BOOK REVIEW: This House Has Fallen

Book Title: This House Has Fallen The Nigerian Crisis
Author: Karl Maier
Publisher: Penguin Books

INTRODUCTION

The author describes Nigeria as one of the world’s strategic nations; despite the fact that corruption, repression, and dilapidation have eaten deep into the system, still, Nigeria truly matters globally. As the most populous African country, the Nigerian market is enormous and this can easily be mistaken as a large dumping ground for the world’s most powerful countries. Its vast lands spread out through the mangrove swamps and the tropical rain forests of the Atlantic to the interior belt of the savannah that melts into the arid edge of the Sahara desert; Nigeria’s assorted human resources with over 300 diverse ethnic groups represent a sizable part of the African continent. As Maier puts it, Nigeria was carefully crafted by foreign settlers for their own gains and later completely abused by the military rule; he adds that the Nigerian state “is like a battered and bruised elephant staggering toward an abyss with the ground crumbling at its feet”. mind.

In West Africa, Nigeria is the biggest state and the impact of its fall would shake the whole region especially as ethnic and religious biases have found a fertile ground where there is neither a consensus nor a binding ideology. Furthermore, Maier describes the Nigerian leadership as the modern equivalent of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century African warlords who built wealthy kingdoms during the Atlantic Slave Trade by selling their people to the Europeans; in recent times, they sell their resources and deprive the people of basic amenities causing generally poor welfare. Hitherto, the hypocritical West blames Nigeria for corruption, fraud, and drug trafficking while funds from such nefarious deals and financial crimes are being deposited in Western banks; meanwhile, they still demand that Nigeria owns up to foreign debt.

The Nigerian civil service is rife with corruption and this makes the connection the fastest way to get anything done. In Chinua Achebe’s book titled, The Trouble with Nigeria:

“It is totally false to suggest as we are apt to do, that Nigerians are fundamentally different from any other people in the world. Nigerians are corrupt because the system under which they live today makes corruption easy and profitable; they will cease to be corrupt when corruption is made difficult and inconvenient… the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership. I am saying that Nigeria can change today if she discovers leaders who have the will, the ability, and the vision”.

The historic events reviewed from Karl Maier’s account of the Nigerian crisis would be dissected into three parts, labeled Amalgamation to Civil War, Nationalist Era and the 1990’s Democratic Era:

AMALGAMATION TO CIVIL WAR

Nigeria is a result of the 1914 amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates by Lord Lugard in the name of the British crown; the colonial government saw the need to balance the deficit north’s budget with profitable south to eliminate the subsidy. The union is attributed to the cost of governance in the North which was too high that the amalgamation was necessary to bring equilibrium in the area; the purpose for the merger was not for the purpose of nation-building. Cited by Maier, London settled for the name, Nigeria – a name coined sixteen years before Lugard’s future wife Flora Shaw wrote in an article for the British newspaper, The Times.

The pan Africanist struggle for self-government resulted in the achievement of Nigeria’s independence from colonial rule in 1960. Nigeria after independence had not fully relished the dividends of self-governance when instability took the center stage. By 1964, the system was crumbling; a middle belt tribe, the Tiv unrest caused Balewa’s dispatch - the first use of Nigerian army against civilians; western Nigeria had opposing groups within the Action Group Party which resulted in a violent clash while Awolowo was incarcerated for treason - the national election was massively rigged and boycotted, the west on the verge of anarchy, and corruption among government administrators condemned the ruling class in the of many.

Civil War

In Karl Maier’s account, on the morning of 15th January 1966, a group of military officers mostly Igbos tried a coup d'état against the civilian administration, the aim was to achieve a radical reform to rid the system of corruption, and other ill practices; this took the lives of many including two northern heads i.e. Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and Sardauna of Sokoto Ahmadu Bello. By July of the same year, the North staged the massacre of Igbos living in the north as vengeance for their dead premiers. At this point, tribal wars provided the chance for a full-blown civil war as the Igbos assumed possession of oil would ensure the reality of Biafran as a nation. While wartime Head of State General Yakubu Gowon was acclaimed for his reconciliation policy, his deferral in handing over power and reports of corruption led to the third coup in 1975.

