploit our delicate (ethnic and sectarian) fault-lines in a divisive political environment, it is difficult to hold anyone to account either for the past or the future; or for that matter, engage one another in any meaningful conversation on the way forward.
Even though Nigeria retains all the apparatus of a functioning state, it is obvious that the system has been rigged against the majority of the people. For us to develop as a society, we need to come to that special place where both the government and the people meet in an honest admission of shared responsibility for lost opportunities and also the challenge of national retrieval. This convergence between government and the people requires leadership and political will. Unfortunately, that is the tragic gap that has bedevilled our nation repeatedly over almost six decades.
In this season of goodwill to all men, we should spare a thought for our country by stopping to blame ‘Nigeria’ for our self-inflicted woes. I wish all my readers merry Christmas.