A government working against itself - I

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Is it the fractured nature of our society that produces the kind of leaders we have, or is it the leaders we have who work to create the fractured nature of our society?

I personally prefer to look at we the ordinary citizens as being the key protagonists. Both because I think we are (and that we underestimate our individual and collective ability to change things for the better) ... and because I think we the citizens can change ourselves (and thus our society), whereas our leaders are constrained to avoid change with all their might.

The things that most of us consider to be "problems" are the very things upon which our political and business elite rely for their wealth and power.  We can't really look to "the opposition" or to "the next generation", because they too aspire to climb the same greasy pole to wealth and power used by the current set. And if we are honest with ourselves as citizens, we will admit that one of the reasons that we the citizens never really push for fundamental change is the desire deep in our hearts to one day climb that same greasy pole ourselves.

I will hasten to point out that this paradigm isn't unique to us. It is a global phenomenon. Indeed, I am constantly aggravated by ex-leaders worldwide, who, in their retirement years, start spouting all sorts of ideas that they never fought for or enacted when they had power to do something about it. To get power, they played the game. To maintain power once they got it, they played the game. To secure private, personal wealth for themselves after their political careers, they played the game. Finally, with grey hairs on their heads, tens of millions of dollars in their bank accounts, and no with political power or influence left, they start criticizing their successors for doing exactly the same things they did, and for being motivated by the same things that motivated them in their time of power.

But this blog is about the beautiful, wonderful Federal Republic of Nigeria, so I will focus on us....

.... especially since our government's dysfunction is taking the country down a dangerously violent road.

As I have often mentioned on this blog, I wrote an essay on a popular Nigerian website back in 2003, warning that violence levels has risen sharply from 1999 to 2003, and that the trend showed the violence would only increase. I warned (in 2003) of the dangers of having so many ethnic militia, regional militia, private political armies, so-called vigilance groups, armed men loyal to governors and on state public service payrolls and so-called "militants", pointing out that every other country in Africa that had collapsed had gone through a phase where the government lost its monopoly of violence.

I said, in 2003, that while different sections of the Nigerian citizenry might have soft spots for one specific private army (based on the mistaken belief that that specific private army was defending their interests), we should learn from other countries in Africa where people thought the same things about their own ethnic/regional/vigilance/etc militia up until the tipping point to anarchy, beyond which they all began to pine for the "good old days" when a dictator held monopoly rights to violence.

[I promise you I am referencing something I wrote in 2003. I know it sounds like I am talking about things currently happening in certain parts of Africa.]

I argued, in 2003, that a country in which it was embarrassingly easy for one private army to smuggle in sophisticated, military-grade weaponry is a country in which it was just as easy for every private army to do the same. So if a particular political leader, or the government in general, or a specific section of the society chooses to overlook the institutional and systemic problems of border security because they fear fixing the problem would disadvantage their preferred private army, bear in mind that you are in effect empowering every private army and negating whatever relative advantage you think you are giving yourself.

When I wrote that essay in 2003, we had not yet fought a low intensity civil war in the Niger-Delta, nor faced an unchecked insurgency in the North. Back in 2003, I got one response to that essay, from someone who accused me of being an alarmist and a "nihilist" (whatever that means).  It is amusing the way people throw around adjectives.  Over the years, I have been called everything from a "neo-conservative" to a "bleeding heart liberal".  I am none of the things I have been called, and none of the people who called me these things ever presented a convincing argument against anything I said or wrote.

Look ... I am not saying anarchy is imminent in Nigeria. What I was saying back in 2003, and what I am saying now in 2012 is the trend of violence was and is upward, with little or nothing being done to stem the rise.