POST EXPRESS Category: Business and Economy Date of Article: 03/24/2000 Topic: How Politics Impacts Nigeria's Economy, by Mazrui Author: Full Text of Article: Renowned scholar, Prof. Ali Mazrui, was in Nigeria as the guest of First Securities Discount House (FSDH) in her maiden annual seminar. Mazrui delivered the paper on "Economic Development and Political Reform in an Emerging Democracy: The Nigerian Case" where he offered some massive views on how to move Nigeria forward. Excerpts: HERE are certain attributes which make Nigeria strikingly unique in Africa - setting it apart in configuration from all other African countries. This aspect might be called Nigeria's exceptionalism. There are other attributes, however, which make Nigeria a mirror of the African experience as a whole - making Nigeria a good illustration of what the whole of Africa is all about. This side of Nigeria might be called Nigeria's typicality. Some particular ups-and-downs of the country may be typical of the entire continent. To understand Nigeria is to comprehend this dialectic between the exceptionalism of Nigeria in the African configuration and the typicality of Nigeria as a mirror of the continent. The excepitonalism of Nigeria includes, of course, the huge size of its population in relation to its neighbours. It is by far the most populous country in Africa. The next in size on the African continent is Egypt - and yet Egypt is only a little more than half of Nigeria's population. It is this size of Nigeria which is reminiscent of Jonathan Swift's character Gulliver in his travels among the people of Liliput (Gulliver's Travels, 1726). Nigeria is the black Gulliver bestriding a narrow world like a Colossus - if Swift's character can be mated to Shakespeare's imagery. When ECOWAS was formed in 1975 upon the initiative of Nigeria and Togo, its population comprised 150 million people in 16 countries; more than half of that total population were Nigerians. The Gross National Product of ECOWAS in 1975 was $85 billion - the bulk of that came from Nigeria. General Yakubu Gowon was a major architect of this ambitious African regional organisation. Nigeria's exceptionalism also includes the combination of immense human resources (youthful and potentially gifted population) with immense natural resources (led by oil and gas). Towards a Pax Nigeriana Almost from independence Nigeria's exceptionalism included a potential leadership role to help keep the peace in West Africa - a kind of Pax Nigeriana. For better or for worse, Nigeria's regional rival in this peace-keeping role has not been another West African country. It has, in fact, been France. It has been France, combined with Nigeria's own internal problems, which have prevented Pax Nigeriana from fulfilling its regional mission to the full. Opinion is divided within France at the end of the 20th Century as to whether to continue Paris' historic role in Africa or whether to find a new mission for French destiny in the newly emerging countries of Eastern and Central Europe. If France is beginning to withdraw from Africa (as the devaluation of the CFA France portended) the so-called regional "vacuum" left behind is likely to be filled by Pax Nigeriana. On the evidence so far Pax Nigeriana - keeping the peace in West Africa under Nigeria's auspices - is better fulfilled when Nigeria is under military rule than when it is under the politicians. The most spectacular exercises in Pax Nigeriana have occurred in the 1990s when Nigeria led the forces of ECOWAS (the ECOMOG troops) in Liberia first to restore peace and then to help re-start electoral democracy. The final result were elections in Liberia in 1997 which returned Charles Taylor to power. In 1998, Nigeria more unilaterally took on the army in Sierra Leone which had overthrown the elected government of President Kaba. Nigeria reversed the military takeover and restored the constitutionally elected government. For most of the 1990s Nigeria paradoxically became a force for democracy abroad but dictatorship at home. Nigerian forces helped to restore relative freedom to the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone - but the Nigerian forces were slow to extend freedom to the Nigerian people at home. This does not mean that Nigeria should not have helped to re-democratise Liberia and Sierra Leone. General Sani Abacha's regional role was one of the positive aspects of Pax Nigeriana. But doing good abroad is no excuse for not doing better at home. Fortunately, there were indications that the military government after Abacha wanted an honourable way towards re-civilisation. It is arguable that one of the first exercises of Pax Nigeriana occurred in Tanzania in 1964. Army mutinies in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika had forced the three governments to invite British troops to return to East Africa and disarm their own mutinous soldiers. President Julius K. Nyerere, understandably disbanded the whole mutinous army once order was restored. But who was going to keep the peace in a Tanganyika without an army? Julius Nyerere called upon fraternal troops from Nigeria to fill the vacuum while Nyerere set about creating an alternate indigenous security force. It is arguable that the beginnings of Pax Nigeriana lie in a voluntary partnership between Nigeria and what later became Tanzania. Nigerians helped the Tanzanians to keep the peace in their own country in 1964. Nigerian Politics: Between the Sublime and the Theatrical Perhaps it is also part of Nigeria's exceptionalism that it has not just one pivotal ethnic group in a national configuration but three. Uganda has one pivotal group - the Baganda. Kenya has in reality two outstanding pivotal groups - the Luo and Kikuyu. Senegal's outstanding pivotal group are the Wolof. Is Nigeria exceptional in having three very large pivotal ethnic groups, each with a dazzling record of achievement? The Hausa are by far the largest linguistic group not only in Nigeria but in West Africa as a whole. Within Nigeria itself the Hausa also have a long record of skills of governance from precolonial days, right through colonialism until postcolonial days. The Yoruba have in many ways the most complex indigenous culture of them all. The Yoruba impact on global Africa and the rest of the black world is less about the Yoruba language and more about the Yoruba religion and culture. Yoruba religion rites are to be witnessed in countries as diverse as Brazil, Jamaica, Haiti, Surinam, Nigeria, Dahomey (now Republic of Benin) and the United States. The Igbo are the great technologists of Nigeria in the second half of the 20th century. Their triumph in economic skills in northern Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s contributed to their vulnerability as a people in 1966. During the Nigerian Civil War the Igbo's innovation also produced Africa's first locally made