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Hosting international summits in a row, while their leaders travel around the globe, is the privilege of great and wealthy nations. Nigeria even before the recent rebasing of its Gross Domestic Product fancies itself as a player on the world stage, so its leaders relish these elite and illusionary preoccupations.
That is why, for example, so soon after bringing the world to Abuja, in a lavish centenary celebration, the country will in a few days play host yet again to statesmen and leading economic players from around the globe. Let us digress to note that there are uncomfortable ironies about the two events. The amalgamation celebrated is a colonist’s dubious gift, written off by one of our scholars as a failed British experiment in political cloning. Soon after glasses were clinked by the high and mighty, a National Conference was convened to put out the smouldering divisive fires threatening to engulf the obviously distressed amalgam. Notice, too, that the imminent World Economic Forum for Africa has the theme, “Forging inclusive growth, creating jobs”, thus pinpointing a conspicuous, disturbing feature of Nigeria’s one-legged growth trajectory. The irony can be explained away but it is poignant.
But let me document other indices of our obsession with a world stage role in order to interrogate it. Consider the splendour, for example, with which President Goodluck Jonathan goes around the world replete with advanced parties and a usually large entourage. The PUNCH columnist, Prof. Sabella Abidde, in “Jonathan goes to New York” (The PUNCH, September 25, 2013) captured the robust ambience of those trips: “Many Nigerians take offence at the size of his advanced party and entourage and the expensive hotels they stayed in. What is more it is as if many of the delegates wait for such visits to empty their fat purses and bulging wallets as they go on shopping jamborees.”
Recall the “storming” of China last year with an entourage which included 13 ministers and four governors among others. Factor as well that this year alone, Jonathan had made trips to several countries among which Namibia, Italy and The Netherlands stand out. Nor is that all. We play Father Christmas on the African Continent by acting as the Gendarme of the West African sub region as well as dole out resources in a Pax-Nigeriana once described by Prof. Ibrahim Gambari as paying the piper without calling the tune. That is another way of saying that we are generous to a fault without deriving any benefit from our generosity since most of those to whom we extend benevolence turn round to bite the finger that fed them.
Not long ago for example, our foreign ministry revealed that we had spent up to $50m in the search for peace in Mali. Notwithstanding our outstanding benevolence, “Our brothers” upon whom we bestow huge benefits have no qualms in subjecting our citizens to unimaginable humiliation of every kind or in voting against us at international fora as did Liberia, Togo and Sierria Lone in 2010 when they successfully opposed our election into the United Nations Security Council.
There are of course several ways to interpret our behaviour on the world stage. It could be seen as the outward manifestation of the incoherence and lack of purpose of a national leadership which aims to be a world player but lacks the strategic focus and power drive to realise its objectives. Such incoherence also manifests itself as emeritus Prof. Akinjide Osuntokun informed in a lecture delivered at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs that, “In recent times, due to corruption and the Nigerian factor, our troops have sometimes been provided with poor arms and equipment leading to them performing below par and consequent United Nations criticisms of our troops”. In this kind of instance, we export the prevalent disorder and corruption at home in a classic justification of the linkage theory that foreign policy as indeed all strivings for the world stage are nothing if not domestic policy writ large.
Yet another interpretation of our prodigal but disjointed external forays would view it as a manifestation of the conspicuous consumption of our political elite at home who merely transfer abroad the spendthrift habits they indulge in at home. Hence, in the same way as the national patrimony is squandered on projects of dubious utility domestically, our leaders think nothing of frittering away substantial sums of money without insisting on commensurate returns. All of these would not have been tragic were we indeed a powerful and prosperous nation with clearly defined and ably executed global objectives. In that circumstance, we would be dealing with visions of greatness rather than illusions of grandeur.
The truth however, is that we are far from being the super state which our actions and postures suggest. True, we possess several of the endowments of the world’s most powerful nations. These include a large and growing population projected by some estimates to reach 440 million by 2050; more than a fair share of geostrategic mineral resources including oil and gas and several solid minerals. These are corroborated by agricultural resources abundant enough to turn us into one of the world’s largest granaries and certainly into Africa’s food basket.
Interestingly too, our steady growth rate, one of the highest in the world, suggests that with the right mix of efficient management and purpose, the potential for Nigeria becoming an economic powerhouse on the scale of the East-Asian countries is very much with us. But potential greatness especially one that is largely predicated on gifts of nature is not the same thing as actual greatness or arrival on the world stage. To make the point clearer, it should be factored that our assets and the so-called miracle growth rate are more than offset by our status indicated by the World Bank as one of the countries that harbour the largest number of poor people. It is not just that, there is the crisis of infrastructural amenities signposted by our bottom league position on the Annual Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme. In this light, we have the paradox of a potentially rich and powerful nation which continues to vegetate in terms of the quality of life at the lowest rungs of the global pecking order. The mystery however is that our leaders continue to spend domestically and externally as if we have actually arrived on the world stage. They carry themselves around as if we are immediately ready to play in the league of China or any of the world’s emergent powers.
It would be interesting to borrow a leaf from the edifying examples of countries like Switzerland, Norway and Australia whose citizens rate extremely high on the quality of life but whose leaders do not pretend to a world role status. As Alexander Boot, author and polemicist, influentially expressed it, “diminution in the quality of life is the prize a nation pays for pursuing great power ambitions.
Obviously, the real losers and victims of our delusions of grandeur are Nigerian citizens who see their plight go from bad to worse as their leaders carry on as if we were already a great power.
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