Myth of the Nigerian resilience

Myth of the Nigerian resilience

A FORTNIGHT ago, I referenced in passing the much-touted Nigerian resilience which I nevertheless fingered as a critical factor in the country's endemic corrupt practices. Considering the multifarious consequences of the proposition of the so-called Nigerian resilience, it is necessary to take a closer look at the concept and to ascertain how it is no more than a myth that has been routinely exploited by those in power to remorselessly perpetrate and/or wallow in misgovernance. The idea of the Nigerian resilience derives from an appreciation of the bewildering hardships that we as a people have had to cope with, and are still grappling with. The resilience tells a story about numbers, of people anyway, and of resources. It begins with the astonishing realisation that some 80 million, then 100 million, and now nearly 120 million people can be so easily taken hostage by a coterie of plutocrats and incompetent leaders. Laws are made without regard to the people, a practice that was exacerbated during an aggregate period of nearly 30 years of military rule.

The jurisprudence under the military saw a fusion of legislative and executive powers. At the Federal level, the operative power resided in the Supreme Military Council which was later renamed Armed Forces Ruling Council and latterly, the Provisional Ruling Council. Law-making under the military was a paternalism by which decrees (or edicts in the states) were issued in a manner often so cavalier that the conclusion was inescapable that we were being taken for a ride. In its most hideous manifestation, the jurisprudence became one of legislation by ambush. Gazettes containing the laws were no longer published; such that targeted offenders were readily apprehended or persons seeking the enforcement of their rights arrived at the court only to learn that the court's jurisdiction had been ousted, or that in the name of the Federal Military Government, the right whose enforcement was being sought had been suspended.

Resilience implies forbearance, the capacity to absorb shock and hardship without snapping. Resilience imputes the notion of a tensile spirit: never say die. Can it be said that Nigerians possess a collective resilience? On the face of it, because the nation has not gone gaga, there is the temptation to accept the resilience notion. Yet a deeper analysis shows the extent of our retrogression. Nigerians may not wear their problems as an emblem, but like the chicken that sweats, their feathery veneer should not be mistaken for resilience. It is conceded that the popular sense in which our resilience is construed is that the country has not gone up in flames in spite of the obvious and rampant misgovernance by the ruling class. But if you consider that coups were often rationalised on the disaffection in the polity, then we may not be resilient after all, because a group amongst us took it upon themselves as salvationists who eventually became self-seeking, misguided opportunists. There was an instalmental and incremental approach adopted by the ruling class in inflicting pain on the governed. The latter for the most part believed that they needed to make the sacrifice in order to reap a life more abundant. Quite regrettably, the sacrifices have only deepened the sorrows.

In fact, what is construed as resilience is escapism; the perpetual denial of harsh realities, a lack of capacity for collective response to problems that hobble our sense of community. The result is what we find in each of us being our own government. It is the cost of running the personalised government that manifests in corruption, sharp business practices and a life that is unpredictable, since everybody is passing his cost to everyone else. For example, NEPA is a terrible nuisance, plunging whole cities into darkness for days on end. We say we are resilient. How? We no longer bother about NEPA; instead we opt to provide our own electricity, making Nigeria probably the highest net importer of power generating sets world wide. The gen sets are noise and fume pollutants with adverse consequences on our health and environment. As you well know, you cannot be heard to be complaining that you have not had electricity for days on end; because your audience will immediately classify you as a poor fellow who cannot afford his own power generator. Escape from the problem thus becomes the misnomer of resilience.

What percentage of our urban population has access to potable water? The commonest sights are those of children and young adults clutching pails and jerry cans in search of water barely leaking from ruptured pipes in silted drains reeking of the most nauseating odour. Neither the affluent nor poor suburbs are spared of potable water scarcity. The response in the upper crust is for each household to sink a borehole; in the other areas, the business-minded do likewise and turn into water sharks ripping off their hapless customers. And these are even in places within the rain forest belt. Yet it is bandied that we are resilient.

Look at the high walls and massive gates in our homes and the number of mai guard we have per premises. It is our way of escaping from a collective response to the prevalent insecurity that haunts us all. These days, the constrictive measures do not afford the kind of watertight security we would wish. Some have latched on to the rent-a-cop business in which armed mobile policemen forsake our collective security and focus on those who can afford the cost of their services. Sirens and private lawless convoys are also part of the escape mechanism on the highway. Outlandish as it may seem, if some Nigerians could have roads made exclusively for them, a kind of flying carpet which they would magically lay ahead of them, then retrieve as they cruise past, they would reach for it and allow the public highways to remain in their abject state of disrepair.

The next is a contentious point which migration experts will come down heavily on. There is probably no corner of the globe today Kosovo, Macedonia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea where you will not find at least one Nigerian who for all practical purposes is an economic refugee eking out a harsh living in order to make remittances home. This is the response to the adversity that has befallen Nigeria since the structural adjustment programme that precipitated an unprecedented brain drain. In a sense, the drift abroad is a survivalist strategy, the never-say-die instinct which we call resilience, in the face of rapidly dwindling opportunities at home. Therefore, stepping out, as the medical practitioners did in their sojourn to the Gulf oil states, was intended for forex empowerment with which they could and did restructure their lives so badly disorganised by the macro-economic mismanagement of the ruling class.

Yet, as we have seen over the years, the drift abroad has become an escape, the solution, in a situation that otherwise calls for a frontal attack on the economic malaise. Western Union and other outfits that are engaged in processing remittances post figures running into billions of Naira as aggregate sums sent home. These monies have no doubt prevented many dependants from reaching for the dustbin for sustenance. But that cannot be resilience, since there is no corresponding effort yielding positive results to reverse the very conditions that have turned some of our best into economic refugees abroad. If there were such corresponding effort, as a true index of resilience, our Naira would not be so poor today, so much so that our economic refugees are paradoxically elated each time their monitor shows that the Naira has slipped further against the convertible currencies. It increases the net worth of the refugees abroad, relative to those back home, but in the end, it worsens our collective agony. To escape from that agony, some take to armed robbery and hired assassination. To escape from that agony, corruption and cheating have grown in epic proportions, such as you find in the passing off of substandard goods. Are we truly resilient? Please, find me another word.