The Fragile Nigerian State

For the twenty years or so, academics have been engaged in a debate about the weight that should be given to the study of non-western societies in undergraduate education. Afrocentrists argue that White scholars in the United States and Europe have consciously and systematically kept things African out of Western curricula. Moreover, they claim that when White scholars do include African issues, they do so in a demeaning and misleading way, for instance, by ignoring pre-colonial accomplishments or excessively criticizing modem African states. It is not just academics, of course. Africa rarely makes it into our popular culture, and when it does, it is often with the naiveté and even racist humor of the two The Gods Must Be Crazy films that portray Africans either as innocent savages or as incompetent politicians.

But when it comes to African states, the Afrocentrists are only partially correct. African states are weak, and one can say that without demeaning Nigerians or any other African people. With the single exception (and then only partial) of stifling dissent, the Nigerian state has not been able to reach its policy goals, whether run by civilians or military officers.

That does not mean that Nigeria has been an abject failure. There is now little or no debate about the Nigerian nation. Most of the ethnic, regional, and religious problems remain, but they no longer threaten to tear the country apart. Moreover, there are policy areas, such as higher education or the establishment of the Youth Service Corps, in which the Nigerian state has done rather well. On balance, however, the Nigerian state remains weak, especially as far as policy making and implementation are concerned.

Weak Central Institutions

In Chapter 13, I suggested that the weakness of third world states is best reflected in their ineffectual central institutions. That might seem surprising at first glance. Abacha and the military leaders who preceded him controlled the central state institutions with an iron fist. There was little organized opposition, and there were surprisingly few protests against major human rights violations such as the 1995 announcement to extend military rule for three more years.

Similarly, when Abacha and his colleagues seized power in November 1993, they dissolved the Parliament and banned the two political parties that had been created under Babangida. In their place, they created a new set of supposedly temporary institutions to run the country until it could be returned to civilian rule.

Each new regime has done much the same thing. Thus, with the exception of the civil service, the central institutions in Nigeria have rarely lasted more than a few years, and their structures and operations have reflected the views of whichever group happened to be in power at the time.

Under Abacha, the Nigerian state was headed by two bodies. By far the more powerful of the two was the Provisional Ruling Council, which replaced the AFRC of Babangida's days. It had twenty-two members at the time (all military officers) and was chaired by Sani Abacha in his role as head of government. There was also a twenty-seven-member Federal Executive Council also chaired by Abacha, twenty-five of whom were civilians. On paper, this council looked something like a cabinet since it included ministers for foreign affairs, defense, and so on. Many of its initial members were civilian politicians who had been active in the years and months before the 1993 coup. Nonetheless, all real power was held by the military, and most of it remained in Abacha's hands alone.

The problems are compounded by other difficulties. Neither the military nor the police could assure basic law and order in Lagos, the former capital that now has about eight million people and one of the world's highest crime rates. Foreign diplomats and business executives rarely leave their homes without armed escorts. The bodies of people killed in traffic accidents are frequently left by the side of the road, because the people who are supposed to collect them are afraid of being attacked by gang members or being held until they pay a bribe to the police.

Public servants are often unpaid, and when they do get their salaries, they do not take home enough money to live on. As a result, many are corrupt. It does not take much to convince garbage collectors or teachers to go on strike. The telephone system works intermittently at best outside of Lagos and Abuja Electrical blackouts occur frequently. Cities lack even rudimentary sanitation systems.

The Nigerian state does not have many resources. A full 82 percent of its revenue comes from either the sale of oil or taxes on the profits of the operations of the multinational petroleum companies. When oil prices plummet--as they have frequently since the early 1980s--so does the government's income.

That may change under the new republic, but the initial signs were not all that encouraging. That begins with the fact that the new constitution was not published until after the legislative elections took place and many of its provisions were not known until after Obasanjo was inaugurated. As the Nobel Prize winner, Wole Soyinka, put it:

The centerpiece of the new state will be its American-style presidency, which is not responsible to the legislature. It, in turn, has two houses, a 360 member House of Representatives elected from single-member districts and a 109 member Senate composed of three people elected from each state plus a single official from the capital region of Abuja.

There is much skepticism, however. On the one hand, the new president has brought new people in to many key offices, and there are many political newcomers in the House of Representatives, Senate, and state legislatures. On the other hand, Obasanjo has surrounded himself with advisors and civil servants who also served under the military, claiming that "you can’t just wave away a whole generation of politicians" overnight in a country that is sorely lacking talented, experienced public officials.

Obasanjo was also quoted as saying, "we need someone who can act as a bridge for a gradual disengagement of the military. If we don’t have someone who can understand them, then I think we will have problems." To his supporters, such statements reflect his pragmatic realization that lasting democratization can only come dramatically and cannot occur if civilian authorities rub the officers the wrong way. To his critics, they are worrisome signs that Obasanjo remains far closer to the military than his public image and statements might suggest.

Corruption

The weakness of those policy-making and administrative institutions is reflected in the widespread corruption that has plagued Nigerian politics since the 1960s. As with state operations in general, there is much we do not know about the magnitude of the problem since corrupt officials rarely talk about their affairs. There is no doubt, however, that corruption is widespread. There was thus little surprise when a 1996 poll of international business executives rated Nigeria the most corrupt country in the world. Similarly, Obasanjo built much of his political base for his return to power as head of Transparency International, an NGO that primarily works to uncover corruption in the relations between businesses and governments.

Corruption takes many forms, including growing concern about official Nigerian complicity in the drug trade. Nigeria is one of but four countries to be cited by the United States for not cooperating in global drug enforcement efforts, and it is widely known to be a transit point for drugs heading for Europe and the United States.

