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International Monetary Fund's Managing Director Christine Lagarde (C) smiles with Nigeria's Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (R) as they hold a joint news conference in Lagos December 20, 2011. (Handout/Courtesy Reuters)
This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers.
Some business persons and economists tend to portray Nigeria sunny-side up. One example is Dambisa Moyo’s Financial Times article, “Africa Can Remind the World of the Capitalist Way.” She asserts that “today’s Nigeria is strong enough to avoid a protracted crisis,” and cites an increase in global brands such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and Walmart in Lagos to argue that the “growing power of the African consumer” explains why the crisis over President Jonathan’s attempt to remove the fuel subsidy failed to spur a political meltdown. “Nigerian consumers want to buy their groceries and get back to work; they have too much vested in the economy.”
Another example is Franklin Templeton’s Emerging Markets Group chairman Mark Mobius. He believes Nigeria represents “Africa’s biggest growth potential,” that the banking sector, in particular, is especially attractive, and that Boko Haram attacks in Abuja and Kano are “isolated incidents.” “You can still do business, even when you have a lot of turmoil,” Mobius said.
In a similar vein, an article by Maram Mazen and Chris Kay, makes reference to a June Morgan Stanley report forecasting that Nigeria would overtake South Africa, “the region’s biggest economy,” by 2025, suggesting that the country is a lucrative investment target.
But these views mask the reality of a country in deep crisis. In fact, President Jonathan’s abrupt subsidy removal initiative started to provoke a “political meltdown,” and that is why he was forced to backtrack on it. It did something else, too: namely, awaken the sleeping giant that is Nigeria’s impoverished millions. The massive demonstrations in major cities marked a watershed in the country’s history. Political and economic elites are no longer in full control and this will have unpredictable consequences going forward. At a minimum, the government will have to exercise caution in its policies for fear of provoking further popular eruptions.
Anti-fuel-subsidy-removal demonstrations were largely peaceful. However, on the other end of the continuum of opposition to the government is Boko Haram’s insurgency, which views the government as corrupt, incapable of reform, and therefore wishes to sweep it away . The sect’s attacks are hardly “isolated incidents,” but rather form a continuous thread of violent opposition, which is spreading within the North. “[S]uicide attacks in recent weeks on two of the north’s largest cities, Kano and Kaduna, suggest the militants’ reach is spreading, with intelligence agencies unable to keep up,” the Financial Times reports.
While some observers seem to take comfort in the fact that the “violence in the north hasn’t hurt oil production or touched Lagos,” the sect appears to understand that it does not have to wage attacks in Lagos to undermine the government by demonstrating that it is incompetent, unable to provide security or address the root socio-economic causes of violent opposition. Even a steady stream of daily low-grade attacks reveals government impotence.
The ongoing attacks, which the military and police have been unable to stop, are also straining Nigeria’s finances. “Nigeria’s security bill has risen to 20 percent of spending in the 2012 budget from 16 percent in 2010, leaving less money for much needed infrastructure projects and for work on reforms to the power and other social and industrial sectors,” according to Chijioke Ohuocha, “Nigeria insurgency beginning to take toll on economy.”
Nigeria’s economic potential is enormous–a sunny prospect given stagnation in the developed world–but at the moment the country’s stability is deteriorating and the near-term future looks stormy.
I don’t agree with this assessment.
First of all, the movement triggered by the anti-subsidy removal riots in Nigeria is not a bad thing. It has created an awareness of the rot in government. For the first time in more than twenty-five years, Nigeria finally has an opportunity to reverse the rot that started when Babangida came to power.
Secondly, the Boko Haram threat is grave but it has less of a chance of derailing the Nigerian economy than the Niger Delta Militancy – and Nigeria dealt with the Niger Delta Militancy.
True, the economy of some Northern states like Yobe, Bornu, Gombe and Bauchi could collapse, but these states don’t contribute much to the Nigerian economy, anyway.
If the North is marginalised economically – that is sad. More Northerners will merely be forced to seek economic opportunities down South (just like the Igbos were forced to do after the Civil War).
