By Tatalo Aremu
At bay in Olduvai Gorge
Olduvai Gorge is somewhere in East Africa, in modern Tanzania to be precise. Inside its humungous crevices, the oldest human habitations were discovered some time ago. That was until recently when what appeared to be some far more ancient dwelling caves were discovered at Iho Eleru in contemporary western Nigeria. Taken together, both human habitats confirm the scientific hunch that it was in Africa that what has come to be known as human civilization sprouted until humankind began the long trek to Asia, Europe and other parts of the globe. As the founding continent, the African DNA produced the later prototypes of humans and remains the warehouse of its original wiring. If the Iho Eleru hypothesis receives scientific validation, it can be advanced that Nigeria is home to the vestigial remains of what became the basis of modern civilization.
This is probably why when left to their own devices or when they find themselves in more amenable and conducive circumstances, Nigerians often exhibit extraordinary mental latitude, a physical resilience and astonishing creative capacity which propel them to the top of their game anywhere they find themselves. Yet tragically enough, and despite its vast human resources, Nigeria as a nation has become a top candidate for ultimate state failure and a poster boy for poverty and underdevelopment. How does one explain the horrid mismatch between potential and actuality, and between the oceanic plenitude of natural resources and the parlous condition of the people which has reduced many to the hunter-gatherer phase of human existence reminiscent of their Iho Eleru primitive ancestors?
When you are in a hole, you must stop digging. A propaganda blitz which hides the roots of failure and the principal cause of illness from the afflicted does not enhance the possibility of swift recovery. Truth is an antiseptic cotton wool which clears the wound of its septic rot. Without this, the wound will continue to fester and suppurate. Let us face the truth so that it can cleanse and clear our wounds for proper dressing. These are not the best of time to be a Nigerian. Our national and international stock has never fallen so low. The level of de-civilization, de-institutionalization and consequent dehumanization witnessed in contemporary Nigeria is enough to send shivers into the heart of the most civilized denizens of the troubled nation. The consequences of decades of economic brutalization of the people and the mindless plundering of national resources are here with us.
Everywhere you turn, there are dangerous signs of looming implosion, apocalyptic signals of the end of the times as we know it and the heavy rumbling of a heaving behemoth just about to topple over. The virtual administrative and economic collapse of the famous University College Hospital in Ibadan last week after the stars of the national eclipse finally pulled the plugs on the institution should be a worrisome index of the disorientation and dysfunction that have overtaken us. Before our very eyes, electricity supply in the country has become a criminal franchise in which people with stone hearts and utter lack of regard for state regulation of enterprise hold the entire populace to ransom without any consequence. Bent on squeezing the last penny from an already bitter and pauperized citizenry, they even go as far as to spurn state directives not to offload the cost of procuring new meter bands on the overburden people. So far it appears as if it is the state that is feeling the heat in this economic confrontation with non-state actors.
Such is the criminal impunity of these people that a top Lagos State official told this writer last week that they can actually get away with murder because they are a monopoly with the capacity to blackmail even the state itself. To buttress his point, the official cited many legal cases pending in court against these power Mafiosi. Even when rulings are obtained against them, they simply refuse to comply. In some instances, it is the officials themselves who goad the consumers to commit infractions only to turn against them after they have collected gratification. In other instances, they employ rogue units within their organization in sting operations only to turn round to accuse the owners of premises of grave infractions.
It is a colossal and gigantic scam against innocent people in which monthly targets are set and monthly targets have to be met at all cost. As it is and as the nation begins to resemble an Olduvai Gorge of cave people deprived of one of the wonders of modernity and civilization political primitivity is clearly going to meet economic primitivity head on. This is going to be far more severe in consequences than the polite and civilized manner of resorting to self- help. Perhaps we are already seeing the precursor to this final settling of scores in the attempts to torch the facilities of power-supplying consortiums. Like the struggle for oil in which oil thieves are requested by government to prevent oil theft, this one is possibly going to take an equally vicious and absurdist dimension before we arrive at Eugene Ionesco’s terminus of termites.
The scales of decades of political, economic and spiritual decimation of the country are now falling off our eyes revealing a level of vandalization and elite delinquency probably unique in the history of class formation anywhere in the world. Even our colonial masters must now be secretly wondering about the end-product of their experimentation and the possibilities of an apocalyptic endgame in which semi-Asiatic hordes square up to Nubian mongrels. Having inherited this level of mismanagement from another elite formation within its own party, the government has come up with a rash of measures including the odd fire brigade approach aimed at stemming the rot. But it is also acutely and critically aware of how far it can go without threatening the basis of its own ascendancy.
Not being radical or revolutionary in its original impetus or inspiration, the government knows how far it can go in a particular direction without bringing down the roof of the unstable coalition that propelled it to power. Hence the resort to what can only be described as the management of mismanagement, a temporizing and stonewalling stratagem of power pragmatism which tries not to give offence to the few that really matter while ignoring the many that don’t. In the circumstances, anybody expecting any wholesale or holistic restructuring program from the administration is wasting his time at this point. What advocates and lobbyists should do is to raise the game and the level of discourse rather than resorting to old, shopworn rhetoric about devolution of power, fiscal federalism and all what not. Those who do management of mismanagement are not in the least interested in such a display of power virginity.
But even then and despite all this, such is the fractious and unstable nature of power pragmatism and the management of mismanagement that they are often confronted by the echoes of their own political and economic limitations. Management of mismanagement is a skilled science of political gamesmanship which requires creative brinkmanship and the brilliance of the ultimate trapeze artist. It cannot afford to indulge in ambitious economic and political reform because failure in the project may invite more revolutionary intervention or radical anarchy. Yet as business-friendly and as politically inoffensive as the ruling administration may be or want to appear to those that matter, there are many who believe that floating the naira and plugging the loopholes in the forex gaming known as subsidy removal have done irreparable and incalculable damage to their business. They are now poised for war.
At the opposite side of the spectrum are enemy nationals who are engaged in a campaign of permanent economic destabilization of the nation as long as their skewered and schizoid ideal of the nation does not prevail. With their access to the media, they subject the ruling party and its leading lights to merciless excoriation on a daily basis and they in turn respond through their hirelings with commensurate firepower making it feel as if the country is on a permanent siege. It can now be seen that even the management of mismanagement has its work cut out for it to prevent Nigeria from tipping over to the Olduvai Gorge of primitive cave-people and savage hunter-gatherer. At the rate at which we are going, we are not very far from this terminal debacle of the Black race.
Management of mismanagement, or the capacity to prevent a terrible situation from further deteriorating, is not the best option for a nation rendered economically and politically destitute by a delinquent elite formation. But it has advantages over sheer mismanagement. Although it can never and will never be able to deliver on ambitious economic and political transformation of the country or drive political equity and social justice, it can prevent the situation from tipping into anarchy or prevent the hostile factions from coming to blows by strategic appointments and skillful allocation of resources. How long this will last and how long the ruling cartel can hold forth depends on its capacity to feel its way through the minefield and deliver on the largesse.
Culled from The Nation
