Debt and the "Maintenance Culture"

I had a conversation with a citizen from one of our states. Initially, he effusively praised the state's current governor for his "pro-people" policies. He was particularly appreciative because this governor had embarked on an expansive road-building and road-rehabilitating programme.

He hailed from a town that has had exactly zero tarred roads from the beginning of time till now.  The governor's roads programme is connecting his home town essentially to the federal republic's network of tarred roads generally, and will specifically cut travel times to the nearest large towns and cities.

He also likes his state governor because of his governor's announced "free" education policy. Per this policy, the governor promised to extend the pre-existing "free" education programme, which covered primary schools and junior secondary schools, to include senior secondary schools and state-owned universities; state indigenes attending universities located in the state but not owned by the state will be included in the free education programme via scholarships in its second phase (non-indigenes would still have to pay to attend the state's-owned universities). As I understand it, university students will be expected to pay back a portion of the "free" tuition/room/board/bursary/etc after they graduate and get jobs.

The governor also announced a commitment to eventually providing "free" healthcare to all indigenes of the state, while simultaneously making the state a "health tourism" destination for Nigerians from other states.

Like other state governors, his state governor has embarked on a massive construction programme, to build hospitals in each local government area, to build new universities, to build .... other things.

These things, he told me, speaking continuously without pause, not letting me get a word in.

When he was finished, I asked him how his state governor intended to pay for these things.

He started ... laughing.

In fact, he laughed for a good long time. As his laughter subsided to a combination of grins and chuckles, he told me he didn't think his state government could afford it, that he had noticed that other states that are much richer than his state were finding it impossible to pay for similar-sized construction binges .... and that he though his state governor was duping the contractors.

Apparently, his state governor has not paid the contractors for their work, and has insisted he will not pay them until the work is complete and he (the governor) inspects their work to make sure it isn't the usual wuru-wuru job contractors do to maximize the amount of profit they make from projects. So the contractors are borrowing to finance their work, on the presumption that once they are finished, they will get paid.

What this friend of mine said is he thinks when the projects are completed, the governor will not be able to pay the contractors, and that he suspects the governor knows this, and that this is the real reason he has a policy of not paying them until the projects are finished.

Let me say I do not think his governor is duping the contractors.  Let me go further and say that I do nothing it will be possible for his governor to avoid making payment, even if he wanted to. The contractors borrowed a lot of money and are not just going to go away quietly if they are not paid.  His governor has presidential ambitions, and our political system is built on patron-client networks and relationships that must be sustained with fiscal transfers, be they illegal (i.e. "corruption) or legal (e.g. "contracts" awarded to the politically favoured).  If he doesn't pay, they will turn on him and he won't return as state governor, much less make any kind of run at the presidency.

Having said that, if the governor decides to run in 2015, he might do what other governors have done which is leave office before the bills come due, sticking his gubernatorial successor with huge bills and an empty treasury.  This has been a frequent pattern in the Fourth Republic.

But this conversation highlights a problem I have with supposedly "pro-people" policies.  Over the decades, our governments at all three tiers have tended to do a lot of things, even positive-seeming things, in an unsustainable way.  We praise them when they do it, as it is usually something we rather desperately need, but it is always done in such a way that the benefits of it don't last. In some cases, over the decades, the benefits didn't last beyond the day the project is commissioned.

It is not just a question of poor construction of infrastructure, which falls apart long before it should, but one of funding the infrastructure construction in such a way as to have nothing left with which to maintain it.  To put it in a simplistic sort of way, the Federal and State governments have racked up enormous amounts of debts in the Fourth Republic, a lot of it to do things that the public might actually approve of it the public were given a chance to vote on it. Unfortunately, in the years to come the Federal and State governments are going to be struggling to repay a lot of this debt, probably not all of it, and whatever funds would otherwise have gone to maintenance will go to service the debts that brought the infrastructure into existence.

And so we will watch, as always, as expensively-built infrastructure wither way.

The Surulere National Stadium in Lagos, and for that matter the Abuja National Stadium, are emblematic in this regard.  We spent a lot, and I mean a lot of money to build (Abuja) or refurbish (Lagos) these two stadia, but there was subsequently nothing in the way of making the stadia financially self-supporting and nothing in the way of governmental funding to sustain maintenance in the absence of commercial self-support.  Those are beautiful, iconic facilities, or at least they used to be. What a waste! We keep having to cough up ever-larger sums of money to do "rescue missions" on the National Stadium in Surulere when the Nigerian government decides to host a major sporting competition, and each time we just let that money flush away once the tournament is over.

