President Buhari
Sovereignty and the scroundrel
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel — Samuel Johnson (1709-1984)
By Olakunle Abimbola
It may be early days yet. But grab pre-SAP newspapers of 1986, and do a content analysis of their pulsating debates.
You may well strike a rich parallel of patriotic hysterics, akin to the current “rail-sovereignty” debate.
That patriotic rail, against IMF and notorious conditionalities — hardly a sane choice! — for “home-grown” economic reforms, birthed Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s structural adjustment programme (SAP).
But SAP was no more than IMF-plus-conditionalities smuggled in through the back door, except that the irate patriots were too angry to know — until it was too late! Their recourse? Eternal lamentation ever after!
Now, as then however, the thundering herd, with their media champions in tow, are no scoundrels — no, never! They are just riled, patriotic bulls.
As the “IMF!” red rag drove them wild in 1986 (so bellicose to completely miss IBB’s trickery), so does “debt!” now drive them gaga, so much so they scorn Transport Minister, Rotimi Amaechi’s caution: that standard commercial clauses hardly equate trading off sovereignties.
This new excitement is on Nigeria’s US$ 500 million loan from China, to modernize the country’s rail. For this, Amaechi’s passion for his job has made him, in the books of many, Nigeria’s new debt Judas.
To this dashing army, bristling with patriotic bile, any mention of “loan”, even to fund putative future progress — as modern rail clearly is — must ideologically equate “peonage”; which you must shout down, with searing patriotic heat.
Perhaps once bitten, twice shy — given the fulsome record, of past debt abuses? Perfectly understandable!
Still, ask how, without cash, you could fund life-changing infrastructure, sans the debt market? Here comes the answer: grumpy, roiling silence!
But years hence, just as their SAP-ped forebears of 1986, these boisterous, goodly patriots would most bitterly lament their fate when, no thanks to a rail-less economy, mass poverty grinds harder! Whoever thinks straight when seized by a wild rage?
Still, beyond the passionate press and patriots, guess who else came to party? Gamers!
The ever-ready Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President of the Federal Republic, lost no time to latch on, as new, radical anti-debt hero.
So did the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the former ruling party, whose 16 years of economic “reforms” could not roll back the deforms SAP wreaked on the Nigerian real sector, since 1986.
Though President Goodluck Jonathan, after eons, managed to complete the Abuja-Kaduna standard rail, it was the Buhari government that eventually commissioned it.
Even then, that was a rare oasis in the PDP desert of infrastructural delivery, though Nigeria earned much more cash, to fund such. If they had done that, there would have been less need for Chinese (or other) loans.
So, you’d ask: what did Atiku, his principal, former President Olusegun Obasanjo and their ruling PDP, show for their long ruling years: sleek expressways, or ultra-modern rails, or even regular power, that from the ruin of SAP, could have recreated the real sector, of mass manufacturing, with its plethora of factory jobs?
Hardly! Their legacy is offensive personal gains — private universities (when the public ones in their care degenerated); and, of course, the prime jewel of power vanity, the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), first in Africa!
To be sure, OOPL is an obscene temple of personal service, in lieu of genuine monuments in the people’s heart. Nevertheless, it is a fair reflection of the self-first — and last — credo of the Obasanjo era.
So, when brilliant infrastructure-delivery failures of the immediate past, with rank opportunism blunder into the rail loan debate, their suspect motives ought to loom large.
There, sovereignty may well be the last bastion of the scoundrel! — to parody the Samuel Johnson famous quote, that opened this piece.
Still, such characters barge in because deep introspection, flowing from vibrant institutional memory, is seldom a strong pillar of Nigerian public discourse.
That’s why people, amplified by the media, screech as if there was no yesterday; there won’t be tomorrow; but only this minute: and the most piercing screecher carries the day! Any wonder then, there is seldom any solid context, historical or otherwise, to these debates?
Ossai Nicholas Ossai, House of Representatives Treaties, Protocol and Agreements committee chairman, did his parliamentary oversight duty to motherland, to “uncover” (to use Saharareporters’ words) the “offensive” sovereignty clause, in Nigeria’s loan agreement with the Export-Import Bank of China.
But by opting for full sensationalization — again amplified by the media — he followed the loud but empty trails of Ndudi Elumelu who, faced with the Obasanjo-era power mirage uproar, grabbed his head with both hands in dramatic surrender, for the cameras to click away!
Till this day, however, not that drama, or the patriotic rage that followed, has resolved that conundrum.
So, Ossai’s heroics may only provide grist for future yarns, in varied mutations, on the debt and sovereignty question. Yet, it’s getting established that it’s only a standard commercial clause, with such contracts.
Of course, the National Assembly must do its duty, combing every treaty and contract, to ensure Nigeria gets the best deal. That is imperative. But even that should be no excuse to ridicule those battling hard to raise Nigeria’s infrastructure stock.
Take Amaechi and his rail records, not to talk of his passion to leave a worthwhile rail legacy. He warns: don’t criminalize contracts, in the excitement of the moment, for terms you don’t fully understand. If you did, funds for other crucial rail projects, nation-wide, just might dry up. Commonsense, isn’t that?
For that however, not a few have gored the minister as the new Satan, sworn to shackling Nigerian future generations with Chinese debt! Typically Nigerian, isn’t that, to talk at, instead of talking to, one another?
Still, lest we forget: the feared debt Armageddon will come, only if you default. But what if you don’t? You could almost hear an irate patriot bawl: what if you do — as we always did in the past?
Fair question — but hardly an answer: for a rhetorical question is no well thought out and logical answer. The truth is: that you default in the past is no surety that you’d always default, even if it’s fair to keep that past misconduct as a constant check — but constant check, not constant crippler!
So, instead of making a fetish of past defaults, to justify possible future paralysis (an ultra-lazy approach to public policy), the media should lead a vanguard for positive behavioral change. That way, we would have annexed past misdeeds for future gains.
With no own cash, Nigeria needs loans to scale up infrastructure for development. Now, are we going to bleat “debt peonage” in self-pity, or think through it all to turn that short-term handicap to long term glory?
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