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I write this as a man who has just experienced Nigeria for myself, as opposed to the usual fare of reading about it.
I confess to having engaged in intercity travel. By road. I walked streets and markets. I saw people park their cars and walk miles to work and back. I heard the frustration and rage of ordinary people. I saw restaurants where people pay ransoms for plates of food. I sat at a few bars and smelled the fears of Nigeria’s dwindling middle class.
Where is Nigeria, you ask?
Nigeria is in a bad place. If you have heard me say this kind of thing at any point in nearly 50 years of writing for the mass media, you must interpret this to mean: a place so dangerous that tomorrow morning may be too far away.
But let me start at the beginning: acknowledgement. I acknowledge something of a somewhat improved Murtala Muhammad Airport in Lagos. While it is still an embarrassment to be compared with the international terminals even of some small African countries, the MMA Arrival that I saw appeared to have developed an element of self-pride.
The news is that the Immigration area is completely rebuilt and now resembles something like it was some 40 years ago when the airport was new. Mine was a pre-dawn arrival, though, so I may have misjudged the situation, but there appeared to be air-conditioning in a nation where we seem to have forgotten that airport halls are, by definition, supposed to be air-conditioned.
Once out of Immigration, the Customs Hall still appeared to be a jungle, characterised by the one battered baggage carousel that we have had in the past 30 years violently tossing passenger luggage around and a legion of motor park-style baggage handlers overwhelming the arriving travelers.
But that is also where I experienced the biggest surprise: not once as we went through Customs did I see or overhear anyone being asked for money by shameless officials.
To that end, I commend whoever in law enforcement or the Ministries of Aviation or Immigration is responsible for these improvements.
If you are a recent traveler, who has related experience to share, I would be delighted to hear from you.
I caution: this story refers only to my MMA Arrival. I await my Departure formalities.
Once out of the airport, I was astounded to find a country I could not recognise. Not only has Nigeria lost its swagger; it has lost its balance. Last year when I last saw her, Nigeria was poor and crazy, but it was still full of hope, promise, dreams, and energy.
In just one year, in 2024, Nigeria is another country: this Nigeria is an exhausted and confused country; it is mentally drained and psychologically disillusioned, bleeding from the bullet holes of poverty and doubt. It is a country on the edge.
What ails Nigeria is extremely tragic, arising from several tragedies of policy incoherence, absence of leadership, and administrative arrogance.
Who is in charge in Nigeria? I do not mean whether anyone has taken an oath of leadership; I mean whether anyone has accepted responsibility for leadership. That normally means an individual challenged, motivated, and guided by the law and a sense of personal example, who in turn challenges, motivates, and guides by law and example towards the good of all.
To that end, Nigeria is in free-fall. People exercise or attempt to exercise authority, but not leadership. Officials are driven by cynicism and self-interest, and none is truly motivated by the public interest or even a sense of decency.
Nigeria is in such poor shape that foreigners laugh at Nigeria in Nigeria: a terrain normally reserved for when you are safely away from that land. They openly affirm, as if we did not know it, that Nigeria is a jungle and that we lack leadership.
They are correct: we literally and figuratively drive at cross-purposes. In no country in the world but Nigeria do the citizens treat road rules as if they were optional. Nigeria is now so accepting of jungle rules that a motorist can turn his car in the other direction—and into oncoming traffic—at will.
Anywhere else in the world, the police would frown at such an incident, commencing investigations, seizing the vehicle, issuing traffic tickets, and so on. Not in Nigeria, perhaps because the police take the lead in driving against traffic with no sense of irony or responsibility.
This, of course, is acceptable to Nigerian officials, who prove at every opportunity that there is no such thing as a traffic violation if it benefits them, or their families and political associates.
This cynical and dangerous driving pattern illustrates who we are and why, as a people, we have driven into serious trouble. Otherwise, we ought to see how laughable the concept of ‘Renewed Hope’ is at a time when hopelessness is now the national diet.
Even if you believed in the Bola Tinubu administration, it is obvious now that it is wrong for Nigeria. It is an administration that is driving into itself and against the people but is determined to continue to do so for its own gain.
In this administration, it is not only policy that is the problem, but also implementation. To go into offices or workplaces, as I did recently, and observe just how lackadaisical and cynical our work habits and productivity are, is scary. The cause is the consequence, and mediocrity is now normal and perfectly acceptable.
What this means is that we are not simply poor, having acquired the status of the poverty capital of the world even before Tinubu arrived; our poor leadership and work habits are driving us even deeper underground.
Part of the question of work habits was illustrated by President Tinubu himself last week as he marketed a story about reshuffling his cabinet only to make the situation worse. Rather than cut the cabinet to the basic standard required by the constitution, he enlarged it and even kept his underperforming ministers.
Put simply, his so-called reshuffle does not reflect the gravity of the challenge before him. All he has accomplished is guarantee the same old “kabiyesi” regime of indifference that got us here.
What this means is that the president does not understand the thin edge on which Nigeria is now perched or lacks the ability to make any real change. There is no evidence he really cares.
There is no sense in which a business-as-usual mentality will treat the emergency—or explosion—that we have on our hands. If Nigeria’s army of the hungry cannot afford food, they are going to grab it wherever they can, and then they will grab it again. If our growing army of beggars and out-of-school children cannot access true help, they are going to resort to self-help, which will get ugly. Perhaps the Nigerian state believes that it is protected by the massive insecurity.
The Nigeria I have just experienced is a warning that a bulletproof vest is no use in a road crash.
