Obasanjo’s Call For A Nigerian ‘Arab Spring’ —Ben Nanghan

On Monday, 5 December 2011, Nigeria’s former Military cum civilian President, General Olusegun Obasanjo (retd) warned the President Goodluck Jonathan government to beware of an ‘Arab Spring’ experience in Nigeria. The former President and Nigeria’s most powerful political godfather detonated this bomb at a workshop on Economic Diversification and Revenue Generation at the June 12 Cultural Centre in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

The former President who has now won a national award for “talking now and thinking later” also added that unemployment could trigger off an ‘Arab Spring’ experience in Nigeria. He lamented the soaring rate of unemployment which he said agriculture could solve. He spoke further: “It doesn’t matter which way you look at it today. People are now talking of Arab Spring (in Nigeria).

How times change. So the former President now listens to Nigerians and with all he has heard, warns government of fatal consequences of governments’ failure to provide vital infrastructural facilities for the nation’s economic take-off.

This same former President who has governed Nigeria for eleven years without listening to one out of his 140 million Nigerians. The former President even carried it ridiculously too far when he appointed his Special Advisers in 1999 and told them that their advice was not worth more than a dime. And the Nigerian tax payers carried the unenvied burden of wasting billions of naira on Special Advisers and Ministers whose advice were never utilized to move the nation forward. Even if Nigerians are talking about the Arab Spring experience, when did the former President become the chief spokesman for all Nigerians. When did he become the mouthpiece of the Nigerian masses? Did unemployment fare better during his 8 years as a civilian and 3 years as a military Head of State?

When the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) was enmeshed in corruption under the former president what did he do to stem the tide of corruption. Instead he looked the other way and today the NDE is an unfortunate tale of unfathomable corruption.

The former president ruled Nigeria as a ruthless despot and colossus, subjecting Nigerians and even his Vice President to unimaginable and unbearable discomfiting circumstances. He sold government parastatals and properties without regard to due process, propriety, prudence and discipline.

The former President governed Nigeria via his whims and caprices introducing strange feudalistic and traditional ideologies which made it mandatory for him to appoint his ministers and political advisers from well established and popular family lineages. Nigeria does not belong to a set of chosen and anointed families. Today no American Secretary (Minister) is selected from the Carter, Kennedy, Nixon, Bush, Lincoln, Roosevelt families. Even President Barack Obama had to shop for Janet Napolitano who was a republican governor to serve as secretary of Homeland Security. Nigeria needs patriotic, dedicated and committed ministers and advisers choosen on well established democratic norms of performance and commitment rather than bogus traditional family lineage.

The seed of today’s unemployment was sown several years ago. The foundation for a vibrant economy was not laid by all our past leaders including General Olusegun Obasanjo who had one of the greatest opportunities to do so but allowed it to slip by.

The former President wasted billions of dollars on electricity generation and distribution and by the time he left office in 2007, Nigeria was generating only 2,000megawatts of electricity for a population of 140 million people. South Africa, with a population of 45million people generates almost 50,000megawatts of electricity via a revolutionary energy technology called the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) which she has even sold to countries outside Africa. The late President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua in December 2007, promised to declare a state of National Emergency in the energy and power sector because according to him “Power was the tonic for industrial growth that can get Nigeria out of its economic predicament. So these Presidents know the critical importance of energy and power!

In so many ways, past leaders were benefiting from Nigeria’s total lack of electricity supply. A former Special Adviser in January 2009 disclosed that the “Federal Government has uncovered a strong cabal sabotaging electricity in Nigeria and that it benefits this strong cabal for the power sector to malfunction”.

Unemployment figures are getting worse because whole industries are either relocating to Ghana or closing shop. For instance in Kano alone 86 factories were shut between 2009-2010. For the same period, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) figures show that 834 industrial firms closed shop throughout the federation thereby losing a total of 830,000 jobs including over 30,000 bank jobs as a result of the sanitization cum restructuring of the banking sector of that period.

Truly, Nigeria’s unemployment rates are mind boggling. For instance America is greatly alarmed and feels very uncomfortable when its unemployment rate nears double digits. For instance in July 2011 Americans unemployment rate was 9.2 and it hovers between 9 – 9.7%. Afro America’s unemployment averaged about 16% while for black youth it is 45%. And so President Barack Obama has proposed another $446 billion stimulus package to buoy the American economy to give a boost and succour to the American people. On the 13 December, 2011, the American Federal Reserve had a hectic deliberation and passed a vote of confidence on the American Economy describing it as “expanding moderately”

Nigeria’s unemployment figures for 2009 is 19.7%, 2010 is 21.1% and up to Oct. 2011 is 23.9%. And 41% of our university and polytechnic graduates are unemployed. While conceding that our unemployment status is becoming alarming, burdensome and almost unmanageable, the Arab Spring revolution which the former President prescribes is not the answer to solving the unemployment malaise.

Even the brightest and most powerful clairvoyant can not foretell how an Arab Spring will end in Nigeria. Is the former President suddenly becoming an apostle of disintegration in Nigeria. You do not need any prophet or stargazer to tell you that a Nigerian ‘Arab Spring’ will be decisively bloody, and will present a golden platform for Nigeria’s impoverished and marginalized minorities to vent intra-ethic animosities bottled-up for so many decades.

The former President could have made his contributions on the forum without any reference to the ‘Arab Spring’. Or is the former President on a spleen-venting mission. Or is President Goodluck Jonathan’s “Subsidy Removal” already affecting the former President. This is so because I am convinced that so many empires will crumble, so many cabals will be shaken to their foundations when the President goes ahead with the subsidy removal.

I am convinced that the former President could not prevail on President Jonathan to shelve the subsidy removal and so the former President is scheming for any option that will make Nigeria ungovernable, coincidentally as proposed by a section of Nigeria. The former president increased the price of fuel more than 10 times, especially during our happiest festival periods and nobody called for an Arab Spring.

Anyone who stirs the peace and unity of Nigeria will himself not have peace. God bless Nigeria.

•Nanaghan writes from Lagos. E-mail: [email protected]