THE FANTASTIC NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT

THE FANTASTIC NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT

by Donald Falayi

 Welcome to Nigeria, the West African nation with the most fantastic governmental model in the world! Ours is perhaps the only country in the world whose problems have so far defied all known structural models, which in a sense makes us one of a kind.

In just 53 years, we have tried everything in the books; first a parliamentary democracy, then  military interventions of different shades and character, a few dictatorships, a couple of complacent pseudo-democratic regimes, and at least one democratic dictatorship. You would think that with all these experiments, my country would have found a model that works for its very peculiar problem, abi? Shior! You don’t know my country!

Here is one character of the Nigerian governmental model that makes ours such an interesting system: outsourcing. We are masters in outsourcing governance!

Here, we outsource everything from power, water supply, road construction & rehabilitation, education, and job creation e.t.c. Oh, that list continues but first you must understand how this system works in case you are studying it for your dissertation!

When you build a house, in say a new part of town, you get a redefinition of the term ’you are-on-your-own’.  You would need to build an access road, because the local government that should come to your aid in that regard has been put down since 2003- or thereabout. Case closed.

You need water and you have two options; sink a borehole or dig a well.  Oh, there is a third option-pay a water tanker service to bring you water and God help you if the source is unhygienic!  You ask what happened to the public water distribution companies and outlets? Dead! Moving on.

Then there is this small matter of power supply and I can tell you, we have successfully tackled this demon with a home-grow solution that we won’t mind exporting to other parts of the world! (Did I hear you say “God forbid bad tin”).  Depending on what you can afford, all you would need is buy a petrol or diesel generator. Shikena! Abi, wetin you expect when in just ten years, government spent about $40 billion to generate 2,000Mw of electricity for an economy that needs at least 100,000Mw! It’s almost like some powerful extra-terrestrials have colluded to keep us perpetually under the 5,000Mw mark!

Funny, I went to see my brother in Lagos the other day and where he lived in a block of flats, they all had generators. This particular evening, every generator within that perimeter was on and even if someone screamed, you could hardly hear it above the din that these small devils made. Then I said to myself, what a wonderful world... (Louis Armstrong- What a wonderful world, 1968.)

‘’Government should not be in the business of providing education and providing jobs...” -succeeding Nigerian leaders 1966-2014. I’m sure you have heard that song before, at least in an implied way. A great song, I tell you. Simply interpreted, it means ‘look, some of us in government have built schools that you can send your children to for a very decent fee. The other option is to send them to the piss-poor dilapidated public school facilities left around and I think you should know, those schools won’t see a red cent of government funding anytime soon! The choice is yours’.

That’s the first stanza of the song.

Second verse: ’if you are a graduate, don’t look up to me for employment. I don’t have the sincerity to attract the industries that could employ you and I certainly don’t have a job for you in the civil service. So, go and think of what you can do to get you profitably engaged’.

The outsourcing issue is by no-means at an end!

These days, we have gotten more creative, we outsource agriculture (depending on the Asians for rice and palm-oil), security (in spite of the fact that we have  an army that is largely in the barracks playing checkers, government is reaching out to people as far away as America and Israel, to come help out with a problem in a location they know very little about, while in the meantime Boko Haram tears it apart in the North and militant oil-bunkering marauders in the South.

To cap our genius in the outsourcing game, we have now evolved a new art: outsourcing blame!

Every rag-head Nigerian politician you see today waxes philosophical on why things have gone so bad in this country and each time they find a microphone, they all seem to be able to trace the source of our woes either to the military or the colonial masters before it.

While outsourcing key sectors of the economy is the new way to go the world over, one would see that most of those governments with a healthy outsourcing culture are also the most industrialised, the most responsible and responsive there is.

The big question would then be, with Nigeria’s ‘enviable’ record of responsibility outsourcing, what then does government do? In other words, when you stop delivering the mandate for which you’re called ‘government’ and push all your responsibility from your plate unto another, what then do you have left?  Oh, I know... you feed your legislators fat; buy expensive cars and jets, build outrageously stupendous mansions across the world; grow government into this giant leech while unscrupulously padding  many bank accounts home and abroad with the people’s commonwealth. That’s how you do government!

Starting today, they are talking again at something they call National Conference. Let’s hope this makes any sense.

Happy chatting!