It is not often that we see a leader embrace controversy as eagerly and as adeptly as President Goodluck Jonathan has done. Of the five or so hot button issues likely to influence the course of events in 2012 in ways guaranteed to alter the shape and destiny of Nigeria, the president casts his shadow over at least three: education, fuel subsidy and the Islamist sect, Boko Haram. The other two issues – electricity supply and the governorship elections scheduled for the early part of the year – have their own self-perpetuating logic and resilience that have made them hardy perennials in the turbulent waters of Nigerian politics.

A little over two years ago, Boko Haram, whose larger aim of undermining the stability of the country was at first subsumed under its narrower objective of undermining Western education, was the object of derision in security circles. Its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, had just been contemptuously murdered in controversial circumstances, and his foot soldiers put to ignominious flight. Late last year, tertiary institutions closed down after many awkward months of negotiations, thereby freeing a frighteningly large population of angry, restless and politically conscious youths for potential trouble. And, finally, fuel subsidy, an issue that had been quiescent for many years, came back to life dramatically on the back of a mismanaged national economy to form the third leg of Jonathan’s fearsome Frankenstein.

Starting from today, The Nation will be drawing attention to all these five issues, from a long list of other germane issues capable of defining the country, or in the apocalyptic words of Jonathan’s key aides, capable of crashing it. There is no special reason to start with the Boko Haram menace today. Nor by focusing on these five controversial issues do we presume to have a special magic wand to decipher their inner workings. We are merely making a statement about their interconnectedness with one another and their thematic relationship with the present and future of the country, to ‘define’ it or to ‘crash’ it, and to give a broader picture of the terrifying leadership lacuna the country has faced from birth more than 50 years ago.

Boko Haram would have been nothing more than a discomfiting aberration had it not been mismanaged from the beginning. Not only was there no attempt whatsoever to understand its internal and external dynamics, managing it was left wholly in the hands of the police who dismissively characterised it as the handiwork of hoodlums. Then, sensing its usefulness, quite like the Niger Delta militants were first co-opted into fractious politics by leading politicians, it was appropriated by the governing elite of one or two states in the North. And when it began to loom larger than its handlers, when it threatened to get out of hand, when it began to feed on the socio-economic morass of the region, the elites panicked and made the situation worse.

Leadership slothfulness may have imbued Boko Haram with fresh dynamism, but it sometimes does much more than animate a disaster waiting to happen. The same slothfulness virtually created the electricity generation shortfalls that have paralysed the country’s engines of production. Quite apart from the lack of scientific and futuristic reasoning required to anticipate the shape of events in the decades to come, there was the more important lack of seriousness and endeavour among the ruling elite which has made it impossible to summon the enterprise and courage required to build the future on a template of the future. If that appalling lack of enterprise manifested in the inertness that crippled the building of power stations for the future, it manifested even more cynically in the deliberate refusal to build refineries or maintain existing ones. (See table showing that fuel price in Nigeria is more expensive than in other countries similarly placed).

Nothing bears more succinct testimony to these failures, among the many that litter Nigerian history, like the Biblical quotation that laments the betrayal of the young generation by the old generation: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Somewhere in India is a graveyard containing many war dead of the Indian Army that fought in the Burma campaign during World War II. On one monument at the foot of the cemetery at Kohima is this inscription: “When you go home, tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today.” Nigeria’s ruling elite have turned this proud and evocative inscription upside down. It can be said of them that “for their today, they gave our tomorrow.”

There is no end to the sacrifices. Policies of doubtful utility have viciously sundered the society into haves and have-nots and stratified the classes into mutually antagonistic entities sworn to destroy one another. This may be the logic that binds together the five controversial issues in consideration. Electricity generation shortfall hamstrings production, and together with structural adjustment programme and subsidy removal-fuelled inflation, low quality of education and a political system where votes do not count and incompetent governments win elections, they have bred malcontents determined to destroy society.

Read separately, these articles may make little sense beyond providing information and perspectives on the issues being addressed. But if attention is paid to the leitmotif that runs through the essays, a recurring theme that looks at the consequences of the leadership failure Nigeria has battled with for a long time, the articles will make better sense. The lesson will be drawn that poor economic policies have stultified production as much as low quality education has spawned nearly illiterate graduates, fewer exemplary and notable men of letters and inventors, and young men and women who have become immersed in a dangerous smorgasbord of unreason, intolerance and retail violence.

This year could yet be Nigeria’s defining moment. It is not clear whether Jonathan understands the risky conjunction of explosive events he has put together in a pressure pot: whether it is the result of one of his typical but bungling deliberateness or the outcome of his boyish indifference to danger. But here he is, with universities closed down and anger among the youths simmering, he began implementing the removal of fuel subsidy on January 1, just when the ordinary Nigerian had exhausted himself financially, and when Boko Haram had stretched the security agencies to their tactical limit. If the country comes out of the cauldron unscathed, it is unlikely anything else would hurt it in the immediate future. But given the stage of the country’s political evolution, the chances of achieving that bliss is more theoretical than real.

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/news/32091-nigeria%E2%80%99s-defining-and-perilous-year.html

frosbel:

This year could yet be Nigeria’s defining moment. It is not clear whether Jonathan understands the risky conjunction of explosive events he has put together in a pressure pot: whether it is the result of one of his typical but bungling deliberateness or the outcome of his boyish indifference to danger.

But here he is, with universities closed down and anger among the youths simmering, he began implementing the removal of fuel subsidy on January 1, just when the ordinary Nigerian had exhausted himself financially, and when Boko Haram had stretched the security agencies to their tactical limit.

If the country comes out of the cauldron unscathed, it is unlikely anything else would hurt it in the immediate future. But given the stage of the country’s political evolution, the chances of achieving that bliss is more theoretical than real.

^^^^^+1000

If the government does not reverse the removal of fuel subsidy before the strike begins, we should expect the most vicious and violent attacks to date, by Boko Haram, starting on Monday. Our clueless government fully expects to keep the sect under control during the strike.

I predict that more innocent Nigerians who go on strike will be killed than Boko Haram members in the next few days. As of today, while Suleja is on fire as we speak and GEJ security operatives are nowhere to be found, we have a 70% chance of being under a military government within 2 weeks. I sincerely hope to be wrong on my predictions.