What has happened to Nigeria and stymied our country’s progress is the capture of power by a political elite focused on primitive accumulation from power, and on the politics that brings power through means fair and foul, but not on GOVERNANCE.
This political elite has waged a war of exclusion against the real elite in Nigeria, those with capacity and motivation, that could have moved the country forward. This is the intellectual and professional class in Nigeria and the diaspora, now an endangered species.
I say this because up to the 1970s Nigeria was making real progress, and the real elite class was in control even with divisions amongst them (e.g. the civil war). From the 1980s progress began to stall. Military leaders tried to rejig the country, even with internal contradictions, and made significant progress especially on infrastructure.
But internal contradictions prevented the construction of a solid political foundation for progress. From 1999 with the Obasanjo presidency, it seemed as if we were back on track, but a new class of “political entrepreneurs” had firmly arisen. OBJ managed the system with a strong bench of powerful technocrats in one hand, but also the political entrepreneurs in the other.
From the Buhari presidency in 2015 the political entrepreneur class became FULLY in charge of Nigeria, and the technocratic elites were relegated. Nigeria went into a downward spiral in terms of capture by corrupt, self-entitled political cabals.
We have not recovered. Some would argue it has only gotten worse. No serious thinking is going on, because thinkers were persona non grata. That’s why we went for two years without Ambassadors. That was not “important”. Politics was. Today, we have seen the result. No country can rise on the back of empty political buccaneers focused only on self-enrichment and power as an end in itself.
For Nigeria to rise again, an age of enlightenment must return, under enlightened leaders with the vision, intellect, experience, motivation and competence to GOVERN and create transformation. This means a restoration of institutions such as a truly independent legislature, judiciary and rule of law, transparency and accountability. These are the cornerstones of development.
NB: I put out a post immediately before this, on “Davos, the New World Order, and Africa”. As of this writing I observed that it has all of 2 “likes”. No doubt that’s because it’s a “deep think” post. Is this because social media responds more to instant excitement and titillation than on deep reflection?
But the issues that post addresses are truly existential for us as Africans and as developing countries. This response tells us all we need to know about the state of our being. We have become brain-dead, focused on symptoms but not on causes, on shadows instead of substance, on constant controversy instead of reflection and action on that basis that can yield sustainable results, on existence but not on PROGRESS.
The agberos have finally brought us all down to their level?
Kingsley Moghalu