gun-vehicles. During the Civil War the Igbo displayed levels of innovative daring unknown in postcolonial African history. The Igbo created rough-and-ready armed militarised vehicles as well as the beginnings of Africa's industrial revolution. This renaissance was aborted by the oil bonanza from 1997 onwards. During the Biafran war, Nigeria was more internally innovative than externally prosperous. The Nigerian civil war produced some of the high points of Nigeria's experience with technological innovation. The Nigerian oil bonanza after the 1973 OPEC price escalation created disincentives to Nigerian enterprise. War had brought out both the best and the worst of Nigeria in human terms. But technologically the power of spilt blood in Nigeria produced greater innovation than the power of sprouting petroleum. The pain of Biafra was technologically, more fruitful than the profit of OPEC. Ideologies: The Cultural and the Economic Nigeria's typicality includes the fact that Nigerians are more strongly moved by socio-cultural ideologies than by socio-economic ideologies. Socio-cultural ideologies appeal to such cultural forces as ethnicity, religion, nationalism, race-consciousness and regional allegiance. Socio-economic ideologies try to appeal to such economic interests as class, economic equity, trade union and rights and the like. Marxism, ujamaa and most other forms of socio-economic ideologies. Ethnicity, nationalism and regional allegiance are socio-cultural ideologies. In Nigeria - as in most other parts of Africa - ethno-cultural ideologies are much stronger than ethno-economic ones. My favourite Nigerian example is Obafemi Awolowo's effort to move Nigeria a little to the left. When he looked to see who was following him, it was not the dispossessed of all ethnic groups of Nigeria who followed, it was his fellow Yoruba of all social classes and levels of income. My favourite Kenyan example is Oginga Odinga's modest attempt to move Kenyans a little to the left. When Oginga looked to see who was following him, once again it was not the dispossessed Kenya of all ethnic groups. It was his fellow Luo of all social classes and levels of income. Africa is a continent of surplus passion but deficit power. Nigerians as Africans feel strongly about many aspirations. In the controversial words of a very distinguished African philosopher president - a kind of philosopher king - Leopold Senghor of Senegal: "Emotion is black... Reason is Greek." But passion can become power if it is channelled in the right direction and if the contents of the goals are relevant and fruitful. If education is both an African and an Americal ideal, young Africans are probably more passionate about getting an education than young Americans. Young Nigerians often walk miles everyday for an education. But good education is more difficult to get in Nigeria than in the USA. And when one does get it in Nigeria, it may be good Western education without adequate relevance to Nigeria or Africa. Can we measure political development by the yardstick of declining scale of political violence? Let us try with Nigeria. The first two decades of Nigeria's independence were the age of regicide and primary violence. The killing of the king or head executive as a trend was regicide. Of the eight supreme leaders of Nigeria in the first 20 years, capital lettersfour had been assassinated. The eight supreme leaders were Azikiwe, Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Gowon, Murtala, Obasanjo and Shagari. The 50 per cent who were assassinated were of course Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Ironsi and Murtala Muhammad. Regicide was at a 50 per cent rate - a high rate indeed. Ahmadu Bello was technically a regional leader but with immense federal and national power. The next 20 years of Nigeria's independence (1980 to the year 2000) were to be of militarism, and constitutional experimentation. These were the last years of Shagari, those of Buhari, those of Babangida and his immediate successors, and the emergence of Sani Abacha. The most promising experiment was the Babangida transition which collapsed ignominiously with the aborted election of June 1993. That transition would apparently have brought M.K.O. Abiola into power. Under Abacha the years of militarism and constitutional experimentation could have continued with a new concept of presidential recycling from military ruler to elected head of state. If Abacha had lived and run for the Presidency, he would have been partially following the precedent of Jerry Rawlings who captured power twice by the barrel of gun and later gained legitimacy through the ballot box and the electoral process. But Abacha died in June 1998 before that scenario could be attempted. Deplanning the Economy and Planning the Polity Elsewhere in Africa there had been politicians who believed in the economic ideologies of socialism and even Marxism-Leninism. Most of these have collapsed in the 1990s as a result of the following factors: . The socialist experiments in Africa had failed to deliver the economic goods; . The collapse of state-communism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe undermined the legitimacy of African equivalents of Marxism-Leninism. . The end of the Cold War exposed fragile African economies to extra pressure from the West and from international financial institutions. . Structural adjustment programmes of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have forced the pace of privatisation and the return to market ideologies. Five-year central economic plans have disappeared from almost the whole of Africa. Some would say "Good riddance". What Nigeria needs now are 10 to 20-year political plans. I realise that presidents and parliamentarians are elected for periods which are much shorter than 10 years, let alone 20. But fundamental political planning needs longer term units of time. That is why members of the European Union took decisions about long-term monetary union which did not depend upon which particular European government would be in power at which particular time. The most fundamental goals in political planning which Nigeria needs are in the following areas: . How to release the developmental energies of the Nigerian people. . How to balance agriculture and the industry,. . How to reduce socio-economic inequalities especially between regions, ethnic groups and religious communities; .How to sanitise the political and economic system - and reduce corruption; . How to empower women in the Nigerian system; . How to stabilise civilian supremacy in Nigeria's civil-military relations; . How to entrench human rights and civil liberties in actual practice and not just in the document of the constitution. . How to reconcile the cultural autonomy of states with the collective principles of the whole nation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------