A lot of people in my acquaintance's home state love their governor because of his "free" education policies, but you know and I know that it is not sustainable. Even in the short-term, quality will fall as the state struggles to find money from somewhere else to cover whatever has been lost in the way of fees that were not sufficient to begin with.  What has happened in the past is teachers and professors invent "fees" of one kind or another outside of the normal school fees, to make up for lost funds, and the government begins to be slower in replacing fixed infrastructure like desks as it struggles to pay for all the different things (education being just one) that are now "free".

Even the part where the university students have to repay the funds. When I first arrived in the USA for university education, one of my nearby neighbours was a Nigerian professor who had been educated abroad at the expense of the Nigerian government decades ago on the understanding that he would come back to Nigeria to work once he graduated. He never went back and he never repaid the money, and that is true of a lot of other people (a minority to be fair) living abroad.

In the case of my friend's home state, what is likely to happen is an appeal (if the governor in the future is amenable) or a protest (if he or she is not) against making the students repay the loans, given the scarcity of jobs and the low level of pay received by students who are lucky to get jobs. Perfectly kind and reasonable arguments will be made (e.g. when they should be thinking about how to support their family or start one of their own on a "small" salary, they are having to repay their loans), and a lot of genuinely nice citizens will feel genuinely sympathetic. Besides, the truth about politics in Nigeria and in the rest of the world is politicians know that giving people things for free brings in votes, even if nothing on Earth is actually "free".  For the same reasons that the current governor has made education "free", the future governor will magnanimously forgive the students their debts, after all, it isn't coming out of his pocket and the state can always go into more debt.

Look, you probably think I am a wicked person for opposing "free" social services. It is quite the contrary. The people who are today praising this governor because he is building roads everywhere will be the same people in the future who start complaining about the lack of "maintenance culture" and the "Nigerian Factor" when a future government cannot maintain those roads and potholes start swallowing the coal-tar.

If we want things to be permanent, we have to do things in a sustainably permanent way.  This is something we innately understand, which is why any number of community improvement unions and self-help organizations levy funds for projects (as opposed to borrowing) and/or make members pay back what is lent (in the case of micro-credit self-help associations).

And for the record, this is not just a Nigeria-specific problem. Everywhere you go in the world, it seems politics revolves around politicians promising to do things that cost a lot of money, for free (as in not making the people pay for it).  Every week it seems, there are massive demonstrations somewhere in the world to demand that the governments give people things without the people having to pay for it. And governments, both from the so-called right-wing and the so-called left-wing, compete to see who can give the most free stuff to the most key constituencies necessary for their particular faction to win an election.

And you know what?  Even in those supposedly "richer" places, eventually they come up against the reality that nothing is free ....

About treaties banning coups

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is apparently working on another of those treaties that ban coups-de-tat.

The standard position of the African Union is to condemn coups as "unconstitutional changes of government".

The half-dozen-to-a-dozen countries that call themselves "the international community" also tend to condemn coups, at least officially anyway. Sometimes, in years past, the "international community" has instigated coups, and other times the new occupant of the office is a ready to work with them as they are with him, so after a while all is forgotten. In recent years, the United States (George W. Bush administration) supported a coup in Venezuela against Hugo Chavez before withdrawing the support once the coup failed, and took an acquiescent position (Barrack Obama administration) to the successful coup in Honduras against the Chavez-allied Manuel Zelaya.

I don't support coups-de-tat in Africa for the same reason that I don't support opposition political parties.  They tend to be led by people who are exactly the same as the people they are overthrowing or opposing.

However I find myself laughing at ECOWAS and the African Union when they condemn coups as "unconstitutional changes of government". The majority of the membership of these bodies are now and have always been leaders who are "unconstitutionally" in power in the first place.

I am not talking about elections. Most countries in Africa hold elections, though in a lot of countries these elections are more or less civilian coups-de-tat.  I mean, that is what a rigged election is, isn't it?

