Nigeria: a different perspective

NIGERIA: There is so much condemnation and negativity attached to that name. A once adored giant of Africa, a colossus on the continent. What really happened?

Some Nigerians might not want to read this — it is indeed a sensitive topic, as many are suffering from a seemingly failed system. But there are positives that could be consolidated upon. Before we throw out the baby with the bath water, it is worth mentioning that, I am in no way trying to be complacent with the position of Nigeria or saying that we are in a good place. NO WAY — it will be delusional to think that. By any means, we are far from that. All I’m trying to inform is that, there are positives we can build on in order to achieve the Nigeria we all want. Singapore, upon independence on 9th August 1965, faced precarious economic prospects. Barbara Leitch Lepoer, the editor of ‘Singapore: A Country Study’ (1989) states: “Separation from Malaysia meant the loss of Singapore’s economic hinterland, and Indonesia’s policy of military confrontation directed at Singapore and Malaysia had dried up the entrepot from that direction”. To add, Singapore also experienced increased unemployment rate, corruption, and other internal vices within their society. But that didn’t deter Singaporeans from galvanizing for development. Sometimes it seems like we take two steps forward and four steps backward in Nigeria. In a conversation with a friend a few months ago on the state of the nation, and he said something interesting, about losing interest in the country because ‘naija no fit better’. To be honest, I don’t blame him for that reasoning. The system has failed Nigerians. The only part that saddles me is the fact that the system can’t be fixed with mindsets like these. The media again, plays a key role in shaping our perspectives. It dwells more on negativity because it sells and knows a headline that reads Global death toll from coronavirus now 297,324’ will capture more attention than one which reads ‘Global recovery from coronavirus now 1,648,397’. Though the latter stands higher than the former, the former captures the eye of the reader more — that’s just how we are wired as humans.

To understand my perspective better, there is a book I would like to recommend, called ‘Factfulness’ by Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans Rosling, and Ola Rosling. It enunciates some facts (growth going on) about the world that people often miss or don’t pay attention to, and further explains the reasons for these using concepts like: the gap instinct, the negativity instinct, the straight-line instinct, the size instinct, the generalization instinct, the fear instinct etc. I will be using a few of these concepts to explain this paper.

NEGATIVITY INSTICT: This instinct relates to focusing our thought energy on bad/ugly situations only and destroys the hope to change negative narratives. There is this common notion among most Nigerians, the ‘omo forget am, naija no fit better’ idea, just like my friend. This view could make us lose sight of the little positive indicators that can be built upon. Ultimately, it kills the zeal to come together for peaceful coexistence and national development. Guess what? You could be that person to ‘make naija better’ — but holding onto the negatives further limits our chances of becoming change makers. The negativity instinct makes you dwell excessively on the problems with little attention paid to providing solutions. Nothing can work that way, no country develops using such mentality. Where was Nollywood 3 decades ago? Today it is the third largest industry in the world, worth $50 billion annually and the second largest employer of labor after agriculture. Imagine how much this can improve the Nation’s economy if properly harnessed. Most might not know about these positive indices because most of what they see in the news are stories about banditry, corruption, embezzlement, unemployment etc. And they choose to place more emphasis on that instead. The Not Too Young to Run bill might not appear effective now or in another eight years, but the reality is that there is a bill that supports increased youth involvement in politics that can be maximized someday, but if the youths keep being blinded by negative and toxic ideas, the motivation to develop themselves for leadership is killed. The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) indicated that the population of out of school children in Nigeria had risen from 10.5 million to 13.2 million as at 2018, the highest in the world at the time. This is egregious right? I agree, it is detrimental to the country. But if we are to focus on that figure alone, it will only deter Nigerians from the fact that in the same year of 2018, Nigeria adult literacy rate was at a level of 62%, up from 51.1% in 2008.