Perhaps even more worrisome for Nigerian domestic politics are the reports regarding public officials. In 1995, 60 Minutes broadcast a program on scams run by Nigerian "businessmen" seeking "investment capital" from naive, rich foreigners. "Charges" (a euphemism for bribes) are exacted for ignoring environmental regulations on imported goods or even getting a boarding card for an airplane flight.

The customs system is notorious. According to one importer, "No one pays the full customs duty. The going rate is to pay the customs officer a third of the difference between the official rate of duty and what you actually pay in duty (usually nothing)."

Under the military, the government encouraged foreign investment (see the section on economic policy later for details), but official approval for an import or joint venture contract typically only came when individual officers get their "personal interests" satisfied. Personal interests came in the form of cars, offshore bank accounts, or tuition fees for their children's schooling in England. Shell and other companies are alleged to "buy" popular support for their activities by handing out liquor and cash.

In 1992, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) had a gap of $2.7 billion, or 10 percent of the country’s total GNP. between what international experts say it earned and what it claims it took in. The assumption is that that money had been diverted to offshore accounts of the leadership. To make matters worse, even though Nigeria is the world’s sixth leading producer of oil, there is a gasoline shortage. Gas stations are usually out, and consumers who want gas have to buy it on a black market controlled by soldiers and pay seven or more times the official price.

The corruption has reached the very top. The Abubakar and Obasanjo governments have both sought to recover money Abacha, his family, and his supporters spirited out of the country. Before he turned power over to Obasanjo, Abubakar obtained about $750 million from those accounts. Then, on 26 October 1999, lawyers representing the government filed suit in Switzerland demanding another $2.2 billion that had been illegally sent to Abacha family accounts there.

Overall, the Obasanjo government has made a major attempt to reduce corruption. The 93 top generals who served under Abacha were replaced as soon as Obasanjo took office. He also revoked all appointments and contracts made by the military after 1 January 1999. During his October 1999 visit to Washington and in almost all his other public statements for domestic as well as international audiences, he stressed the new regime’s commitment to honesty. But, since this chapter was written only five months after the government took office, it is far too early to tell how much it can do about the corruption that has contributed heavily to the country’s enduring poverty.

Disruptive Federalism

The last troublesome part of the Nigerian state is its structure. At independence, the country was divided into three regions that maximized the influence of the three leading ethnic groups but also made it hard to separate regional. and national conflict. Moreover, there was no protection for the smaller ethnic groups. After the crises that wracked the: western region in 1962 and 1963, the government agreed to the creation of the fourth, mid-western region in 1964, but as we saw earlier, that did little to defuse political tensions. The first military regime abolished the regions and divided the country into twelve states, six in the north and three each in the east and west. The authors of the Second Republic constitution further divided the states, creating a total of nineteen, of which the three main ethnic groups would control twelve and the smaller ones seven. In the late 1980s, Babangida's government created two new states and a federal district around the newly created capital city of Abuja. In August 1991, yet another nine new states (making a total of 36) were formed in an attempt to defuse ethnic and other tensions. There are also 449 local governments, which combine elected officials and traditional authorities, although their numbers and composition have fluctuated dramatically over the years.

In some ways, the changes in state and local government structures have been successful. Now, most of the significant ethnic groups control the regions in which they live, which was not possible in the days of three or four regions. Moreover, the creation of smaller states has made local politics less and less a part of the all-or-nothing nature of national competition.

In the late 1970s and again in the 1990s, those sub-national units also played a vital role in the attempts to return to democracy. In each case, it was hoped that creating relatively homogeneous state and local governments and holding elections at those levels first would smooth the way to peaceful democratic politics at the national level as well. State politics may also be eased by the new government’s decision to allow them to keep a third more of the money they raise through taxation than had been the case under the military.

In other ways, however, the federal system has been a hindrance to democracy and stability. There has always been considerable uncertainty about what the respective responsibilities of the state and federal governments should be. Moreover, the inevitable duplication of services between federal, state, and local officials is bound to be a drain in a country with such limited resources. Most of all, federalism has reinforced ethnicity as the most important and disruptive issue in Nigerian political life. It has helped provide areas of "home rule" for the major ethnic groups, just as the redrawing of state lines has in India. But it also has made ethnic identity the main stepping-stone to political power, however the national leaders have tried to write rules for national political parties and other institutions.

The Personalization of Power

One final theme should help tie these themes together--the personalization of power in Nigeria and much of the rest of the third world.

Everywhere, we have a tendency to identity policies or problems with the individual men and women who are in power at the time thereby exasperating their importance in the process. There is, of course, no better example of that than giving former President Gorbachev so much of the credit for Soviet reform efforts and so much of the blame for its collapse.

In an established regime like that in the Soviet Union at the time, it probably is a mistake to do so. In a country like Nigeria in which most institutions are weak, the person who occupies an office is often far more important than the formal responsibilities and rules for the office itself.

That emphasis on the individual politician may work out well when he or she is someone of integrity and talent, as seems to be the case for President Obasanjo. But, it also opens the door even wider for the abuse or, simply, the poor use of power when the individuals involved lack either the ethical principles or the ability he and a handful of other Nigerian politicians have demonstrated, over the years.

In sum, Nigeria provides us with an excellent example of the paradoxical nature of the state in much of the third world. On the one hand, the state is expected to play a major role in almost all areas of public and private life. From forging a sense of national unity to developing the economy, almost everything passes through it. On the other hand, the Nigerian state is quite weak and has not been able to make much progress toward reaching any of those goals that have been thrust on it.