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The Nigerian situation does not really give hope and the fragility of the Nigerian state is not in doubt. Apart from being the poverty capital of the world, Nigeria, the so-called giant of Africa, is among the most terrorized countries in the world. Nigeria has 133 million people who are categorized to be multi-dimensional poor. Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and democracy, has 94.5 million poverty-stricken people. These Nigerians live in misery at $1.90 per day. With the fluctuating exchange rate in which $1 is equal to about N1,220 in the black market, millions of Nigeria live at less than $1 per day.
By definition, “Afro-pessimism” is a critical framework that describes the ongoing “effects of racism, colonialism and historical processes of enslavement in the United States, including the transatlantic slave trade and their impact on structural conditions as well as the personal, subjective and lived experience and embodied reality of African-Americans.” It can be applied to the Nigerian situation of today, where the citizens are still grappling with the effects of transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and its ingrained racism and many oddities brought to us because of our unfortunate encounter with the white man, many decades ago. Moreover, African-Americans and those in Africa shared almost similar colonial experiences and racism. I also use the term to illustrate the level of pessimism and despondency among Nigerians in the face of excruciating economic hardship, anomie and fading hope. I equally charge the leaders to turn the growing pessimism to optimism.
Despite the renewed hope mantra of this APC central government, hope is fading at an alarming rate. Nigerians are leaving the country in droves in search of greener pastures in the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), Canada and China. Some are even migrating to Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Niger Republic and Chad. We have more Nigerian doctors and nurses working in US, UK and Canada, than in Nigeria due to brain drain. Many of our IT experts have left the country. Our lecturers, including those teaching Igbo and Yoruba have joined the migration train. Nigeria has failed its citizens, old and young.
It has equally failed the unborn generation. There is even a joke by our comedians that no young person will like to be born in Nigeria. If they have the choice, they will choose any other country but Nigeria. Nigeria is one of the worst places to be a mother due to our high rate of maternal morbidity and mortality. It is one of the worst places to be a baby or child. Since the advent of the present political dispensation in 1999, our democracy has degenerated so much that it is no longer the government of the people and for the people. It is now the government of the few rich Nigerians and for them, their children, their wives, concubines and mistresses. Their praise singers only get a pittance for their yeoman’s job.
In Nigeria, people are conditioned to think more of death and how they will be buried than life and how it will be lived. All these village meetings and development town unions and association talk nothing but death, levies and burial rites/rights. The religious agencies have compounded the situation by presenting them with alternative reality spiced with utopia instead of our present dystopia. Some churches have introduced insurance for members’ burial and not for their business or paying of house rents or school fees. Most sermons in these churches dwell on fear of death and hell fire and the very few that will make paradise.
Some of these religious bodies use utopia to promise their members heaven on earth while at the same time extorting them through various modes, church building, offerings and tithes. Do you blame the religious bodies for presenting the masses with their own opium and alternative realty and utopia? Not quite really. It is only that some of them are over-doing it. They are taking more than the owner. They are reaping more than the owner of the farm. However, they are filling the gaps left by those in political leadership, those who failed to provide good governance, good roads, good hospitals, good schools, good transportation system, affordable housing and potable water. They are filing the huge gaps left by our political pretenders, corrupt and inept leaders, the selfish politicians, those who mismanage our diversity and our economy.
If there is food for all in the country and our hospitals are functioning, Nigerians will not troop to any church in search of miracles or prophetic utterances to know the future. They will not be trooping to foreign embassies in search of visa to leave the country. They will not try to escape from the sufferings in the land. The feeling of pessimism and despondency is true of Nigeria and most African countries where democracy is tottering. The resurgence of coups on the continent can be traced to failure of democracy. Military intervention in politics is traceable to corrupt and bad leadership in Africa, especially West Africa. Tenure elongation among African leaders and the penchant to remain in power perpetually or sit-tightism can explain the resurgence of coups in Africa.
Since slave trade, colonialism, independence and neocolonialism, the story of Africa has been a story of conquest, racism, discrimination, denigration of African cultures and values and other oddities associated with the transatlantic slave trade, including the dehumanization of the African. Despite the achievement of independence by African countries and years of self-rule, the feeling of despondency, alienation and pessimism is still ever present. With some strides among North African countries, South Africa and to some extent Nigeria, the story of democracy in Africa is not fascinating. The story of development on the continent is equally not enticing.
The Western model of democracy has brought wars, under-development, dictatorship, violence and terrorism in Africa. It has brought hunger, disease and squalor and impoverished the masses. Democracy has weaponized and feminized poverty. Democracy has been used to divide the people along ethnic, religious and party lines leading to a fractured democracy and fragility of the country. The distortion of democracy in Africa is probably why Nigeria’s former leader, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, recently advocated for a homegrown democracy or what he termed, afro-democracy. He surmised that the Western form of democracy has failed in Africa because it lacks our input and it is alien.
Moreover, our politicians have failed to domesticate democracy in Africa. That is why Africa is littered with stories of failed democracies, despotic leaders and wars of attrition.
The kind of democracy we practise in Nigeria and other African countries will not endure. It will soon die a certain death. Ours is characterized by greed, hostility, absence of ideology and lack of vision. The political parties are so weak and bereft of the tenets of democracy, including internal democracy. A few individuals own the political parties and determine what happens in them and who gets what. The members of the party are rendered powerless and only told where and who to vote during elections.
The contradiction of our political system is manifesting in diverse forms in all parts of the country. The political mentors and mentees are fighting dirty over who controls the levers of power and the so-called political structure across the country. It has happened in Edo State. It is presently unfolding in Rivers State. In all of this, the central government is mute. It is a bad signal for our democracy.
The subterranean moves to turn Nigeria into a one-party state by the APC portends danger to our nascent democracy and must be highly resisted. The profligacy of the political elite in the face of growing poverty is an invitation to anarchy. In Africa, democracy has not offered the desired hope. That is why African youths are migrating to Europe and America in droves. Our leaders should think and change the political despondency in Africa to optimism.