GENERALIZATION INSTINCT: This instinct basically refers to false generalization and is common amongst the human race as a whole. The letters ‘A’ and ‘Z’ are both letters of the alphabets, but are they pronounced alike or do they have the same features? The answer is clearly NO as we all know. For example, in a patriarchal society like Nigeria, women are perceived to be weak, only competent in the home, and not mentally strong enough to occupy high profile offices. That is so inaccurate — let’s bridge this gender gap. Would you say that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is weak? She sits on the Boards of Standard Chartered Bank, Twitter, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, the African Risk Capacity, she also occupies the office of the Special Envoy to Mobilize International Economic Support for Continental Fight against Covid-19, not to mention her past achievements at the World Bank and as Minister of Finance in Nigeria, this doesn’t sound like a profile belonging to a mentally weak individual. Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh of blessed memory stood her grounds in not releasing patient zero, Patrick Sawyer, from quarantine despite the pressure from the Liberian government, and this helped curb the spread of the Ebola virus in Nigeria drastically. She later died of the virus — a true hero indeed. This false generalization can make us miss it as a people. If a woman is competent enough to lead, then she should lead. Senegal alongside over 130 other countries has a balanced gender quota system in its political sphere, and they are thriving.

‘Na the north be our problem, or na the south be our problem’, these are popular ideas on the minds of Nigerians from various parts of the country, it led to a civil war that the country hasn’t fully recovered from. As much as people argue that the Civil War in itself is a major contributor to the divisive polity of ‘North & South’, and to an extent this is true. We need to also bear in mind that the generation that has strong sentimental ties to this idea is slowly fading away and some of the younger generations really don’t hold on to the events or consequences of those tragic years. You might ask, how about Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB? — notice that I said ‘some’ of the younger generations and not ‘all’. I have a colleague and good friend, Mr. Hassan, from Yobe State. He is a staunch advocate of nationalism in Nigeria who views Nigeria and Nigerians as one unit — he doesn’t believe in the division between northern, southern, eastern, and western Nigeria. His nationalistic values are worthy of emulation. If I had the ‘na the north be our problem’ mentality, I would never see the positives in Mr. Hassan and vise-versa. Point is, division never births development in any country, and these mindsets might cloud your judgement to ignore competency when it presents itself. It is instinctive to make a generalization based on one or two events/characteristics, but this could limit the channeling of energy and resources.

STRAIGHT LINE INSTINCT: People often think that things just keep moving in a straight line. Nigeria was declared the world’s poverty center in 2019, so in four years it will just keep moving along that straight line, right? False. Before Nigeria became the poverty center of the world, India was. If the theory that things continue to move in a straight line was accurate, then India would remain the world’s poverty center today. Would you say that a palm tree can keep growing in a straight line till it reaches the clouds? No, it stops growing in height at some point, just like humans. The straight-line instinct is another psychological tool that deters us from looking at things from another perspective. It makes us reason that things just keep growing in a straight-line direction. There is currently a misconception that the world population is just increasing. Take note of the word ‘just’ which I made italic, that word is the misconception. In fact, the world population is increasing very fast, roughly a billion people will be added to the world in the next 13 years, according to experts. That is not the misconception. That the population is ‘just’ increasing suggests that it will keep growing in a straight line and drastic actions would need to be taken to stop the growth, now that is the misconception. In the year 8000 B.C, about the time agriculture was introduced, the world population was roughly 5 million people, spread along coastlines and rivers around the world. The total of humanity was smaller than our big cities today: London, Bangkok, Lagos etc. This number increased very slowly over the next 10,000 years (staying relatively constant through 8000 B.C, 6000 B.C, 4000 B.C and 2000 B.C) eventually reaching 1 billion in 1800. Then something happened, the next billion were added in 130 years, and 5 billion in under 100 years. It sure looks like the population is just increasing and people get worried at this steep increase, because the world has limited resources. Sometimes this instinct might be right, but not in all cases. The current world population is estimated at about 7.8 billion people as of March, 2020. Still, it has already started slowing down, and UN experts are pretty sure it will keep slowing down over the next decades. They believe the curve will flatten out at somewhere between 10 to 12 billion people by the end of the century — THINGS ‘JUST’ DON’T KEEP GROWING IN A STRAIGHT LINE. Corruption will not ‘just’ keep increasing in a straight tangent, poverty will not ‘just’ keep growing in a straight line, unemployment and out of school children will not ‘just’ keep moving in a straight line.

Imagine how Singapore would be today if they didn’t build on their resilience and positive drives. If we build upon the existing positive indicators, it could culminate in apex preparedness for when the grand opportunity presents itself. You may say I am being overly optimistic, but why shouldn’t I be? If I am not optimistic, I will be limited by all the wrong instincts and this will only lead to pessimism. Let us develop a different perspective about our reality and adopt a positive and nationalistic approach to the growth of the nation.