OPINION: Nigeria is dying…gradually

CHIEF Afe Babalola is a Nigerian statesman. He excelled in many fields. He is a legal figure and senior advocate. He commanded respect before judges and outside the court. He is a giant not only in the field of law but now also in the field of education. He is the founder of one of the best private tertiary institutions in the country, Afe Babalola University in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti state. He is also a giant in human physical form. He has presence and with him there are no half measures. He can litigate if and when he chooses to. I should know because I was in his crosshairs in my previous incarnation as a newspaper editor some three decades ago.

We flexed our muscles in what should be considered a ”fight” between an elephant and a fly. I am still young. I’m drunk. I am intoxicated with the axiom that the pen is mightier than the sword. I failed to take into account the fact that the adage of the pen and the sword might be more appropriate and applicable in other climates, if such climates exist. Rethinking that axiom has become more pressing and urgent today, considering what has happened between the President of the United States, Donald Trump. [the sword]and the media in that country [the pen]. Before Trump took office as president for the second time last year, America was considered the home of press freedom and free speech. To some extent, some of us also think that about Nigeria. In a dispute with Chief Babalola over a publication some 30 years ago, I assured myself that I would not be intimidated. After certain telephone conversations between us, I was persuaded by well-meaning and more experienced professional colleagues and supervisors to accept Chief Babalola’s invitation to visit Emmanuel Chambers. [I hope my recollections of the name of the chamber is correct] in Ibadan, Oyo state. I made an appointment and invited a team of two to visit. We met. He’s friendly. What is interesting is Chief Babalola [SAN] instructed that we be invited to lunch at the popular amala shop in the neighborhood. And when we prepared to return to Lagos, he insisted that he would cover our transportation costs, ignoring our protests that we were coming in an official car. This is just one side of Babalola. The same person was able to become an ‘‘ikiri’’, the Igbo name for a stubborn animal that almost never lets go of any prey – remember his meeting with activist lawyer, Dele Farotimi. It was a bruising fight. It was so stunning. That’s huge.

For over 30 years I have been a follower of Babalola and his rare interventions in the public sphere. Although interventions are rare, they are usually very large. He once said that our country was experiencing decline and was becoming increasingly unrecognizable. His prognosis of Nigeria and subsequent analysis inspired the above title and prompted this article. The trigger for this article is a premonition of what is happening in our country today.
Babalola is not known for giving interviews to the media or being the center of attention. But in 2023, he wrote an article for a national newspaper entitled ”Restructuring or Reconfiguration”. He wrote at the time that ”Nigerians have lost their sense of Nigeria; namely: the true meaning, essence and quality of being Nigerian. Many of our young people have lost the true meaning, essence and quality of being Nigerian”, adding that ”being Nigerian today is synonymous with internet fraud, crime, gangsterism, drug dealing, romance scams, corruption and evil deeds in general”. In recent years, young people continue to think of the poor quality of education, which they say is worse than illiteracy; insecurity that means ”many Nigerians now live in fear, unable to carry out their daily activities without fear”; and a debt trap that threatens the country. It seems now that the elder statesman has completely retreated into his cocoon and left Nigeria and the Nigerian people alone. His choice cannot be compared to that of some of the Yoruba elite who are usually vocal, but have now remained silent and lost their critical voice on national issues since one of them, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, became president more than three years ago. What really stands out in this new ”mother is the word” class is Prof. Oluwole Soyinka. The writer accused of coining the derogatory word ”Shepopotamus” refers to former First Lady, Dr. Patience Jonathan, while she waged verbal war against the government of her husband, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, has so far failed to find a label for the more appalling behavior and disposition of the current First Lady, Pastor Oluremi Tinubu. Remi Tinubu is currently busy with the politics of how to return her failed husband to a second term as president rather than thinking about the suffering Nigerians are going through because of Alhaji Tinubu’s ill-digested economic policies.

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The First Lady is focused on acquiring a luxury vehicle, most likely a sport utility vehicle [SUVs]for women leaders in states not controlled by the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC] political parties, and relied on or expressly directed APC governors to purchase cars in states where they controlled government. The cars are for political campaigns ahead of the 2027 elections. Needless to say, the cars that Remi Tinubu directed must be purchased and registered in the names of the beneficiaries, will be acquired with taxpayers’ money. Given Nigeria’s dire financial condition, it can be inferred that the endowment will be funded from loan proceeds from external international commercial lenders. This would be a double jeopardy for suffering citizens because public funds would be diverted to achieve private and partisan political goals, and this would be done through foreign debt. The First Lady’s order to purchase a private vehicle for the female leader of her political party ostensibly using public funds is also an offensive, insensitive and appalling act even if the directive was carried out using funds obtained from domestic loans. It is understandable that Prof Soyinka gave them permission as the first family is said to have been the Nobel Prize winner in Literature’s benefactor at a very difficult time in his life.

Everything that could go wrong in our country has gone wrong in the three years of Tinubu’s misrule. Nigeria’s currency, the Naira, is recklessly devalued. The national economy is not export-driven and not export-oriented, so the argument for a massive devaluation could be strong. The price and even quantity of the country’s main export product, crude oil, is not under the control of our government and rulers. Even though there is a lot of manipulation and manipulation, national inflation, especially food inflation, still tends to increase and is stuck in the double digit zone. Unemployment, including youth unemployment, has become widespread. The same thing happens to underemployment. The cost of living for most Nigerians is getting worse every day. Corporations are in no better shape. As the number of its population falls below poverty every minute, our country since 2019 still maintains the dubious status of being the global poverty capital.

The bad situation in Nigeria is made worse by increasing insecurity. Insurgencies carried out by Islamist groups are a problem that previously occurred only in the north-eastern zone of the country. No longer. The northwest is a major kidnapping-for-ransom zone. The north-central, and now the southwest have been thrown into the mix. Currently, there is nothing to suggest that the southeast and south will escape the threat of kidnapping for ransom. The Southeast region has just emerged from the grip of separatist or self-determination group agitation with its peculiar insecurity.
The scary thing is that this regime doesn’t seem to care about the country’s inevitable fate. They are busy with re-election politics. Yes, this has been very much in focus since taking office in 2023. For Tinubu and his supporters, politics and power trump governance.

Nigerians should be concerned that their country is dying before their eyes. As several scholars have noted, the death of a country begins in the hearts and minds of its citizens, not necessarily through the loss of territory. Except for a handful of people who feel they have benefited from this system, many Nigerians no longer invest in the country. Nigeria is not working. Many no longer consider this country a worthy destination. Its customs have been destroyed. There is no hope for creating an economic opportunity and achievement-based system for the majority of society. The picture is gloomy. We are getting used to being surprised. Terrorists beheading kidnapped citizens and sharing the videos are now widespread. In fact, a math teacher was kidnapped and had her throat slit on live video about two weeks ago. About 40 students, including a two-year-old child, kidnapped students and teachers as well as the murdered teacher are still in the kidnappers’ den. These are children, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, cousins, nephews, grandparents, grandchildren, etc. Etc. Elsewhere, a viral video shows a young girl stripped naked by terrorists, hanging from a rope with her legs spread as wide as possible, and exposed to flames between her laps. And another video where the kidnapping victim is tortured with burnt plastic waste. We see videos like that every day and we shrug our shoulders and move on. When a newspaper columnist wrote some 40 years ago that Nigerian society was no longer shaken, he certainly did not expect a day like today to come. Of course he didn’t think that those were the days of innocence. The question we must face is no longer whether Nigeria’s already bad situation will get worse? What we should worry about is how bad things will get before we hit rock bottom or before something happens.