Michela Wrong – “Nigeria in Transformation” – speech on Nigeria’s 51st Anniversary of Independence
Michela Wrong is the author of 3 books on Africa including It’s our Turn to Eat: the Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower
This is a very exciting time in Nigeria’s history, a moment full of potential and opportunity, and it’s very flattering to be asked to share my thoughts on this important occasion.
The last time I was in Nigeria, about a year and a half ago, I came to talk about my latest book, which was about a major procurement scandal, involving 18 military and security contracts, exposed in Kenya by a remarkable man called John Githongo, the government’s former anti-corruption czar.
The title of my book was “It’s Our Turn to Eat”. It’s a phrase, used all the time in east Africa, to describe the system of rule in Kenya, whereby government contracts, infrastructural investment, ministry and parastatal posts and jobs in the civil service, all get quietly carved up according to the ethnic affiliation of the Big Men in power. Under President Jomo Kenyatta in the 1960s and 1970s, this meant the Kikuyu ethnic group did rather better than others, under Daniel arap Moi it was the Kalenjin, and under Mwai Kibaki, in 2003, the Kikuyu again. The “eating” goes all the way down through the echelons, and as a result, 30 per cent of the budget in Kenya today – a permanent secretary at the Finance Ministry recently revealed – cannot be accounted for.
When I talked about this syndrome in Nigeria, there was instant recognition from the audiences, and some hearty laughter. “We have a slightly different phrase, here, but it means the same thing,” I was told, “We say: “˜it’s our turn to chop'”.
But I sensed a different reaction in the two countries.
Kenya came close to the brink of a civil war after its 2007 elections, largely because opposition supporters became convinced that Kibaki’s crowd had rigged the elections to ensure the Kikuyus got to “eat” indefinitely. Kenyans were frightened by just how close they had come to disaster. They were determined to change the system. By the time I visited Nigeria, they were working on the introduction of a new, decentralised constitution, a radical experiment in restructuring the state and neutralising the explosive issue of ethnicity. They are trying to repair and rebuild the social contract between citizen and government, a contract they realised had come close to breaking down completely.
In Nigeria, it seemed to me, yes, people were exasperated with the “It’s our turn to chop” syndrome. But they shrugged their shoulders. I sensed a cynical, weary resignation, an acceptance that this was the way things had always been and always would be. Not nice, but what could be done?
I think that resignation takes two forms, depending on how well off you are as a Nigerian.
For members of the elite, there’s a belief that you can use your financial heft to buy yourself out of the system, to bypass altogether all the chaos and nastiness. If the electricity isn’t flowing, you get a generator. If the water doesn’t run, dig a borehole. If the police aren’t doing their job, move to a gated community. If the local TV stations are awful, get a satellite dish. If the roads are terrible, buy a fleet of 4WDs. And so these gated communities turn into what are essentially autonomous mini-governments, supplying the services the state isn’t providing. So who needs the social contract? We’re all rugged individualists.
For the ordinary Nigerian, the psychology is slightly different. Poor Nigerians are mad as hell at corruption, both grand and petty, at nepotistic job appointments, at rigged tenders, unfair allocations of contracts and the constant bribe-paying they have to do. Unless, that is, they are the ones to benefit. And then it’s not corruption at all. It’s a cousin or uncle or brother doing the right and decent thing. The mental connection is not made. Corruption is what OTHER people do.
That approach leaves them without a moral leg to stand on. As a Nigerian friend told me before coming here: “We’re all lost on a sea of moral relativism, in which every thing is understandable, everything can be forgiven, everything is justifiable and the only criteria of whether something is good or bad is whether you can get away with it.”
I think there’s something else at work, too. Nigerians, as we all know, are the most confident people in the world. No Nigerian can bear to be thought a fool. Many people, even those who are doing worst from “it’s our turn to chop” syndrome, believe in their hearts that this is a game the man with chutzpah and guts should be able to play and win. If he loses, it’s only because he didn’t try hard enough, work those connections energetically enough and take the necessary risks.
To those Nigerians I would say: look at the figures. Nigeria’s statistics on poverty levels, infant mortality and maternal deaths contradict you. How is it that my own country, recession-hit Britain, feels the need to spend £250m a year in aid on health and education in this oil-rich land? Believe me, it’s not you, it’s the system. It’s dysfunctional.
And the stakes are higher than you think. If I can pass on a lesson I gradually learnt while researching my book, corruption, when it is sustained and greedy enough, does more than merely undermine and leach away at an economy. It destabilises what once seemed like strong states. Because over the years it creates a perception of “us and them” that eats away like acid at a society’s existing fault lines and pressure points, whether based on ethnic difference, religion, or geography. Kenya had a lot of fault lines, but Nigeria has more.
