What’s Going on with Africa’s Giant?

            Nigeria is not only Africa’s most populous nation, it is the home of abundant natural blessings, such as petroleum, natural gas, coal, minerals such as gold, iron ore, niobium and tin and a significant amount of arable land.  Moreover, Africa’s giant has plentiful human resources to call upon – many of whom have already made significant contributions to society.  Unfortunately, there are too many Nigerians who have succumbed to the temptation to engage in criminal activities or who have perverted holy teachings to persecute their fellow citizens.  As a result, what should be a progressive nation enjoying its God-given blessings has become a hellish place for too many of its people and a disappointment to a continent and a world that could sorely use the leadership it is quite capable of providing.

            According to Statista, the international research company, more than two-thirds of Nigerians surveyed were quite concerned about being mugged or robbed.  More than 61 percent reported having their home broken into.  Nearly 60 percent have experienced having their car stolen.  Nearly 59 percent reported having been the victim of a violent attack.

            Although respondents in the Statista survey didn’t mention it, kidnapping has surged to its highest level in at least a decade, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, an aggregator of information on violence and conflict worldwide. We are familiar with the notable kidnapping of the nearly 300 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in 2014, but not as familiar with the numerous kidnappings of women and children since then.  More than 900 students have been taken from schools in mass abductions just since December 2020, according to the United Nations.

            A June 2021 Al Jazeera article entitled “Once Africa’s promise, Nigeria is heaving under crime, few jobs,” the news service described a demoralizing situation for Nigerians.

“Endowed with some of the world’s biggest oil reserves, plenty of arable land and a young, tech-savvy population of 206 million that sets Africa’s music and fashion trends, Nigeria had the potential to break onto the global stage,” the article stated.

“Instead, policy missteps, entrenched corruption and an over-reliance on crude oil mean that a country that makes up a quarter of the continent’s economy risks becoming its biggest problem. A dangerous cauldron of ethnic tension, youth discontent and criminality threatens to spread more poverty and violence to a region quickly falling behind the rest of the world.”

The article went on to tell the story of Tomi Davies, a systems analyst, who was one of thousands of Nigerians who came home to help rebuild the country. After a few years working on public sector projects, he told Al Jazeera he was offered a lot of money to add ghost employees to the payroll system he was installing. When he refused, he said, a group of men attacked him at his home in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.  Davies has retreated to the United Kingdom.  Others who returned full of hope also likely have succumbed to frustration and despair.

According to the World Bank, personal incomes in Nigeria have fallen to their lowest level in four decades, pushing an additional 11 million people into poverty heading into 2022. One in three Nigerians in the workforce is unemployed, which is among the world’s highest jobless rates, fanning social discontent and insecurity.  In a nation full of clever people with plenty of ingenuity, how could this happen?

Certainly, corruption and cronyism in the economic sphere have played a role in undermining the potential of Nigeria’s commercial power.  Mismanagement of all sorts has been a great detriment.  The over-focus on oil and the abandonment of mining and agriculture have taken its toll.  The coronavirus pandemic certainly didn’t help, but Nigeria’s economy has been limping along for quite some time before the pandemic hit in 2020.

Policy miscalculations such as the revival of an import-substitution effort that was popular in the early 1980s has crippled businesses that can no longer get sufficient goods to continue in operation. The government has banned foreign currency for imports of dozens of products, closed borders to halt rice smuggling and refused to fully ease exchange controls.  The result has been a reduction in foreign investment, an increase in food inflation to 15-year highs and the halting of a planned expansion in Nigeria of companies such as South Africa’s innovative supermarket chain Shoprite Holdings Ltd.

If it was only the federal government making poor policy decision, that would be bad enough, but state and local governments also commit policy blunders – some extremely dangerous for citizens. In August, Human Rights Watch reported that authorities in Borno State announced it would repatriate 1,860,000 internally displaced persons and refugees back to their original communities despite ongoing safety concerns. Sixteen days after some returned to Kukawa Local Government Area on August 18, Boko Haram attacked and abducted 100 people. Despite that outcome, the federal government continued to participate in forced returns of Nigerian refugees from Cameroon in spite of remaining danger to their safety.

