Recently, Nigeria’s statisticians
momentarily took Boko Haram off the headlines by reporting that
Nigeria’s economy was 80 per cent larger than previously thought,
eclipsing South Africa as the continent’s largest. Remarkably, nobody
seemed to question what neglecting to rebase their GDP for twenty five
years might say about Nigeria’s governance.
I have
listened to several interviews of survivors of Boko Haram attacks and
one question keeps recurring. Where were the soldiers who were supposed
to be protecting you? The answer is almost invariably the same. They ran
away with us. Africa’s biggest economy is a failed state.
What, to paraphrase Chinua Achebe, is the trouble with Nigeria?
The
Sultan of Sokoto, the spiritual leader of Nigeria’s Muslims, sums it in
one word: corruption. “Corruption breeds injustice. Injustice is a big
barrier to good governance and if you don’t have good governance in any
society, you don’t have the people.”
A
young Nigerian scholar Akinola Olojo supports the Sultan’s prognosis.
“Boko Haram”, he writes, “has been able to draw upon a considerable base
of local sympathy and support largely from the ranks of the uneducated,
unemployed and impoverished youths in Northern Nigeria. In addition,
the group’s ability to manoeuvre and stage-manage the force of religion
in achieving its objectives appears to be dangerously reinforced by the
influence of political interests and elites.”
The
parallels between Nigeria’s security crisis and our own is inescapable.
“A man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say
where he dried his body” so goes the Igbo proverb popularised by Achebe.
Where did the rain start beating us?
It
began when we adopted what I call development fundamentalism. This is
the ideology that the raison d'ĂȘtre of the state is material progress.
At the extreme it is reduced to economic growth, as we did in Sessional
Paper No. 10 of 1965.
The pillars of a state are a
cohesive society, security and justice. They are indivisible and
mutually reinforcing. But these have been at the periphery of our
development agenda.
We have retained intact the
repressive colonial security infrastructure whose primary function was
to protect the Government from its oppressed subjects.
SUPERNORMAL PROFITS
In
this ideology, nation building is exactly that—construction. Roads have
historically occupied the pride of place, but railways are the flavour
of the month. We lament that we are spending too much money on recurrent
expenditure instead of “development” by which we mean building ever
grander edifices.
We forget recurrent expenditure
includes the salaries for police officers, and money to maintain their
vehicles as well as to buy the fuel they need to respond when you call
them.
The rain beat us harder with the emergence of an
incestuous, unbelievably greedy oligarchy that straddles the civil
service, business and politics. We went one further than other
countries, legitimising civil servants active involvement in business.
In
a capitalist economy, an independent policy maker’s goal is to have as a
much competition in the economy as possible. The oligarchs’ interest
is the complete opposite—to undermine competition in the industries
where they have interests.
This conflict of interest
is at the heart of our economic underperformance, unemployment and
inequality. It has created a high cost economy that generates
supernormal profits for the corporate aristocracy at the expense of
creating jobs and providing affordable goods and services.
Case
in point. This year’s budget contained an increase in tariffs for the
local steel industry. Now, industries don’t come more capital intensive
than steel, so why would an economy that needs to create jobs single
out the most capital intensive industry for protection? And why now?
Standard Gauge Railway, that’s why. It’s the oligarchs sniffing out the
opportunities to cash in.
But what has this to do with
insecurity, one might ask? It will make importing the stuff that Jua
Kali artisans make for us: windows, doors, furniture, karais, and the
rest of it, cheaper. As of last year, Jua Kali manufacturing employed
2.4 million people.
This is not only close to ten
times the number employed in ALL the formal manufacturing industry
(254,000), it is in fact one and a half times the 1.6 million total
employment in the entire formal private sector economy.
Let
us, for argument’s sake, suppose that this protection will destroy 10
per cent of Jua Kali manufacturing jobs and increase the formal
manufacturing ones by 20 per cent. It works to 240,000 jobs sacrificed
for 50,000 jobs, that is, a net loss of 190,000jobs — round it up to
200,000. The vast majority will suffer without bitterness, but a few
will not take it lying down. Let’s say only one per cent turn to crime.
That is two thousand more criminals.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY KLEPTOCRACY
Of
these, one per cent might fall prey to Al Shabaab. That’s 20 homegrown
terrorists. While you are being mugged, the oligarchs will be raising
their glasses to another year of double digit growth.
Then
came ethnic political mobilisation — and the heavens opened. The first
case of pure unadulterated ethnic political mobilisation that comes to
mind is the oathing of Kikuyus to defend the regime following the
assassination of Tom Mboya in 1969. The regime defenders were to find
themselves in an awkward situation when the same fate befell their own
JM Kariuki six years later. What goes round comes round.
Moi
came to power on a platform of eradicating tribalism and corruption.