What Jim Sanders fails to capture is a growing sense of defiance in the face of Boko Haram attacks. People are saying “is this the worst you can do?”. We’ve endured suicide bombings, Church bombings, Mosque bombings, beheadings, coordinated attacks, attacks with Kalashnikovs etc.
Is there anything else we are yet to encounter.
Contrary to popular opinion, Nigerians will not cower in the face of terrorist attacks. The same Deeper Life Bible Church that was attacked last December in Damaturu is open for business today. In due course Nigerians will get on with their daily lives, Northerners fleeing the South will return and Southerners fleeing the North will return.
Christianity will flourish in Northern Nigeria and Islam will flourish in Southern Nigeria. Inspite of predictions of woe by Western analysts, Nigerian Christians have refused to respond aggressively to extreme provocation.
They should be commended.
Do not judge Nigerians by American standards, Nigerians are much more resilient people than Americans. We can endure power cuts, insults and brutality but still wake up and get to work with a smile.
By the end of this year Boko Haram will run out of steam.
Very apt.
Yes, Jim Sanders. Dambisa is absolutely right.
Nigeria now has too much vested interest to allow the failure of the country. A lot of Northerners have invested heavily (socially, economically, politically) in the South, and vice-versa. Despite the Boko Haram bombings there are more intermixing of the population (more inter-marriage, inter-schooling, etc) of the various ethnic groups in Nigeria than when Mr Sanders was active in Nigeria.
We have been in much more difficult crisis before: Northern riots of the 1950s, the coup that precedes the pogroms of the 1960s and subsequent civil war, the Yoruba OPC crisis of the 1990s that followed the annulment of June 12, the Sharia riots of the early 2000s and the most recent Niger Delta crisis. Nigeria solved all these problems and will continue to do so, including Boko haram.
The very fact that Nigeria non-oil sector growth is driven by her growing consumer base is a very big plus. That is what Dambisa and Mobius have seen. They have been watching Nigeria for a very long time too and they know that Nigerians will never be cowed (even military rule couldn’t) and will continue their normal business. Boko Haram for sure will soon be worn out and die a natural death as previous crises before them.
First of all, I have to say this post is very much on point. For a while now, I have been waiting to read of such opinion from a neutral but very perceptive observer of events in Nigeria to reinforce what many of us Nigerians know and believe anyways: that there are two Nigerias. The one that analysts and economists like to believe is experiencing economic growth of between 6-8% per annum with rising incomes and an educated middle class mostly restricted to the core of Abuja, Lagos and several other cities and the other half, the rest of Nigeria in the outskirts and slums of these cities and other parts of the country.
I read some “funny” (its anything but funny) report sometime last year which claimed Nigeria’s middle class was growing. Some of us challenged such a study and the methodology used because surely it should be obvious to any keen observer, much less an “expert” that Nigeria’s middle class is doing anything but growing. Not surprisingly, the government capitalized on this report, using it to brag for a few weeks before holes were punctured in said report. You can read it here: http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/survey-nigerias-middle-class-growing/99455/
Now, the National Bureau of Statistics’ recent report released on the 13th of February reveals that poverty in Nigeria is GROWING despite the country’s “economic growth”. The report states that percentage of Nigerians living in absolute poverty rose to 60.9 percent in 2010, compared with 54.7 percent in 2004!!! I think some economists and analysts need to remember more than anyone that there is a distinction between economic growth and human development. The so-called economic growth, on closer analysis is a false bubble built around the capital intensive oil sector and oil revenues, there is little growth in the non-oil sector which has been neglected, and which incidentally is a larger employer of labour.
As for Boko Haram, I commented on a previous post on this blog on the attacks in Kano titled “Boko Haram Attacks Muslim Nigeria’s Pre-eminent City, Why?”. I hinted alluded to the dangerous political game going on in the country as the zero-sum political game has taken a very deadly dimension. I specifically said: “The general consensus is that these sustained attacks will continue and would eventually spread to Kaduna, the political center of the north until the North is destroyed. This (conveniently?) coincides with the recent (some) vociferous separatist and irredentist agitation from other parts of the country for a balkanization of the country.” Now as you can see, several attacks have been targetted at Kaduna in the last few days. Boko Haram has also threatened to start attacks in Sokoto. When you look at it, the main cities of the North are Kano, Kaduna, Maiduguri and Sokoto…do the math. You could sample the opinion of Northerners (middle class, professionals) and you’d be surprised. There is a widespread belief in the North that there are several factions of Boko Haram: all of which are deadly and misguided, and that the faction currently responsible for the carnage is tied to high-wire politics.
