Independence Has Failed Nigeria: Is  Recolonisation Still Off-limits? By Ugoji Egbujo

Nigeria has a profound leadership crisis.  It isn’t just recycling indolent,  corrupt and manipulative leaders, it’s incubating a defective citizenship.  The necessary sceptical edge to watchdog democracy has been blunted. The citizenry is aggressively normalising political mediocrity.  Failure is excused. Mundanity is celebrated. Stagnation feels peaceful 

For the poor, hunger and joblessness have acquired inevitability. The rich live in squalor with baffling pomposity, blind to their predicament. It’s not desensitisation.   It might have something to do with religion. The ordinary people’s pathological capacity for tolerance reinforces the chronic waywardness of political leadership. The susceptibility of the public to divisive propaganda is a factor. It inhibits cohesion, undermines the force of outrage, rendering the public tepid, impotent, even complicit. Perhaps discernment, I must concede,  is implicated. The situation seems hopeless. The redemptive power of revulsion has been stolen. The cycle is vicious: more bad leaders, more docile and distractible followers, hankering after political deities. Nigeria should consider surrendering to therapeutic recolonisation. 

Lekki is one of the most important neighbourhoods in the country.  The Lekki-Epe expressway is a vital artery in our national life. On that road,  Lagosians lament  traffic snarls at the lights but a tourist sees utter madness. We have grown too inured. In fact, the traffic lights are the only emblems of sanity left on that road.  There are no road markings  There are no road signs. Cars shift lanes like swimming fish in a stormy river. There are no lanes. During rush hours, the maze induces insanity. The concrete channelising islands to separate turning traffic from straight-through traffic are dangerously unpainted. Their bruised tops are evidence of the ruin they have bestowed on cars and livelihoods that ran into them  The road is shabby. Its surroundings, as dishevelled as the tangled dusty hair of a roaming madman. Yet Lekki is one of the best neighbourhoods in this country. And this road,  sadly, is one of the better roads in the country. On that road, you simply can’t have a flat tyre. Because lurking  beside the road,  are ravenous  street urchins. Out-of-school children,   circling like vultures,  waiting for prey . Sometimes, they are not that patient. They storm the road, break windows and rob motorists in broad daylight. The police will never come on time. Yet that road is one of the safest both in Lagos and the country. Kidnappings occur there once in a while, but “it’s not rampant yet. After all, muggings happen in developed countries.”  That’s the patriotic way the government likes us to think. If that road is eventually resurfaced, no matter how shoddily, we will clap and dance for the government, cheerily indifferent to the absence of road markings.

The right eye is the objective comparing eye of an outsider. The eye that sees the shabbiness of the country in our tattered police patrol vehicles. Because a kabukabu, as a police patrol vehicle, is actually otherworldly.  The eye that cringes at governors and senior public officials lining up at the airport to see off the president every time he travels. Most local eyes are on the lookout for flickers of promise to render obeisance. So they can’t see the abnormality of widespread peacetime misery. Perhaps it is no use retaining a troubling societal visual acuity for disorderliness.

The time has come.  Nigeria must consider at least the prospects of a foreign manager. A CEO or National  Technical Adviser, whatever it might be called.   Nigeria is presently incapable of adroit self-leadership.  We need not be ashamed.  We have tried independence. We must choose realism for the sake of future generations.  Self-government has left us impoverished, backward and morally crippled.  Wouldn’t Somalia have fared better under permanent  British rule? Besides false hopes, what has independence fetched Nigeria and Africa? There is no dignity in living squalid, contemptible lives, with citizens fleeing in droves to become refugees, burdens of other well-run countries. Sovereignty without food and security services only serves he egos of narcissistic leaders.  Ruthless poverty and abject lack permit no dignity. Yet we are going blind,  getting all too sentimental with our absurd, farcical sovereignty.

Our leadership problem is complicated. A section of the citizenry is passive and the other revels in masochism, worshipping political oppression.  The standards for what constitutes good leadership have been bastardised – mediocrity has become excellence. The country seems doomed.  

A foreign tourist who comes into Nigeria is welcomed at the Lagos airport by hustle. Despite our low aviation traffic, simplicity and order elude us.  The visitor joins a queue to meet officers who, unaware of the roles,  pass passports around aimlessly and run idle commentaries.  The visitor is asked to move on by a face that seems stuck in regret.  He is ordered to join another queue. This is the only country in the world that duplicates entry controls. The first queue is the secret police. The next queue is immigration. Their questions have an unprofessional tone. They want to ingratiate themselves with the traveller and earn the chance of a monetary reward. At the end of this queue, someone checks the passport and tosses it to another for stamping. Nobody seems troubled by the presence of dozens of officials loitering idly. It’s not inefficiency.  It’s all too normal. 

After a rowdy baggage claim the visitor picks his way  through shoving passengers and entreating louts in uniform. Does the CCTV work? The advice to a lone foreigner will be to submit to one of the uniformed folks to lead the circuitous trek.  There are no signs.  But he can’t avoid the horde of officials in customs uniforms, half stern and squinting, half announcing their willingness to entertain under-the-table deals with their eyes. These are Customs officers. They are supposed to pick out people for screening but they are cunning predators, the masters of shakedown.   If he smiles at them, they will openly ask for money and save his time. In Cairo or Nairobi, a first-time visitor needs only their phone and a few apps.  He will find his way. At the Lagos airport, he needs a guide.  The chaos which the locals no longer see is unsettling to foreigners. 

In the past, George Goldie and his United African Company, which later became the Royal Niger Company, owned swathes of Nigeria  .  The company sold Nigeria to Britain.  That colonial ownership was ruthlessly  exploitative so people now  dread any mentions of a  recolonisation. However , today’s proposed  submission to foreign control  is  a voluntary quest for freedom . If  Nigeria yields  to a new colonial master, whether a nation or company, its stocks will rise astronomically. The country has enourmous human and mineral resources .  It may  lose face in some circles intially and may be compelled to pay taxes and fees but the Lekki Epe expressway  will yield to firm law enforcement, good road designs and proper drivers licensing . The country which runs like an overheating bolekeja with a faulty wheel alignment will be set right from the basics. Bandits won’t take selfie with relieved villagers who have paid them peace fees . Power may not be reliable at the outset, but the plan for power sufficiency will be defined. It won’t be the case of Niger or Burkina Faso under French  partial supervision that facilitated  exploitation through the facade of semf government.  This will be an outright management contract .  Regionalisation and evolution of powers with a return to the parliamentary system might help . But can it break this elite capture by local wolves? 

One way to break the cycle of doom into which the politicians have plunged the country is a national rebirth instigated by the streets. The other is a quiet surrender to the leadership of a prosperous and conscientious welfarist foreign nation like Norway. 

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