Can the Nigerian Project be Salvaged?

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Can the Nigerian Project be Salvaged?

• Growth, Democracy and Security
• Richard Joseph

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Fannie Lou Hamer, 1917-1977
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Former Presidents Carter Clinton
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Senator Barack Obama, June 2006
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Chinua Achebe, December 2010
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Governance, Enterprise and Shared Prosperity

• With better governance, I have no doubt that
  Africa holds the promise of a broader base of
  prosperity. Witness the extraordinary Witness the
  extraordinary success of Africans in my country,
  America. They're doing very well. So they've got
  the talent, they've got the entrepreneurial
  spirit. The question is, how do we make sure that
  they're succeeding here in their home countries?
  
• President Barack Obama, Accra, Ghana,
  July 2009
• How do we begin to solve these problems in
  Nigeria where the structures are present but
  there is no accountability?
• Professor Chinua Achebe, January 2011

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Developmental Governance

• Africas future will not differ from the grim
  present if a Weberian culture of effective and
  legitimate bureaucratic organization does not
  take root in African soil. At the center of smart
  partnerships for African development will be one
  overriding commitment building sustainable
  institutions that actually work as intended. How
  this very fundamental but revolutionary step can
  be made is a question for which answers have not
  been found.
• R. Joseph, Smart Partnerships for African
  Development,
• US Institute for Peace, May 2002
• Consortium for Development Partnerships, 2004
• Research Alliance to Combat HIV/AIDS, 2006

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Scholars Forum, BusinessDay, June 2009

• As the Obama era unfolds, there are four
  contributions I hope to make to help fulfill the
  agenda for progress and transformation
• Write up the narratives of African, and
  especially Nigerian, struggles for peace,
  democracy and social justice that I have
  personally experienced.
• Provide policy advice regarding key development
  challenges in Africa. In the case of Nigeria, at
  the top of the list is the failure to establish a
  fully independent, non-partisan, and capable
  electoral system.

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Scholars Forum, BusinessDay, June 2009

• 3. Advance analyses of Africas mighty problem
  which is the failure in many countries to create
  a
• universalistic, legitimate, and capable state.
• 4. Help design a Nigerian Project on sustainable
  growth and development that would draw on the
  extensive technological resources, notably in the
  United States, to address key economic and
  infrastructure challenges.

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Nigeria 2025

• By 2025, if the necessary transformations have
  occurred, Nigerians should bask in the
  economic growth that has taken place and the
  developmental governance for which they have
  become known. This vision can become a reality.
• R. Joseph, June 2009
• I am sure you are one of the optimists who think
  the current security crisis presents President
  Goodluck Jonathan an opportunity for fundamental
  reform of Nigerian governance which he may just
  grasp.
• Dr. Abimbola Agboluaje, February 8, 2012

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What is Nigeria?

• Nigeria had been formed by the gradual
  incorporation of different contiguous areas and
  peoples into the British Empire from 1861
  onwards, taking its final shape by 1914, when the
  celebrated amalgamation by Lord Lugard
  established the administrative pattern of a
  coastal Colony (Lagos and its hinterland) and a
  Protectorate over the rest of the country
• K.W.J. Post and Michael Vickers, Structure and
  Conflict in Nigeria (1973)
• Before colonialism there were no states called
  India or Nigeria.
• Isaac Chotiner, The New York Times, March 4, 2012

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The Making of Nigeria

• Any country is, in a sense, an artificial
  creation. In the case of Nigeria, however, union
  was so sudden, and included such widely differing
  groups of peoples that not only the British, who
  created it, but the inhabitants themselves, have
  often doubted whether it could survive as a
  political entity. On 1st October, 1960, despite
  many difficulties, Nigeria became a sovereign
  federation and has survived intact despite a
  protracted civil war.
• Michael Crowder, The Story of Nigeria (1962/1978)
• Britains decision to join the Islamic north of
  the country with non-Muslim settlements in the
  south fed tribal conflicts and insurgencies that
  has lasted to this day.
• Isaac Chotiner, March 4, 2012