Contrary to Maduka’s view though, unfortunately, it appears Boko Haram is only growing stronger and really bent on destroying the North and pitching Nigerians against each other, which it seems to be doing rather well.
Zainab,
What exactly are you implying? Who exactly, are you suggesting, is orchestrating Boko Haram?
You train of thought would have been laughable if it was not so dangerous.
I still maintain that the Nigerian spirit will overcome Boko Haram and that Boko Haram will run out of steam in the near future.
Zainab,
The Nigerian Middle Class is growing. Every university graduate that makes the journey to Lagos, Abuja or any other mid-sized city has the potential to join the Middle Class.
However, the underclasses are growing and growing rapidly.
The truth is that most Nigerians are better off financially today than they were under Abacha. More can afford motor vehicles (the clogged streets of Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja, Benin, Enugu, Owerri, Calabar, Onitsha and Ibadan attest to that fact).
The truth is that the North is destroying itself with no help from anyone. There is no plot in the South to destroy the North. On the contrary, Northern politicians set in motion the events that are playing before our eyes today.
At a time when Governor Duke of Cross-River State was busy developing the economic potential of the Obudu Plateau. At a time when Governor Saraki was aggressively courting farmers from Zimbabwe, when Governor Saraki brought in DFID to assist in improving the quality of education in Kwara State. What were the so-called Northern politicians doing?
They were busy using religion to divide their constituents for selfish political reasons. Yerima didn’t introduce Sharia because he was pious but because he cynically calculated that is was the only way to derail the rampaging PDP locomotive. He won his election, but he set in motion a chain of events that destabilised the North.
Kano State has for decades spent more on Hajj Pilgrimage than on higher education. In Gombe State out of 18,000 candidates that sat for the school certificate only 17 had the requisite qualifications to be admitted to a university. These problems did not arise because the South is bent on destroying the North. They are a legacy of four decades of misrule by the Northern elite. (Abacha is considered to be the fourth most corrupt leader in history! He is from the North – Kano to be precise and of Kanuri ancestory).
Of course you will propound wild conspiracy theories about how we are bent on destroying you. That is mental escapism, it serves no useful purpose. After the Civil War, my people, the Igbo were only given 20 pounds each (only those with bank accounts – a very tiny segment of the population!) and told to get on with it.
There was little or no Federal investment in the South-East, we were marginalised economically and we suffered much more devastation (1.1 million dead and all our means of livelihood and infrastructure destroyed) – the so-called “destruction of Kano, Kaduna, Maiduguri and Sokoto” pales into insignificance.
We didn’t call on legions of Western apologists to make our case (from Lugard to Marjorie Perham to British District Commissioners and now John Campbell and Jean Herskovits – the North has never lacked Western sympathisers). We merely worked our way out of our disadvantaged status – and that is what the North has to do.
So instead of deflecting the blame away from the Northern elite and getting your Western friends to write sympathetic articles in the news media, take your leaders to task, let them account for their stewardship. Ask Dangote (from Kano) why he has the bulk of his investments in Southern Nigeria, when Ibeto and Innocent Chukwuma (from Nnewi) make it a point of duty to ensure that a significant proportion of their investments are in the South East.
Ask your elite how many people they have sponsored through school. Why is Rochas Okorocha providing free tuition to students in Ibadan and Kano and very few people in the North see it fit to do the same? Instead they prefer to feed beggars and Almajiri with rice after the jummat service amidst shouts of of “Ranka dede”.
Dangote recently commissioned a cement plant that will turn the country into a cement exporting nation.
A US company is about to invest in a 30,000 hectare rice farm in Taraba State(the same state where a Boko Haram chieftain sought refuge before being apprehended).
The country lurches to the right and left as it is buffeted by forces of anarchy but I also think it would pull through this crisis as well.The source of its strength is the resilience of its citizens which is commendable
Lets hope for the best and suprise the naysayers.