The American wartime (Second World War) president, Franklin Roosevelt, insisted that at the end of the war, Britain will not re-constitute her colonial empire. He wanted more advanced colonial entities like India to become independent immediately. Others, like Indonesia, placed in a limited-duration transitional Trust ship. And more primitive colonies, like much of sub-Saharan African countries, started on a long process of preparation for independence. Unfortunately, he died shortly before the end of the war, and his proposal was not factored into the de-colonization of these primitive countries, including Nigeria.
Undoubtedly, the history of post independent Nigeria has evinced that, as of October 1, 1960, Nigeria was not reap for independence. Have our rulers – military or civilian – in their avarice, crudity, bigotry and obscurantism not run the whole country aground? Have they not brutalized the national psyche, stolen everything within reach, vulgarized the national ethos, debased our morals, perverted the value system and destroyed all public institutions. Thus, all our institutions are dysfunctional.
As president, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua once broached the idea of seeking British assistance in reforming the Nigerian Police Force. Such a help would have been wonderful, as it would have make the Nigerian police more efficient, law abiding and committed to the service of the Nigerian public. But then, the problems of the Nigerian police are symptoms of deep rooted societal maladies, like the moral and ethical collapse of the Nigerian society and a culture of lawlessness.
Therefore, the Nigerian Police Force cannot be reformed in isolation. It has to be reformed in tandem with our attitude, especially, towards the law, and the other institutions of the country, or the whole exercise will end in futility. And for the British reformers to embark on this mammoth scale of reformation in Nigeria will be tantamount to the re-colonization of Nigeria by the British.
An Ikwere song of the 1960s, sang about: when the White man ruled us, we were at peace; we had unity; and things worked. But since we started ruling ourselves, we do not know what we are doing. It may have been excusable that a nascent country, led by her neophyte political class, did not know what it was doing. Optimists will assume that, with time, the leaders of the country will learn their lessons, and hone the necessary skills, and garner the necessary experience, for statecraft. And thus, set the country on the right path.
The tragedy of Nigeria is that virtually nothing about the country has improved since independence. Unfortunately, it has not, even, been a case of stagnation, but that of untrammeled retrogression. This is because our rulers, instead of honing the necessary skills for statecraft, perfected the deplorable arts of corruption, falsehood, forgery, thievery, electoral fraud, obscurantism, and arrogance and abuse of power; and instead of aspiring to decency and elevated morals and ethics in governance, engendered a moral and ethical collapses of the society and deployed state power as a ruthless enemy of the people.
The First Republic teetered precariously under its own of weight of tribal rivalry, political intolerance and electoral fraud; it collapsed, when the soldiers struck. The soldiers pretended to be reformers and redeemers, but then, proved themselves a band of hedonistic, financially reckless, money stealing and brutal power grabbers. But then, in our knowledge that both by training and orientation, soldiers are ill-equipped for political leadership, we excused their follies and foibles. Lamentably, after twenty five years of the revenance of democracy, nothing, absolutely nothing, has improved.
Ordinarily, democracy is a wellspring of political stability, social justice and overall societal progress? Justifiably, therefore, Nigerians expected that it can progressively improve the standard of our political morality and steadily elevate national ethics and values and significantly improve the quality of life for the majority of Nigerians. Disappointingly, like military rule, democracy has also proven a disaster for Nigeria. The twenty five years of democracy has brought us nothing but moral squalor, unwarranted wealth of a ruthlessly corrupt elite few, mass poverty and hunger, social injustice, broken and dysfunctional institutions, incorrigibly corrupt judiciary and social indexes comparable only to those of war-torn countries of the world.
These days, former president Olusegun Obasanjo, pontificates like an infallible pansophist, with solutions to all our national problems and societal ills. But his presidency was besmirched by official corruption and electoral fraud. Billions of dollars budgeted for public projects disappeared, and remain unaccounted for. He was unapologetic about his government’s sponsored electoral frauds. According to him, the victories of his favored candidates was “a do or die affair”, and “even Jesus Christ cannot hold a credible election in Nigeria”.
Disconcertingly, since after his presidency, the Nigerian situation has significantly worsened. The Buhari presidency was a disaster: official corruption soared; the economy atrophied; insecurity spiral out of control; and Nigeria became an international laughing stock: an oil-rich country that is also the poverty capital of the world. The Tinubu administration is a continuum, a deadlier form, of Buharism. It reinforced the despair and misery of Buharism. Consequently, poverty, more than ever, pervades the land; and hunger is inexorably tightening its vicious grip across the country; people are suffering from Kwashiorkor and dying from starvation.
The federal government lost control of swaths of the country to a motley of terrorists, bandits, separatist agitators and other criminal gangs. They range and ravage the country with perplexing impunity and baffling sense of entitlement. The Tinubu administration has failed in its most central responsibilities to Nigerians: ensuring the welfare of Nigerians and securing our lives and property. Nigeria is a failed state.
It is most unlikely that we can, on our own, resolve our myriad of daunting and seemingly intractable problems, the stimulus for the transformation Nigeria cannot come from within. This is because, among other reasons, we are governed by a weird and warped value system that exalts the abyss, celebrates criminality and fetes around thieves, murders and gangsters. The reformation of Nigeria will demand foreign help or intervention. I recommend British re-colonization of Nigeria.
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
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