Nigeria, No Talk Should Turn Asunder Guest Columnist: By Issa Aremu President Goodluck Jonathan has inaugurated the National Conference! Yours truly like President Jonathan was (in President’s words) “one of those who exhibited scepticism on the need for another conference”. According to the president his scepticism was “..borne out of the nomenclature of such a conference, taking into cognisance existing democratic structures that were products of the will of the people”. My initial reservation about the conference was in the labelling as it was also conceptual. The hitherto demanded conference of ethnic nationalities was unacceptably exclusive for a Nigeria in 2014. It was indeed a recipe for mutually assured destruction of the project of Nigerian nation building dating back to 1,000 years (even though Lugardian centenary captures official imagination the more). The conference modalities announced by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Pius Ayim, shows that this conference has commendably undergone some quality control processes. The new modalities show that this conference is not based on exclusive fixed categories of tongue and tribes, reminiscent of a society of hunters and gatherers. On the contrary, inclusive modalities that parade working men and women (organised labour) women, elder statesmen, manufacturers, youths, students, political parties, civil societies, lawyers, traditional rulers etc. This shows that this conference is about a modern nation state willing to deepen the process of nation- building in a globalised world. This new conference should not turn asunder a God’s own country which Nigeria is. Certainly many things are not in place in Nigeria. Not few things have truly fallen apart even seemingly worse than when Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart left us. This conference must put many things in place. The most notable being an all, inclusive region- blind, tribe- blind unemployment tsunami. Witness the latest recruitment tragedy. As many as 6. 5 million applicants looking for 4,500 job placements in Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) notorious for incompetence and corruption in recruitment exercise!. Some media had likened the spectacular pictures at the national stadia in Lagos and Abuja on Saturday to the final of the soccer World Cup tournament. The better images are that of the protests in Tunis and Thahir Squares that swept the ancient regimes in Tunisia and Egypt out of power. At the root of the Arab Spring is youth unemployment. On the eve of the Tunisia revolution in 2010, unemployment level was just 14 per cent. With Nigeria’s open-ended massive unemployment and under-employment as witnessed at the weekend, our luck is running out. The assumptions that informed the 11th hour conversion of some of us just like President Jonathan (just as the former President Obasanjo’s conversion to the moribound National Political Reform Conference) are today academic. This conference with all it’s worth in naira and time, must strengthen the federation, reposition Nigeria as a leading country in Africa and an active player in the world. The conference must be part of the work of nation building in progress. For instance, the crisis of unemployment cuts across all the regions of the country. We must break the jinx of the painful paradox of a country with so much to be done in all sectors, with so much resource endowment and yet inexplicably saddled with such huge idle hands. Today Nigerian school graduates have all the degrees, Bsc, B A, Msc, MA, Ph.d but they lack the singular degree to terminate income poverty, which is JOBS. To among other things address the problem of unemployment, this conference must replace negative nationalism with positive nation-building attitude. Sources of negative nationalism are insecurity, poverty and ambition of few a elite. Positive nationalism means working for prosperity of the critical mass as distinct from the obscene wealth of the few. This conference must be how to turn the geography of regions to value addition development centres. The ideology of tongue must give way to ideology of production and income distribution. This conference must start with a dispassionate SWOT analysis of Nigeria. The energy in the the next three months should be to identify and deepen our strengths, eliminate and minimise the weaknesses, grab the opportunities for development and eliminate the threats of poverty, injustice and disunity. This conference will not make any impact unless it comes to terms with where we are coming from, where we are and how we can improve on the existing reality. It must be guided by progressive history that recognises progress that has been made in the past, and of course acknowledging the problems and future prospects. It is a false consciousness to assume that Nigeria is too big. Yes we are big in relations to Ghana (25.3 million) or Togo (6.6 million). But we are certainly small in relations to China population (1.351 billion) India ( 1.237 billion), Bangladesh (154.7 million) and European Union (EU) 503.5 millions and United States of America, 313.9 millions. Certainly few reckon Togo as a possible contender of a member of leading 20 economies in 2020. Our comparison should be with China, India and United States of America. In any case, smaller size does not guarantee security. Witness South Sudan and Central African Republic where old reactionary animoisites have turned the countries asunder. So there is nothing to gain from disunity but many to lose with disintegration. With the rebasing of Nigeria’s GDP, the estimated size of the Nigerian economy is between $384 billion and $424 billion meaning Nigeria in terms of GDP will be higher than South Africa’s GDP of about $384 billion. Under these new figures, Nigeria still have lower per capita GDP of just $1,000 far less than South Africa at $6,800. Rebasing therefore does not mean Nigerians are better off than South Africans. Indeed, we are worse off than South Africa in prosperity. Two-thirds of Nigerians still live below poverty line. Electricity is still a luxury while lives are daily unavoidably wasted due to poor health and transport facilities. This conference must address all these inclusive issues and ignore exclusive issues of regions and ethnicity.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 23:39:53 +0000
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