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Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, 1910-1982He did more
than anyone else to establish the serious study
of African history in Britain. Obituary, The
Times (London)
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Thomas Hodgkin at Crab Mill, Oxfordshire
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The Making of Nigeria

• Perhaps the first event in Nigerian history to
  which a reasonably accurate date can be assigned
  is the conversion to Islam of Umme (or Humai),
  Mai of Kanem, shortly before the end of the 11th
  centuryIn the 1240s, its Kanems government
  built a madrasa for Kanem pilgrims and students
  residing in Cairo
• Ibn Khaldun,14th centuryhis account of the
  embassy which Kanem sent to al-Mustansir, the
  founder of the Hafsid dynasty in Tunisia, and the
  public excitement caused by the gift of a
  giraffe.
• Thomas Hodgkin, Nigerian Perspectives An
  Historical Anthology (1960/1975)

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The Future Nigeria
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Pre-Nigeria States
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Pre-Nigeria Sokoto Caliphate
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Sokoto Caliphate

• Shaikh Uthman dan Fodio, Jihad, 1804-1809
• Its objectives were always presented in Islamic,
  not in ethnic terms, and tribalism was
  explicitly and frequently condemned
• It had a genuine popular basisIt also
  represented a protest of the Hausa commoners
  (talakawa) against the old Hausa dynasties
  against the oppression of the ruling class as
  much as against its paganism or lack of
  orthodoxy.
• The kind of state which the leaders of the
  revolution were pledged to establish was a state
  in which social justice, administered in the
  light of the Sharia by God-fearing rulers, took
  the place of the arbitrary decisions of
  irresponsible despots.
• T. Hodgkin

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Sokoto Caliphate

• The most obvious consequence of the jihad was
  the imposition of the authority of a single
  government over a large region formerly occupied
  by a number of competing sovereign states.
• European commentators have tended to
  underestimate the extent to which the Caliphate
  survived through the nineteenth century as an
  effective political system.
• The two major empire-building movements in
  Nigeria which marked the beginning and end of
  the 19th century Fulani and British had
  more in common than is sometimes realized.
• T. Hodgkin

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Nigeria, 1965
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Today 36 States
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Geopolitical Zones
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University of Ibadan, 1976-79
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Kamerun to Nigerian Project

• Ruben Um Nyobé and The Kamerun Rebellion,
  African Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 293 (1974)
• Settlers, Strikers and Sans-Travail The Douala
  Riots of September 1945, Journal of African
  History, Vol. XV, No. 4 (1974)
• The Royal Pretender Prince Douala Manga Bell
  in Paris, 1919-1922, Cahiers dEtudes
  Africaines, Vol. XIV, No. 54 (1974)
• The German Question in French Cameroun,
  1919-1939, Comparative Studies in Society and
  History, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1975)
• National Politics in Postwar Cameroun The
  Difficult Birth of the UPC, Journal of African
  Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1975)
• The Gaullist Legacy Patterns of French
  Neo-Colonialism, Review of African Political
  Economy, No. 6 (1976)

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Kamerun to Nigerian Project

• Radical Nationalism in Cameroun Social Origins
  of the UPC Rebellion (Oxford The Clarendon
  Press, 1977)also published as Le Mouvement
  Nationaliste au Cameroun (Paris Karthala, 1986)
• National Objectives and Public Accountability,
  Issues in the Nigerian Draft Constitution, ed. S.
  Kumo and A. Aliyu (Zaria, Nigeria Institute of
  Administration, 1977)
• Affluence and Underdevelopment The Nigerian
  Experience, Journal of Modern African Studies,
  Vol. 16, No. 2 (1978)
• Gaullist Africa Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo
  (Enugu, Nigeria Fourth Dimension Publishers,
  1978), editor
• Political Parties and Ideology in Nigeria,
  Review of African Political Economy, No. 13
  (1979)

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Conference on Nigerian Draft
Constitution March 1977
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Conference on Nigerian Draft
Constitution
March 1977
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Knowledge Generation Social Progress

• The military regarded the university as an
  enemy-formation and tried hard to empty the
  Nigerian university of its intellectual contents
  resulting in the scattering of Nigerias best
  brains in foreign universities and other
  institutions.
• ...our commitment to the revitalization of the
  educational system in Ekiti State. We recognize
  the importance of the university as a fountain of
  knowledge-generation and social progress.
• Governor Kayode Fayemi

