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Where are the figures? By ONE of the issues that dominated the headlines some months back was the Obasanjo administration's decision to make the possession of a national identity card a minimum condition for participation in the 2003 elections. The rationale was quite simple. The identity card would be a more reliable means of voting than the voter's card, less prone to forgery and virtually impossible, at least in theory, to be employed in multiple voting and other forms of rigging. With the ID cards, so the theory went, it would finally be possible to know what Nigeria's true population is, rather than depend on word of mouth testimonies and foreign "experts" who base their projections on the projections of their home-based consultants. The whole idea, like all Nigerian blueprints, sounded great on paper.
But there was a little problem. There were no national ID cards. In spite of billions of naira invested by several administrations, the project was yet to produce any results, apart from a few very rich contractors and their rich associates in the civil service. The federal government announced that the jinx hanging over the project would finally be broken and the ID cards would finally leave the drawing board and become reality. In response, the northern establishment declared its strong opposition to the idea. Apparently, the identity cards would be too sophisticated for the nomadic cattle rearers, Professor Jubril Aminu's gallant efforts to educate them notwithstanding. After some "raking", the administration caved in and proclaimed that the ID cards would not, after all, be used in the elections. Last week, President Obasanjo disclosed that the census earlier scheduled for 2003 has been postponed by a year because conducting the headcount and the 2003 elections in the same year would be "too much". The logic cannot be faulted, but why didn't anyone think of it earlier?
However, the point of the whole story is this: two well-advertised efforts to realise a statistically sound census and election have fallen through. Now, the fundamental basis of election rigging and distorted planning are still very much in place until hopefully, 2004. Our culture of imprecision is alive and well.
One of the greatest sources of our underdevelopment is the lack of reliable statistics in virtually every area of national life (including the number of the president's wives). We don't know how many we are and therefore we cannot determine how much infrastructure, how much housing, how many hospitals, how many primary schools, secondary schools and universities, how many rail lines and trains, how many policemen and guns, how many prisons, how many special advisers in Aso Rock ñ and how many megawatts and distribution lines for NEPA. As a consequence, guessing has become a national habit we need. Our population, depending on who is speaking and what his agenda is, fluctuates from 100 million to 110 million to 120 million. On paper, the difference may not sound much but some nations are much fewer than 10 or 20 million. The question is: how do you plan when you don't have figures? The Federal Office of Statistics is supposed to be the official repository of statistics in this country but its figures are often as unreliable as the accident and crime statistics from the police. And this government agency neither updates these figures regularly nor publicises them adequately.
This national culture of vagueness can sometimes be comical, even though its consequences are so grave. Consider NEPA. How good is electricity supply in this country? Depending on where you live, the answer could be very good, fair or terrible. Because we do not have any frame of reference, all the answers are right  and wrong. Apart from the 4000 megawatts which NEPA under its former Technical Committee achieved rather mysteriously in December, we have no other information regarding its performance especially in the area of distribution. How good is it? How bad is it? We do not know. Like primitive people inhabiting a dense forest, we are isolated and our reality is defined by whether it is sunny or rainy in our own patch of the woods.
Recently, the president announced that inflation is still a single-digit affair and therefore still within the manageable parameters he had set. A colleague who knows quite a bit about such matters says that Chief Obasanjo does not know what he is talking about. I cannot offer an authentic opinion one way or the other because neither do I. But it is very likely that president's unshakable belief that he is managing the economic fundamentals well is built on this shaky statistical foundation. Actually, he is as much a victim as the rest of us. Just like Abacha who was a prisoner of the smart alecs who constantly told him that NADECO agents were hiding in the luxuriant shrubs behind his bedroom, Obasanjo may not have any facts to challenge Musiliu Smith when that able policeman comes to inform him that the rate of armed robberies and assassinations is declining. Or when the minister of labour walks in to give him the happy news that the poverty alleviation programme and youth empowerment schemes are resounding successes. Without any means of confirmation, it is easy for the GSM operators and their unofficial counsel, the Nigerian Communication Commission to make all kinds of tall claims about the success of the programme even as Nigerians are being ripped off through all kinds of unethical practices.
The story is the same in the states. Depending on who you are talking to, Orji Kalu, Chimaroke Nnamani, Abubakar Audu, Lam Adesina and Rabiu Kwankwaso are either fantastic achievers or irredeemable failures. Their supporters praise them to the high heavens, their opponents are not ready to admit that they have even put up a signboard successfully since they were sworn in and there is no independent and objective channel to determine what exactly is on ground. This explains why Nigeria is a political propagandist's heaven. Without any frame of reference, it is possible to make any claims, however far-fetched and outlandish. Not surprisingly, it is also easy for the public officer who is articulate to sell themselves as hard-working even when they have no achievements to show beyond their "big grammar". Conversely, the hard-working minister who is not blessed with a gift of the gab may end up not getting credit for his or her accomplishments.
Something has to be done about our national celebration of imprecision and vagueness if Nigeria is to have any real chance of true development. Every serious country calibrates its progress through statistics such as GDP, inflation rates, interest rates, employment levels, housing units etc. Knowledge is power, and this practice of blundering through a forest of indistinct and shadowy "facts" can only lead to retrogression. A national emergency to tackle the paucity of reliable statistics permanently is called for.
March 2002 |