Thomas Agbonkpolor's submission on the draft Concept paper
A STRATEGIC ANALYSIS OF THE CHANGE WE NEED IN NIGERIA: Some thoughts on the draft concept paper.
I welcome this opportunity to contribute towards operationalizing the concept of political changes we need in our country at the moment. In doing this, the first theme of this contribution is my thinking that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. If Sir Isaac Newton can see further than his peers merely by standing on the shoulder of giants, we can also excel in the current quest by taking a look at political models that worked elsewhere – in comparable institutional settings and adapt such models to the Nigerian condition. Supposing somebody asks the question: why do we need change in the country or change for what practical purpose? I find that some possible answers to such questions have been tucked away in the preamble of the draft concept paper. Building a consensus around these answers, to my mind is imperative because it is when there is a fair consensus as to where we are going that we can move on to the next level of road-mapping strategies. Thus a second theme is the need for strategic analysis by asking and attempting to answer the following questions in the Abuja meeting as honestly as possible. The questions are
1. Where are we?
2. How did we come about this state?
3. Where do we want the country to be within a defined time frame?
At least two of the above questions featured in the Vision 2010 document. But how were they answered? Was there really a serious appreciation of the critical condition of the Nigerian state and honest strategic solutions? Thus, before mobilizing for change, there should be a fair consensus on these and the objectives of change articulated and internalized by the critical segments of the civil society acting as the harbinger for change. This can help in making meaning of ‘the main theme’ in the draft concept paper.
The remaining part of this brief presentation concentrates on some suggested guidelines towards answering the above questions. It intentionally raises more questions than answers since the main purpose of the Abuja meeting is to brainstorm on the way out of the current social quagmire (apologies to Dr Tunji Braithwaite).
The current state: Failed leadership and virtual state collapse marked by increasing level of poverty, ignorance, disease, institutional ossification and decay; yawning gap between the rich and the poor, increasing criminality and militancy and flight for greener pastures by those who can afford it. Participants can add the litany of woes that seem to characterize the polity etc. Parallels can be drawn with other problem states like Somalia but one word that can be used to describe the current state of the nation is ‘precarious’.
How we arrived at this state: Probably, there will be as much differences of opinion as there are patriots in the talk shop. Sample: we had a Dutch disease (remember that (in) famous statement of General Gowon: money is no longer our problem), poor and visionless leadership, corruption, historical accident of the 1914 amalgamation, centrifugal pull of the federating units- a marriage of strange bedfellows, an inappropriate political structure/engineering that will bring in a sense of unity and release the productive potentials of the people.
What type of country do we want Nigeria to be? If as indicated above, we are not interested in reinventing the wheel, we can take a panoptic look at political models that have worked in other developing nations of the world, that are less amenable to counter-revolutionaries, that have sound theoretical and ideological foundations. Are we interested in the Singaporean/Hong Kong model? Given the crony capitalism that almost evaporate the developmental gains of the Asian tigers and dragons and the semblance of their models to the failed one that have been implemented in Nigeria, their models should not have high marks in my opinion. How about the Brazilian political economy model? One of the FOI patriots Baba Aye is currently studying in that country and can do an intricate report on what makes their model to be working.
We should be able to agree on a system that incorporates much of the elements in the preamble to the draft concept paper. But we can make our goal/objective modest like ‘to make Nigeria work’ or ‘to arrest the drift’ depending on which side of the divide we are. Talking about “transmuting Nigeria into a Nation state with the capacity to lead Africa to impressive heights and invariably becoming a world power” is reminiscent of the grandiloquent wishing of our failed leaders and politicians. The man who supervised the last Ghana elections said Ghana has gone beyond manipulating election results, and many of us know the level of political and economic developments in South Africa. So let us be modest in our aspirations and strike a difference between our plans, action and utterances and the failed elite currently looting the country.
An agreed conception of what a good country should be is vital. Most of the characteristics of such society are, as I earlier indicated stated in the preamble. They can be brought out, articulated and made our battle cries. But at the minimum, a good society should be able to
• Rewards risk taking and merit and therefore act as a spur to releasing the creative potentials of the citizenry. At the moment, the current Nigerian system doesn’t. On the contrary, it rewards criminality and laziness thus crowding arena where easy money can be made- politics,
• Minimizes corruption in private and public life
• And harnesses the commonwealth for development.
The political system we envisage should be marketable such that most citizens can buy into the idea and work assiduously towards its realization. Many that have invested heavily in the status quo should be expected to resist but there should be chances of the new system being realized in our lifetime.
The change gospel of President Obama succeeded because he built essentially on the economic and political foundation of liberalism that American is noted for. We can as well succeed by identifying critical foundations – like federalism, mixed economy, political pluralism etc that have shaped the Nigerian state while we aspire to change the dysfunctional elements in the polity.
I wish the Abuja summit a successful deliberation.