He did neither but, thankfully, he ran an equal opportunity kleptocracy.
Anybody could eat, as long as they were prepared to be a sycophant and
to spread the loot. While more economically costly than Kenyatta’s
exclusionary one, its inclusivity made for social stability.
Moi
ended the political marginalisation of northern Kenya, and the Somali
people in particular. If the war with Al Shabaab was in the context of
the Kenyatta era post Shifta political environment, we would be like
Northern Nigeria today or worse.
The cynical political
manipulation of ethnicity returned with a vengeance with the Kibaki
regime, in the aftermath of the MoU fallout. We may never know why the
Kibaki oligarchy found it impossible to live with the MoU. My own
sense, with the benefit of hindsight, is Anglo Leasing.
The
connivance required to execute and keep the scams under wraps would not
have been possible in the environment of openness that the spirit of
NARC would have engendered. We now know that the pillage began on day
one. The genteel Moody Awori seemed a rather unlikely choice for Vice
President following the death of Kijana Wamalwa — until he was fingered
as a key player in the Anglo Leasing scams.
Whatever
the case, the oligarchy reverted to the tried and tested—the Luo
bogeyman. Even Anglo-Leasing was rationalized thus. Desperate times call
for desperate measures. Money was needed to defend the Government from
the “munjaruo.”
POLITICAL MILEAGE FROM TERROR
It
is this mindset that blindsided the Government and the security
services in the wake of the 2007 election debacle. With all the
attention focused on Kibera and Kisumu, they did not see Rift Valley
coming. ICC, same script.
When under threat social
groups, family, clan, tribe, even sheep’s instinct is to close ranks and
fight the common threat. But these syndromes have so damaged our social
fabric that even under external threat our instinct is to exploit the
very differences we ought to forget for political and financial gain.
Terrorists
strike, and our first instinct is how to get political mileage out of
it. The need to revamp security infrastructure is high season for
dubious single sourced security procurement.
No
security infrastructure, however sophisticated, can protect us from our
prejudices, intolerance, greed and warped national priorities.
“Insecurity must not be allowed to compromise our economic activity”
writes a prominent business journalist.
“This
political bickering during a national tragedy is an unseemly spectacle
that can only repel potential tourists and investors”, warns the
editorial of another national newspaper.
It is fine it
seems for Kenyans to be massacred in Bungoma, Marsabit and Mandera as
long its does not get enough press to alarm tourists and investors.
Prof
Abdalla Bujra is no political activist. He is one of Africa’s most
accomplished development scholars. He grew up in Lamu. This is what he
said in a research interview in February this year. “What you have in
Lamu is a question of internal colonialism. All the powerful government
people—the PCs, the DCs, the DOs, all the powerful public officers,
especially those handing land matters have never been local, they all
come from Nairobi.
“In the 1970s, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta
opted to tackle the burning land question in Central Province by
importing thousands of Agikuyu into Lamu. This was done in total
disregard to the interests of the Bajuni, Swahili, Orma, Awer and other
indigenous Lamu people many of whom had been evicted from their
ancestral land earlier.
OUR NEIGHBOURS, OUR FRIENDS
Jomo
Kenyatta and his acolytes like the former Coast PC (Eliud Mahihu) were
in power when local, politically connected elites from Nairobi grabbed a
lot of land in Lamu County.
“All these issues planted
the seeds of simmering conflict that will explode in the region if
local grievances are not dealt with.”
This is what
community leaders told the same researchers: “We Lamu and Coastal people
have for centuries welcomed and embraced visitors in our midst. Some
have become Muslim; intermarried, made Lamu their home, speak in the Amu
dialect—you cannot tell they came from Kirinyaga, Machakos, Meru,
Kisumu, Bungoma. They have become part of us; they are our neighbours,
our friends.
But how do you go to someone’s home, grab
their land, kick them out, bring your own family members, recreate and
rename the neighbourhoods after your own villages upcountry? On top of
that you come into local elections and attempt to usurp power. Can’t the
Lamu people govern Lamu?
“We fear that this LAPSSET
project which requires a population of one million people will make us,
the indigenous people of Lamu, lose our cultural, religious and ethnic
identity forever. We are only 100,000 right now in the whole of Lamu.”
Social cohesion, security, justice.
Where
were the security services when Mpeketoni exploded? They were in
Mombasa. Some were there to protect tourists and investments from the
people, some to attend the political rally.
Had they encountered the attackers en route, they’d have taken their bribe and wished them safari njema. They are as corrupt, as divided, as myopic as the rest of us.
Ethnic
cleansing is a crime against humanity. But we can’t go there, can we?
What goes round comes round. Choices. Consequences.
Dr Ndii is Managing Director of Africa Economics ndii@netsolafrica.com
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