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Ekiti Governor Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Professors M.
Aluko and R. Joseph
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Dysfunction Sub-Optimalism

• They have stolen much of our collective wealth
  and left us with little to fight our massive
  poverty. They have not created a united
  countryThey have failed to give us appropriate
  infrastructureThey have not given us the level
  of peace and stability needed to attract
  sufficient foreign investmentThey have not
  managed to diversify our economy despite the
  billions they have earned from oil. They have
  maintained a huge developmental gap between
  policy and implementation.
• Prof. Ebere Onwudiwe, 2009

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Growth Development Debate

• British aid agency Oxfam has flayed the
  International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
  Bank (WB) for their complacent approach to the
  problems caused in sub-Saharan Africa because of
  its huge external debt, which is in excess of
  183 billion.
• "After a decade of structural adjustment programs
  implemented under the tutelage of the World Bank
  and the IMF, Africa remains trapped in a downward
  spiral of economic and social decline and poverty
  is increasing. There is "overwhelming evidence
  that existing adjustment policies have failed
  they have neither created a platform for
  sustainable recovery nor addressed the central
  problem of poverty alleviation.
• November, 1993

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Growth Development Debate

• IMF managing director Michel Camdessus reacted
  angrily to the Oxfam report and said he, too,
  feared "the sinking of a continent" and was
  disturbed that per capita growth rates in Africa
  had been falling for the last 20 years The level
  of debt "has remained an overwhelming obstacle"
  to recovery and calls for debt forgiveness by the
  G-7.
• Camdessus added African countries needed to make
  important changes, including putting the right
  macroeconomic policies in place and reforming and
  strengthening governmental institutions.
• November 1993

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Growth Development Debate

• Let me tell you why I believe that success is
  possible. The situation in Africa has improved.
  .. I have no intention of overlooking the poverty
  and all the deficiencies that we still face This
  does not apply to the countries ravaged by war,
  fratricidal conflicts, and serious political
  upheavals It is clear that an economic recovery
  began in 1994. Real GDP growth in sub-Saharan
  Africa is expected to average roughly 5 percent
  in 1996-97, compared with only 1 percent in
  1991-93. And at last, real per capita GDP growth
  will be clearly positive for the first time in
  many years.
• Michel Camdessus, July 1996

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Growth Development Debate

• The "Afro-pessimists" will tell you that this
  recovery will be short-livedthat it is readily
  explained by an uptick in the terms of trade due
  to shifts in commodity prices.
• How wrong they are. According to the most
  rigorous studies, Africa's stronger growth is
  explained not by higher commodity prices, but by
  the fact that an increasing number of countries
  have undertaken courageous adjustment and
  structural reform programs.
• This is the key to Africa's progress.
• Michel Camdessus, July 1996

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IMF Reform Agenda

• What did these reform programs involve?
• Reducing public sector deficits so they could
  be financed without fanning inflation or building
  up excessive debt
• maintaining monetary stability while maintaining
  realistic exchange rates and liberalizing prices
• mobilizing domestic savings and liberalizing
  trade
• freeing the productive energies of the economies
  through comprehensive structural reform.
• Michel Camdessus, July 1996

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Emerging Africa

• more democratic and accountable governments
• more sensible economic policies
• end of the debt crisis and better relations with
  external agencies
• new technologies and opportunities for business
  and political accountability
• a new generation of policymakers, activists and
  business leaders
• Steven Radelet , 2010

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The Radelet Narrative Africa, 1995 - 2010

• Emerging Africa
• Threshold Countries
• Non-Emerging Countries
• OilExporters

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Africa Rising The Hopeful Continent

• Over the past decade six of the worlds ten
  fastest-growing countries were African. In eight
  of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster
  than East Asia, including Japan. Even allowing
  for the knock-on effect of the northern
  hemispheres slowdown, the IMF expects Africa to
  grow by 6 this year and nearly 6 in 2012, about
  the same as Asia.
• The Economist, December 3, 2011
• Vijay Rajahan, Africa Rising, 2010