Tom Agbonkpolor
Belfast, Northern Ireland. 27th February 2009.
I welcome this opportunity to contribute towards operationalizing the concept of political changes we need in our country at the moment. In doing this, the first theme of this contribution is my thinking that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. If Sir Isaac Newton can see further than his peers merely by standing on the shoulder of giants, we can also excel in the current quest by taking a look at political models that worked elsewhere – in comparable institutional settings and adapt such models to the Nigerian condition. Supposing somebody asks the question: why do we need change in the country or change for what practical purpose? I find that some possible answers to such questions have been tucked away in the preamble of the draft concept paper. Building a consensus around these answers, to my mind is imperative because it is when there is a fair consensus as to where we are going that we can move on to the next level of road-mapping strategies. Thus a second theme is the need for strategic analysis by asking and attempting to answer the following questions in the Abuja meeting as honestly as possible. The questions are
1. Where are we?
2. How did we come about this state?
3. Where do we want the country to be within a defined time frame?
At least two of the above questions featured in the Vision 2010 document. But how were they answered? Was there really a serious appreciation of the critical condition of the Nigerian state and honest strategic solutions? Thus, before mobilizing for change, there should be a fair consensus on these and the objectives of change articulated and internalized by the critical segments of the civil society acting as the harbinger for change. This can help in making meaning of ‘the main theme’ in the draft concept paper.
The remaining part of this brief presentation concentrates on some suggested guidelines towards answering the above questions. It intentionally raises more questions than answers since the main purpose of the Abuja meeting is to brainstorm on the way out of the current social quagmire (apologies to Dr Tunji Braithwaite).
The current state: Failed leadership and virtual state collapse marked by increasing level of poverty, ignorance, disease, institutional ossification and decay; yawning gap between the rich and the poor, increasing criminality and militancy and flight for greener pastures by those who can afford it. Participants can add the litany of woes that seem to characterize the polity etc. Parallels can be drawn with other problem states like Somalia but one word that can be used to describe the current state of the nation is ‘precarious’.
How we arrived at this state: Probably, there will be as much differences of opinion as there are patriots in the talk shop. Sample: we had a Dutch disease (remember that (in) famous statement of General Gowon: money is no longer our problem), poor and visionless leadership, corruption, historical accident of the 1914 amalgamation, centrifugal pull of the federating units- a marriage of strange bedfellows, an inappropriate political structure/engineering that will bring in a sense of unity and release the productive potentials of the people.
What type of country do we want Nigeria to be? If as indicated above, we are not interested in reinventing the wheel, we can take a panoptic look at political models that have worked in other developing nations of the world, that are less amenable to counter-revolutionaries, that have sound theoretical and ideological foundations. Are we interested in the Singaporean/Hong Kong model? Given the crony capitalism that almost evaporate the developmental gains of the Asian tigers and dragons and the semblance of their models to the failed one that have been implemented in Nigeria, their models should not have high marks in my opinion. How about the Brazilian political economy model? One of the FOI patriots Baba Aye is currently studying in that country and can do an intricate report on what makes their model to be working.
We should be able to agree on a system that incorporates much of the elements in the preamble to the draft concept paper. But we can make our goal/objective modest like ‘to make Nigeria work’ or ‘to arrest the drift’ depending on which side of the divide we are. Talking about “transmuting Nigeria into a Nation state with the capacity to lead Africa to impressive heights and invariably becoming a world power” is reminiscent of the grandiloquent wishing of our failed leaders and politicians. The man who supervised the last Ghana elections said Ghana has gone beyond manipulating election results, and many of us know the level of political and economic developments in South Africa. So let us be modest in our aspirations and strike a difference between our plans, action and utterances and the failed elite currently looting the country.
An agreed conception of what a good country should be is vital. Most of the characteristics of such society are, as I earlier indicated stated in the preamble. They can be brought out, articulated and made our battle cries. But at the minimum, a good society should be able to
• Rewards risk taking and merit and therefore act as a spur to releasing the creative potentials of the citizenry. At the moment, the current Nigerian system doesn’t. On the contrary, it rewards criminality and laziness thus crowding arena where easy money can be made- politics,
• Minimizes corruption in private and public life
• And harnesses the commonwealth for development.
The political system we envisage should be marketable such that most citizens can buy into the idea and work assiduously towards its realization. Many that have invested heavily in the status quo should be expected to resist but there should be chances of the new system being realized in our lifetime.
The change gospel of President Obama succeeded because he built essentially on the economic and political foundation of liberalism that American is noted for. We can as well succeed by identifying critical foundations – like federalism, mixed economy, political pluralism etc that have shaped the Nigerian state while we aspire to change the dysfunctional elements in the polity.
I wish the Abuja summit a successful deliberation.
Tom Agbonkpolor
Belfast, Northern Ireland. 27th February 2009.
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