John Githongo, the Kenyan whistleblower, argues that inequality, and the perception of inequality, actually matters far more than actual poverty. I think he’s right. Kenyans had actually experienced a five year economic boom before it experienced its most violent elections in history in 2007. People gradually adjust to privation, what makes them snaps, like a stretched elastic, is the realisation that not everyone is suffering equally.
I would suggest there are already signs of that elastic snapping in Nigeria. When I first used to visit this country in the late 1990s, as a journalist for the Financial Times, it was impossible to imagine that the groups protesting at the underdevelopment of the Niger Delta might one day be transformed into armed rebel movements capable of holding the government to ransom. Now I get their statements on Facebook. And then there’s the Boko Haram movement, as explicit expression of exasperation at Nigeria’s widening north-south divide as it is possible to imagine.
These are warning bells. What they tell the Nigerian elite that believed it could withdraw inside its gated utopias is that you simply cannot build the fences high enough. You cannot unilaterally decide the social contract does not concern you. You cannot indefinitely tolerate a system which fails, decade after decade, to invest in schools, hospitals, roads and basic utilities. The Boko Harams and Niger Delta militants and the gangs of armed criminals that are becoming an increasing problem can get to you. As we have seen, with tragic results, they can now reach as far as the UN compound in Abuja itself.
We experienced a similar wake-up call in London just recently, when middle class Brits suddenly noticed they were living next to run-down council estates whose residents deeply resented not being able to buy the fancy trainers and mobile phones they saw displayed on the High Street. So those residents broke the glass and took them. Boy, were we in the middle class surprised.
So as Nigeria enters its 51st year, with a new team at the top whose makeup has got excited and hopeful tongues wagging around the world, what can be hoped for? I am well aware that most people in this room are better educated and boast more life experience than me, so I will ration myself to just a few ideas.
When I’m asked how to tackle the corruption that are crippling economies in other parts of Africa, I usually find myself talking about shoring up the independence of the judiciary and the chief prosecutor’s office, bolstering the police, safeguarding the independence of parliament, and warning that setting up anti-corruption units is not the answer it sometimes seems. These are all hugely laborious tasks in themselves, but in Nigeria’s case, I think it’s clear that they merely skim the surface of the problem.
If the new government is to challenge the “It’s Our Turn to Chop” syndrome and its impact on ordinary citizens, it must examine, at a very fundamental level, the principle upon which power and money are distributed in this country.
Nigeria’s unwritten agreement on the rotation of power has, interestingly enough, some admirers in Kenya. They argue that the first past the post electoral system left behind by the British has turned political contests into zero sum games, with no consolation prizes for communities that come second. They praise Nigeria’s rotational system as a kind of tacit codification of the “it’s our turn to chop” philosophy, taking the sting out of ethnic, geographical and religious differences.
I would suggest that the opposite may actually be true. That the rotation system of government enshrines and legitimises the differences between Nigerians, constantly reminding them not of their common humanity, but of how little they have in common with one another. It does nothing to create a more heterogenous society. It rewards mediocrity, penalises high-minded effort and encouraging procrastination as players complacently wait for their “turn” at the table to arrive. And the main point, surely, is that “eating” – or “chopping” – should not be the main ambition of those entering the political sphere in the first place.
It was Sir Ahmadu Bello who said, as far back as 1963: “Let us not be blind to our differences. But let us also direct our attention to our common interest and the means by which those differences can be solved. And if we cannot end our differences, at least we can help to make the world safer for diversity.” As a Nigerian acquaintance said to me recently: “no one will mind if a president or minister is Christian or Moslem, so long as he actually delivers.”
Only Nigerians can decide this magnificent, vibrant, overwhelming country’s future. I note in the media that even those who have benefited most from the system are now saying a “revolution” is due. They are surely in part responding to the statistic that is as terrifying as it is hopeful, and which certainly can’t be ignored: the 70 per cent of the African population that is under the age of 40. This demographic tsunami can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on what the leadership decides.
That brings me to my last, point, which may sound like a statement of the obvious. Societies only make substantive change when their members insist upon it. You have to want it. Kenya so frightened itself in 2007, it reached that stage, and its new decentralised constitution is the result. It’s not yet clear if it’s done so in time, or come up with the right answer, but it has taken a radical step towards a new future.
The old joke, it seems to me, applies rather well to Nigeria: “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?” “Only one, but it really has to WANT to change.”
Straight to the point Michela. Thank you. Some of us have been pounding the same pavements for a long time. But most of my people languishes in a state of ideological bankruptcy and outright cowardice. It suffices them to talk the talk, but the courage to walk the walk eludes them. However, we must keep telling it like it is. Hopefully, someday, something positive will snap in the collective consciousness of my people before the “elastic” finally snaps.