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Africa Rising The Hopeful Continent

• Africa is on the move from basket case to a
  potential bread basket, from dodgy debtor to
  investor opportunity.
• A market of nearly 1 billion people, about a
  third of them under 21, is making up for five
  wasted post-independence decades.
• There is a wave of creativity novelists and
  artists, film-makers and musicians, designers and
  stylists, all are thriving.
• Michael Holman, Financial Times, February 28, 2012

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Conflicting Narratives

• Sub-Saharan Africa has an unprecedented
  opportunity for transformation and sustained
  growth and could be on the brink of an economic
  takeoff, much like China was 30 years ago, and
  India 20 years ago.
• World Bank, Africa Regional Strategy, March 2011
• Progress, stagnation and discouraging regression
  continue to co-exist on the continent.
• Africa Progress Panel, 2011 (Kofi Annan, Chairman)

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Conflicting Narratives

• Radical and growing economic inequality
  animated much of what was at stake in the various
  Arab uprisings, and it will play a major role in
  shaping African politicsThe disaffected
  Tunisian street vendor who set himself alight
  was not so different from many disaffected young
  men of Nairobi and Kampalas slums. They are
  Africas overwhelming majority poor,
  marginalized and angry about corruption and
  soaring food and fuel prices. It is those young
  men who endure the daily humiliations of poverty,
  struggling to find jobs as elites crow about
  growth and an African renaissance.
• John Githongo, Anti-Corruption Crusader, Kenya,
  July 2011

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Nigerian Narratives

• We are going down an escalator that is going
  up.
• Dele Olojede, Publisher, NEXT newspaper, Lagos
• We have major systemic issues arising from
  decades of unchecked corruption. Those systems,
  the beneficiaries, the sectional interests and
  others that depend on these benefits wouldn't
  just fold their arms while we threaten their
  interests. We have begun a very painful process
  of correcting the system. It is no easy featWhat
  we are implementing are not theoretical solutions
  but solutions aimed at correcting the very ills
  plaguing our country.
• Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigerian Minister of
  Finance, January 2012

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Emerging Africa and Nigeria

• For the first time, the proportion of people
  living in extreme poverty less than 1.25 a day
  fell in every developing region from 2005-2010.
  In sub-Saharan Africa it droppedbelow 50 for
  the first time.
• The World Bank, February 29, 2012
• In Nigeria, poverty continues to increase. 61 of
  Nigerians, 97.6 million, live on less than 1 a
  day. Poverty is 10 higher in 2010 than in 2004.
• Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics, February
  13, 2012

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Symposium on Growth, Democracy, Security

• Post-liberation States and Non-Democratic
  Development Angola, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda
• Pivotal Nations Angola, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast,
  Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa
• Re-territorializing trans-Sahara, trans-Sahel,
  regional configurations
• Expanding oil and gas reserves Ghana, Uganda,
  Ivory Coast, Mozambique
• South-South Relations China, India, Brazil
• State, War and Predation Congo, Sudan, Somalia,
  Zimbabwe
• Turmoil and Transition Egypt, Libya, Morocco,
  Tunisia, (Algeria?)
• At-Risk Democracies Botswana, Ghana, Mali,
  Senegal
• Building Democracy Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia,
  Niger, Zambia
• African Global GDS Islamism,
  Counter-Insurgency, Food, Water, Climate, Energy

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AfricaPlus

• Claiming Democracy
• Building Social Wealth
• GATE (Governmental Accountability, Transparency
  and Efficiency)
• INVENT (Invest in Ethical Entrepreneurship)
• State-Nation Configuration

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Claiming Democracy

• In much of the developing and postcommunist
  worlds, democracy has been a superficial
  phenomenon, blighted by multiple forms of bad
  governance abusive police and security forces,
  domineering local oligarchies, incompetent and
  indifferent state bureaucracies, corrupt and
  inaccessible judiciaries, and venal ruling elites
  who are contemptuous of the rule of law and
  accountable to no one but themselves.
• In these regimes the purpose of government is
  not to generate public goods, such as roads,
  schools, clinics, and sewer systems. Instead it
  is to produce private goods for officials, their
  families, and their cronies.
• Larry Diamond, The Democratic Rollback The
  Resurgence of the Predatory State, Foreign
  Affairs (2008)