Elsewhere the rules are rigged in such a way as to guarantee only one possible victor at the polls. To be fair, almost every "democratic" country in the world has rules that lock power into the hands of particular political parties, even if the parties in question do not hold positions reflective of what the majority of the countries' people want. But whereas there is some leeway for power to switch back and forth between these parties in other countries, the level of distortion in most African countries reaches the level of contradicting the constitution's pretence of guaranteeing democratic governance. In other words, the country is a one-party dictatorship (and in some cases consequently a one-man dictatorship) masquerading as a democracy.

Look, this really isn't a topic that requires lots of rhetoric and grammar.

All things considered, the ECOWAS and AU position on coups is less about safeguarding the rights of we citizens to choose our governments, and more about self-preservation. Our continent is full of presidents who never want to lose power, and in some cases political parties that never want to lose power.  Our sub-regional and continental organizations are basically a self-help society of men and political parties keen to help each other stay in office forever, and as such they take a dim view of anyone who would dare remove one of them.

Okay, I will stop being sarcastic and be serious for a moment.

There is a saying (which I will paraphrase) that anyone who makes peaceful change impossible is by definition making violence change unavoidable.  Here is my problem.  The various governments in Africa make it impossible to democratically remove any of the governments in Africa, so while I do not support coups (for the reasons I stated above), the only alternative our leaders offer us is for them (or their parties) be in office forever, with dire consequences for our countries and our continent.

This is why Nigerians and Africans are apathetic towards coups. As much as commentators might condemn coups, citizens generally shrug their shoulders and carry on, because the government that just fell was irrelevant to them at best, harmful to them at worst.  That is not to say that they support the coups, because they expect the new government to be irrelevant to them at best, and harmful to them at worst.

So while the political leaders in ECOWAS and the AU react with outrage to coups, most Africans react with apathy .... and with amusement to the sight of hypocrites accusing other people of thwarting the constitution. Because lets be honest, inasmuch as there hasn't been a coup in Nigeria since 1999, there hasn't been much "constitutionalism" either.  And we are actually one of the better cases on the continent.

I believe that the people of Africa would stand up and fight if there was something worth fighting for or defending. I believe the reason our people don't fight is there is no sense in risking their lives or dying on behalf of politicians, political parties and political systems that either frustrate their life hopes or actively harm them on a day-to-day basis.

The only way to ensure a stable political environment in Nigeria or Africa, is to create a political environment worth fighting to preserve. And this is the thing our political leaders do not understand, or do not want to understand.

So they can write as many treaties as they want banning coups, it won't save them from coups, or in the case of Egypt and Tunisia, from a sudden explosion of long-pent-up rage at the political system.

Indeed, one gets the distinct impression that even the army officers and soldiers do not feel these governments and political systems are worth dying for.  There is a tendency among them to make peace with the new, rather than defend the old.

About our politics.

If anyone reads this blog (and I have my doubts), I apologize for not having written anything in over a month.

There is always plenty to talk about in terms of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but it is difficult to do so in a "blog" format.

The thing about Nigeria is very often it isn't just the issue that is a problem, but how we talk about the issue. And it isn't simply an internal problem; much of the discourse about Nigeria/Africa, too much of the discourse about Nigeria/Africa, is driven, powered, peopled and guided from outside Nigeria/Africa, by people who are not Nigerians/Africans, and their "analyses" of our problems are usually ... problematic (and rather self-serving, but that is another argument altogether).

Personally, I am not one for blaming foreigners for our problems. We are the architects of our own direction, and have a responsibility not only to work for our own good but to also work to minimize the effects of whatever it is beyond our borders that would negatively affect us.

So I am not as interested in the problematic analyses from outside our country and am more focused on the our own problematic analyses.

Per this blog, I cannot piggyback off of a consensus position and add a little varnish of my opinion. If I were to fully discuss most issues, I would have to build the argument up from scratch, taking time to argue against each of several competing existing consensus arguments related to that issue.

By way of giving an example, take the 2011 Presidential Election.  Three candidates won states. President Goodluck Jonathan won the most states, General Buhari (rtd) finished second, and Nuhu Ribadu won a single state (Osun).  You know and I know that there are reasons certain states voted for Buhari. The reasons those states voted for Buhari are also the reasons the rest of the states voted for Jonathan, except in the inverse. As for Osun, the ACN machinery in the state obviously misplaced the directives from the party's godfather-in-chief, Ahmed Bola Tinubu.