Question for Michela:..When is Britain and the rest of the so-called developed nations going to stop aiding and abetting powerful elites that runs African countries in atrocious ways and manners that clearly contradicts the principles and values such “developed nations” stands for?
Insightful the problem of nigeria is basically a lost value system where there no longer exists any form of social contract between the governed and the gorvenor its everyman for himself and if u are lucky to be opportuned to have to yourself your share of the national cake nobody cares it is ur turn anbd u paid a heavy price for it nobody expects u to do anything to improve the country they are also hoping abd praying it will soon be their turn.
Very insightful piece, especially coming from a foreigner.
Keep up the good work.
What an excellent speech, a known facts. These people really don’t know they sitting on gunpowder! It will be very devastating.
Common knowledge succinctly composed. Missed Target! – When you say strengthening institutions could attend to Nigeria’s problems or when you project the opinion that a revolution is due. Her problems run deeper and they appear more cancerous than benign. Suspicion is mirrored in North-South fronts and a positive course of revolution will ultimately be lost on irrational sentiments.
I just wish ALL Nigerians especially the ethnically and religiously biased ones would read and ‘understand’ this brilliant piece.
Michaela, you are surprised the demonstrations in the Niger Delta turned into militancy? I warned about that more than 20 years ago.
The system is dysfunctional and it was designed that way to enable the graft and corruption. I like to remind people that the constitution we are using is the same one that the dictator Abacha created to perpetuate himself in power.
‘Nigeria’ was never a nation. As a child I remember adults in the village expressing the view that the govt was nothing more than a place to ‘go and chop’. This was in the 70’s, So when did we lose those virteous values? After the civil war? The coups and counter coups? The 1960 constitution skewed we now know deliberately and arrogantly to favor a particular region? The 1965 constitutional crisis?
For many then and now Nigeria is nothing more than a milk cow. I am bewildered sometimes. We always look and ask for some reason Nigeria suddenly became the way it is. It never changed from the way it was. Cobbled together for commercial interest and convinience alone in 1914.
Perhaps the real issue is whether the progressive elements that have struggled to eke out a truly Nigerian national identity since independence can prevail against the agents of imperial style plundering and domination.
Let them that have ears hear what Michela has said!
A word is enough for the wise.
Aluta continua!
Ken
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This is an informed and brilliant piece; but let me just add one or two things. The difference Ms Wrong sees between Nigeria and Kenya is about conditioning. We have been running government badly for too long to the extent we have accepted some fundamentally flawed public processes as the norm. The habit has become so entrenched that despite laws being passed to correct these, bad public conduct prevails and makes such laws functionless. Of course, where the perpetrators of the breach are the chiefs of state, implementation becomes quite impossible and institutions that should correct these become playthings of political vandals.
So, how do you begin to conceive of progress in that mix of a seasoned rule-breaking elite, a compromised judiciary, a supine media and a complacent citizenry that have since accepted the bad conduct as standard and seems inured by it? With everyone hanging on to the base principle of survival, the snouts are out there smelling and gobbling food from anywhere, even if poisoned! Yes, Nigerians are busy eating up their present to poison their future in a conscienceless trade of their children’s birthright for that plate of vile porridge! We are quick to glorify wealth without questions as to source; we are quick to hail mediocrity as achievement, because the piper has paid for our belly! We complain endlessly about our leaders, but troop behind their rattling shekels, stolen from the commonwealth!
The answer, as Ms Wrong said and as we know, lies in our calloused hands. But we will not move our butts yet; we will not believe the evidence of our own experience; we will not take that step of solidarity as civil populace, because the man or woman we should be linking hands with comes from another hamlet, another state, another ethnic group, another planet! Our bastards are better than their bastards and as it is our turn to chop, we must grab it all and take everything with us to six feet below! Let the children wail; there is a war of greed to be won by ghosts!
Well, I’m not sure how many will reflect on this piece, because several of its kind are splashed across the public space. But it is instructive that even outsiders seem to understand our problems better than us. More crucially, they know who should bell this errant cat. When we are ready, we will fight this noose on our collective neck. The night is near….
Finally, I do have one or two differences with Ms Wrong in terms of perception of the present Nigerian leadership, the makeup of which she says “has got excited and hopeful tongues wagging around the worldâ€. I really don’t know what elicits that hope in the makeup of “the new team†in charge of our nation. I say so, because I believe every discerning observer can see clearly that we are still being run by the same failed hands under the same failed system. The difference in perception can only possibly be in the degree of failure, not in any prospect of success. The signs simply aren’t there. I mean, I still find it difficult to nail down one fundamental achievement of President Jonathan’s team and I’m not being cynical when I say this.