Biafran War - Ojukwu vs Gowon

NATIONALIST ERA

General Murtala Mohammed ascended to power with his second-in-command Olusegun Obasanjo in 1975 and the regime promised to reform the thriving oil economy and reinstate civil rule but after seven months Mohammed was slain during a futile coup d'état and Obasanjo took over as Head of State with Musa Yar’adua as his second-in-command. The nationalist ideology states that a strong state can promote economic growth - this was the trend during Obasanjo’s rule which took active control of the media, the economy and interfered with sinkhole projects such as Ajaokuta Steel Complex which expended billions of dollars for naught.

Nationalism - One Nigeria

The 1978 Land Use Decree of reassigned land control from the local people to the government and this amplified state power and triggered tension between the federal government and the indigenes of the oil-rich Niger-Delta, agriculture was declining and food import became more profitable than production. The civil rule came to power as promised and Obasanjo handed over power to Shehu Shagari winner of the elections soiled by rigging and coercion; thus, the lousy civil administration was branded with mismanagement, corruption and waning political and religious chaos. From 1979 to 1983 of Shagari’s administration, capital flight was obvious as the elites enjoyed immense luxury while the poor endured high unemployment and inflation which further drowned the Nigerian economy.

Gen. Muhammadu Buhari

In 1983, the military took over again with General Muhammadu Buhari as Head of State and his second-in-command Major General Tunde Idiagbon. Originally addressed as the antidote to the corruption of previous governments, the Buhari/Idiagbon regime developed a repute for tyranny and oppression. Ibrahim Babangida and Abacha ejected Buhari out of power in 1985, and vowed to fight corruption, reform the economy and ensure the shift to civil rule just like their antecedents; but corruption intensified and Nigeria got entangled with the drug trade that labeled the regime as a “narco-dictatorship”.

THE 1990’s DEMOCRATIC ERA

Ibrahim Babangida’s regime further worsened the moral state of the nation; the Devaluation of the naira, Deregulation of the economy, and Democracy were the model (3D’s of third world development) of his regime. This was when Dele Giwa was letter-bombed for telling his colleagues about Maryam Babangida’s wife and her affiliations with drug pushing. Babangida also deprived his friend MKO Abiola of triumph in the 1993 Presidential elections because of ethnicity as Abiola was a southern Yoruba man; In August of the same year, Babangida was forced out of office after instituting an ad hoc civilian rule led by Ernest Shonekan, a Yoruba businessman.

Gen. Ibrahim Babangida

The interim civil rule was a joke as in November of the same year, a headstrong minister during Babangida’s regime Abacha declared himself head of state. Abacha’s totalitarian autocracy proscribed political parties and scattered electoral structures. The famous June 12, 1994 incident, when Abiola’s self-declaration as president led to his arrest and incarceration was not shocking as Labour Unions and Trade Unions were banned, newspapers were shut down while many journalists and activists were imprisoned or killed; Obasanjo and Yar’adua were detained for scheming to take over the government. Nigeria received global attention during Abacha’s regime particularly in November 1995 when the government executed Ken Saro-wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists who had championed the cause for political autonomy reparations from damages caused by oil companies. Abacha’s regime has the record of the most capital flights as Billions were siphoned into overseas bank accounts while the masses were knee-deep in misery and poverty.

Abiola and Abacha

Hot-headed Abacha insisted on succeeding himself in the transition to a civil administration despite opposition and warnings even from his supporters stating that succeeding himself could push Nigeria into anarchy. In the long run after so many attempts, Abacha died mysteriously in what Maier calls “a coup from heaven”. After Abacha’s death, Abubakar Abdulsalam became the interim head until 1999 when he handed power to Olusegun Obasanjo who was out of prison and elected as President. Obasanjo’s inaugural ceremony was mirage footage of his handing over power to a civilian president in 1979.

Obasanjo's 1999 inauguration

Obviously, Obasanjo’s 1999 swearing-in was kind of eventful as it represented the military’s exit from politics rather than the inauguration of a new civilian government. In his speech, Obasanjo stated that Corruption had reached the level of “full-blown cancer” and he pledged to put Nigeria in good shape and to stamp out malfeasance wherever it may lurk. To date Nigeria still battles with corruption 20 years after that speech despite the measures out in places such as the EFCC, ICPC, and CCB.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF NIGERIA?

comment and share so that others can join in the conversation