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Claiming Democracy

• The aspirations of the African people, as shown
  in survey after survey, including in Nigeria,
  have not been matched by what politicians
  actually do once they are elected. Democracy is
  therefore compressed into a voting act performed
  every four or five years. In view of the
  declining quality of elections, even these acts
  can be drained of meaning.
• Nigeria needs more efficient, transparent,
  responsive and accountable governmentsMuch
  remains to be done to get federal, state and
  local governments performing in ways commensurate
  with the nation's abundant human and material
  resources.
• R. Joseph, Nigerias 50th Anniversary, Abuja and
  Lagos, October 2010

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Claiming Democracy

• This is essentially a peoples contestIt is a
  struggle for maintaining in the world, that form,
  and substance of government whose leading object
  is to elevate the condition of men to lift
  artificial weights from all shoulders to clear
  the paths for all to afford all an even start
  and a fair chance, in the race of life.
• Abraham Lincoln
• Presidential Message to Congress, 1861

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Building Social Wealth

• Water, Energy, Agriculture, Law-based
  Governance, Transportation, Health
• Francis Fukuyama
• substantive as well as procedural democracy
  elections as well as jobs, roads, electricity,
  water, food, health care

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Knowledge Production Social Progress

• More than ever before, at this historic juncture
  in Nigeria, we need our best minds to steer the
  ship of state.
• Governor Babatunde Fashola
• Lagos State

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The Fashola Reform Agenda

• 1. aggressive road construction
• 2. integrated mass transit
• 3. improved power and water supply
• 4. environmental renewal
• 5. affordable shelter

• 6/7. qualitative and affordable education and
  health care
• 8. food security
• 9. employment generation
• 10. revenue enhancement

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Nigeria 2025 Growth, Democracy and Security

• I. Civic and Communal Associations,
  Corporations, NGOs, Faith Groups
• II. Local Governments, States, Sub-National
  Zones, Confederation
• III. Qualitative Education
• IV. Strategic Partnerships and Out-Sourcing
• V. Engaging the Diaspora
• VI. Ethical Leadership Followership

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State-Nation Configuration

• We have failed as a people to confront the
  fundamental structural challenges of our national
  togetherness and collective political life.
• Unless wereorder the fundamentally flawed logic
  on which Nigeria has operated until now, we will
  not be able put the national state in the service
  of the diverse people who constitute it.
• Governor Kayode Fayemi, September 2011

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Conglomerate Voting Pattern

• Presidential Election
• April 2011

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Nigeria 2025Collaborative Learning and Action

• CD/BSW/GATE/INVENT/SNC
• Nigeria after Military Rule 1999-2025
• Midway 26-year Marathon
• A Conglomerate Society, Ken Post (1973)
• A Cultural Federation, Turi Muhammadu (1979)
• Amalgamation 1914-2014 E Pluribus Unum
• April 2015 Elections, and Beyond
• Nigerian Consensus/Nigerian Compact/Nigerian
  Model
• South-South Learning Brazil-India-Nigeria-Indones
  ia
• What tried? What worked? What failed? What next?

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AfricaPlus Expand Knowledge, Design Solutions

• Library and Documentation
• Collaborative Projects
• Symposium on Growth, Democracy and Security
• Distance Learning Policy Consultation
• Teleseminars
• Teaching and Research Partnerships
• Publications

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Northern Nigeria and the National Project

• 1. The End of Northern Primacy
• 2. North Military Dominance, 1979 -1999
• 3. The Second Obasanjo Regnum, 1999 - ?
• 4. Goodluck Jonathans Presidency, 2010-2015?
• 5. Northern Diversity 70-75 million population
• 6. Islam and Pluralism
• 7. Education Stagnation, Economic Decline
• 8. Political Manipulation of Religion
• 9. Military/Security/Criminal Networks
• 10. Youths without Jobs, Education, Hope
• 11. Global Jihadism/Counter-Insurgency
• 12. Centenary of the Amalgamation 2014