During my last visit to Nigeria several years ago when I worked for the U.S. House of Representatives, I noted the danger from jihadism in the northeast was exacerbated by the ham-handed tactics used in dealing with Boko Haram from its inception, as well as a looming threat from Shiite militants in Kaduna State that also was brutally addressed by the Nigerian military in 2015 in the town of Zaria, which made that threat more likely to erupt into greater violence than it has already.

Speaking with Ibo elders in the East, they described residual resentment against northerners because of what they saw a discrimination and brutality against them, which resulted in the Biafra secession in 1967.  That effort failed, but the bitterness Ibos felt was transmitted to their offspring, who now want to secede again.  One might caution that the conditions in 1967 don’t apply today, but the negative rhetoric and anti-Ibo attacks from those outside eastern Nigeria certainly don’t calm those passions.  Moreover, other ethnic groups in the Niger Delta and beyond also now feel aggrieved and see their complaints as being unaddressed by what many view as a government that doesn’t care about their interests or even their survival.

In fact, many wonder how a leading Fulani cattleman such as President Muhammadu Buhari could be so absent in any effort to quell the constant warfare between supposed Fulani herdsmen and farmers from various ethnic groups in the country’s Middle Belt.  It isn’t as though this is a quiet concern.  Since these clashes were first noted in 2018, hundreds of people on both sides have lost their lives.

Religious clashes in Nigeria also have produced a high death toll.  Tens of thousands of Christians have been killed in the last few years in Nigeria for the crime of being followers of Jesus Christ.  In fact, Nigeria has been called the most dangerous place to live for Christians.  In the current World Watch Report by Open Doors, an international organization monitoring religious persecution, Nigeria is said to have more Christians murdered for their faith than in any other country.  I have seen first-hand the destruction of human lives due to Islamic extremism unchecked by more reasoned followers of Mohammed, who often are themselves the targets of Islamic extremists.

This extremist threat goes far beyond Boko Haram.  Speaking at the 14th Workshop of the League of Ulamas, Preachers and Imams of Sahel countries in Abuja earlier in December, Nigeria’s National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno, identified Jama’at Nasr al-Islam Wal Muslimin, the Islamic and Muslim Support Group and the Islamic State in Greater Sahara as groups bolstering activities of terror in Nigeria and other Sahel countries.

 The NSA appealed for Islamic preachers and imams to utilize their vantage positions to solicit support for ongoing counter-terrorism operations.  He said that alliances between the clerics and security forces “should be the backbone to rebuilding our terrorism infested communities.”

Nigeria has many self-inflicted social wounds, but the alarming increase in criminal violence is the bitter icing on a poisonous social cake.  It is making life unbearable for Nigerians who live there, expatriates who need to return to tend to family or business interests and outsiders who want to become involved in a potential commercial powerhouse.

SBM Intelligence, a Nigerian information gathering platform, and EiE Nigeria, a civil society group formed to provide a voice for Nigerian citizens, have produced a report showing that more than 2,287 persons were reported killed in Nigeria in the third quarter of 2021 alone in violent incidents, including attacks by Boko Haram terrorists, militia herdsmen, bandits, abductions and gang clashes.

Not only is this carnage making Nigeria repulsive to outsiders wanting to invest or even engage in tourism; it undermines the confidence Nigerians should justifiably have in their home country – the pride one should have in their country’s capabilities and prospects for tomorrow.  More than anything, however, this level of violence and criminality is corrupting youth and wasting the promise they should provide for Nigeria’s future.

Nigeria has been called the essential African country.  It was a vital element in the establishment of the Organization of African Unity in 1963 (remember, South Africa was still under apartheid and not a part of this organization as its founding), and the participation of Nigeria in the creation and full functioning of the African Continental Free Trade Area has been considered essential.  For the sake of Nigeria, the Africa continent and the world at large, this rising violence and chaos in Nigeria must end now.