The thing is .... none of this had any relevance to the important, strategic, vital issues facing Nigeria. If I wanted to comment on the issues, I wouldn't be able to piggyback off of the candidates' campaign positions and add my own varnish.  I would instead have to start from scratch, creating an entirely new "campaign" position of my own.

And while I am on the topic, why are people acting surprised when they see our current President struggle with our problems?  Meaning no offence to anyone, the President inclusive, nobody voted for him because they thought he was capable of handling our problems. They voted for him (to the extent that the election was free and fair) because anything and anyone was preferable to them over Buhari, for exactly the reasons that other states (again, to the extent the election was free and fair) thought Buhari was the candidate for them.

And the problem of Presidents and Prime Ministers who are not necessarily able to tackle the problems is an old one.

Understand I am not trying to be insulting. I actually like Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, our first Prime Minister. When he was murdered in 1966, he left behind an estate that was about as large (or in his case, as small) as you would expect from a man who had held the occupations he had held at the times that he held them ... unlike many of our subsequent leaders who left office mysteriously and inexplicably rich, as in multi-million dollar wealthy.

In a sense, Balewa (may he Rest In Peace) was the prototype of the post-1960 Nigerian President or Prime Minister, in that he was a compromise candidate acceptable to the various political cliques and power centres across the country.  And one of the things that makes a candidate "acceptable" to these cliques and centres is that he not be the sort of the personal who tries to, or is capable of, exercising real, pseudo-dictatorial power. The preference is for someone politically weak, who cannot cause a decision to be made or enforce a decision without first having to "consult" with the powerbrokers that put him there.

General Ironsi did not make himself president; other people and other events put him there. General Gowon was not the leader or most influential man in the coalition that brought him to power. For all his fearsome reputation, Muritala Mohammed's ascent to power relied on power brokers, some of whom ended up assassinating him. Olusegun Obasanjo, in his first go-round was quite the docile figurehead, so much so that he was entrusted with figurehead duties two decades later in 1999.

Alhaji Shehu Shagari had much in common with Alhaji Tafawa Balewa. The First Republic (contrary to rose-tinted memory) and Second Republic were both known for rampant corruption, but I believe both men (Shagari relatively and Tafawa Balewa absolutely) were honest men sitting atop corrupt systems they neither controlled nor could influence even if they wanted to.

Buhari got overthrown probably for the same reason that Muritala Mohammed was assassinated.  A lot of people think Ibrahim Babangida is a political genius, but the real powerbrokers in that regime were .... well, this blog post is starting to run long, so let me just say that when Abacha felt like being president, Babangida was sensible enough to invent a way to step down.

Abacha tried to make himself into Nigeria's first true dictator .... and his subsequent death is still a matter of mystery to the Nigerian public. Then came place-holder Abdulsalami Abubakar, followed by professional figurehead Obasanjo, who tried to give himself and unconstitutional Third Term, only to realize that Nigerian powerbrokers, no matter how much he intimidated or bribed them, were not interested in the kind of 25-year and 40-year presidents the rest of Africa has "enjoyed". The Nigerian Presidency simply is not that powerful of an institution, and Obasanjo, who knew a thing or two about when and why Nigerian governments get overthrown, opted to massively, massively, massively manipulate the 2007 election in favour of the late Umaru Yar'Adua (RIP). Between the normal nature of Nigerian politics and his own ill-health, the Presidency remained what it had always been ....

.... and now we have President Goodluck Jonathan, a man who has risen through a sequence of senior political offices without once, not even once giving anyone a real reason as to why they should want him in those offices in the first place.

My point is .... the men who have occupied the position of Prime Minister or President have never been men who proved, one way or another, to Nigerians that they had some kind of a vision as to what we should do about our problems.  Whether by coup or by election, nobody, least of all themselves, had any idea what they were going to do about the issues of the day once they were in office. That they all went on to do a lot of things without actually doing anything is hardly cause for surprise.

Interestingly, we the citizens still manage to get into arguments about which one of them should or should not be our leader. A lot of times when you listen to these arguments, you note that underneath a thin veneer of "issues", a lot of the argument seems to revolve around the same kind of "reasons" that caused some people to support Buhari and others to support Buhari's opponent.

I cannot piggyback off of these sorts of arguments because I want to talk about the issues, and these arguments have nothing to do with the issues.