The other point I will like to make is that the quotation she ascribes to Sir Ahmadu Bello may not be his. I think that was actually a quote by President John F Kennedy on 10 June 1963, in a speech delivered in Washington DC at American University’s Spring Commencement when he was calling for the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve a nuclear ban treaty and help the cause of world peace. I do not know if Ahmadu Bello made reference to that speech at any time, but I certainly know that the quote isn’t his.
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Lucid write-up … the juxtaposition of the Nigeria, Kenya experience made interesting reading.
Michela, you have hit the nail on the head, you really said what every Nigerian youth has in mind, our road and other infrastructure are in total decay whilst our politicians are always smiling to various banks both local and international. Enough is enough and it’s time we the youths take our destiny into our own hands, b/cos the worst thing is not what the evil men do but the good men that watch them and decided to do nothing. This is a wake up call for every right thinking Nigerian youth that need a change.
The idea that Nigerians will not suddenly and miraculously wake up from a deep, self-medicated, sleep spent slumped behind the wheel of a rickety car packed with explosives and rolling slowly but surely down a slope towards a cliff over-looking a rock-filled ravine is the stuff of pessimists.
I rebuke it. IJN! Amen.
Michelle you spoke my mind on very key issues that must be radically addressed if we are to make a head way as a united country in Nigeria.
A very insightful article. Unfortunately, the Nigerian political class will never touch the honest suggestions made by the author with a long pole. They’re only interested in enriching themselves and their cronies.
I agree with you mam, your observations are clinical enough, but your understanding of the make up of Nigeria social and constitutional framework is a little less adequate but above all, u understood a lot of many clear threatening sensitive fabrics that hold us together.
The potential of Nigeria is massive no doubt, but we fail to understand the fact that we have not been productive for 51yrs, we depend solely on exploring the resources under our feet than exploring the intellectual capacity of 150mil peopl. Our leaders, has never solved a problem facing our nation before, they always seek the easy way out. They use the resources of the Nation to bribe and bind our differences rather than using it to build the future of our country. We are far less productive, we spend the money we don’t have, we acquire expenditure we don’t need.
I said it 10yrs ago that Arm struggle will soon start, many of my friends said its not possible, now different principles are creating different militants and our government is encouraging them. Soon u will see stoppage to Boko harram menace, not bcos they wanted to stop but a lot of money will be paid to settle them, same they did in Niger delta. They will use the freedom and contact and fame they are enjoying now to build more arms and make friends. Don’t be surprise, more militant group will soon be busy killing people in d name of whatever to get them noticed.
I Love my nation, but its disheartening to see leaders with no revelation to solving the nation’s problem but rather seeking financial revenue for themselves and stealing money they don’t need. Worrying to have leaders with no vision but grafting ambition….
Thanks mrs wrong for paying attention and devoting your time to my country, let’s us hope all will be well
Kenya’s violence was not about stark inequalities between different ethnicities, it was rather about the consequences of ethnic fragmentation in a state where it is very expensive not being at the eating table.
You over-emphasise by much the potential of Kenya’s new constitution. It is fashionable to do this, but I predict buyer’s remorse by the end of the next elections.
Already it is clear we will be unable to afford many of the institutions, let alone the welfare pledges made in the new law’s radical Bill of Rights. But worst of all, the system retains key aspects of the previous one that do not do much to repair the fragmentation among powerful elites that led to the conflagration.
First, the first-past-the post system is retained. Second, the presidency is an American style one, with an executive cabinet that is appointed by and responsible only to the head of state. Finally, the powers devolved to the counties (most of them economically unviable and mapped out on ethnic lines and especially with finances hard to come by) will not be much more transformative than those under the old constitution.
What this means is that elites have much less reason to keep the state together. Those who’re never again going to get into office as powerful national ministers, with national budgets may well decide loyalty to the Kenyan experiment isn’t worth their time.
The solution for both countries may be to re-do their social contracts so there’s less power with the elites and more at the local level, to diminish the cost and power of the state across the board, and devolve more responsibility and power to lower levels where direct citizen participation and buy-in is possible. If there’s little reason to be recruited into elite schemes to capture Nairobi or Abuja, or one of the county seats, I’d think you have a better chance that people can design themselves better futures and spend less time campaigning to seize power.
Michela Wrong is not wrong on her prognosis on Nigeria, she is spot on.Coming from a jurisdiction outside Nigeria, may be;just may be, the powers that be would not continue to be blinded to the imminent collapse of Africa’s tallest midget if the long overdue structural transformation is not carried out. There is nothing new to be written about Nigeria, it’s been repeated over and over again like a cracked record, now is the time to force them to walk the talk failing which the house would collapse on all of us.