Democracy, the challenge of Globalisation and a Nation’s Dysfunctional Dynamics -By Jimi Bickersteth

Flying this sunny afternoon, after days of series of relentless rain, cold and wetness, on this second Sunday of the seventh month and ruminating over the nation’s saga of the two or was it three nations in one that had not really met to function as one, in the comfy bosom of this exquisitely designed Hawker Siddley at low altitude; I was watching without seeing a comic strip cartoon on the 17” Sony television mounted on the gallery within the fuselage, titled: The Coming of the Space Age, highly comical virtual reality, but for the actors clothes that were almost comically inappropriate.

Each time within the two-way, four-some hour long flight, I had to from this cosy height take a panoramic view of the earth space beneath, all I was able to see from the air, was a countryside that was half-buried in trees and fit very well as a vignette design on the first page of a romantic book. At a point, I had to chose to concentrate on the emerging labyrinthine views about ten thousand feet below. At houses that appeared as if enclosed in an area of buildings and streets, but rather as if the houses have forced themselves up, under and among the trees.

Flying low over it, one saw growth, greenness, and the fragments of streets, some macadamized, some like craters others with potholes that could accommodate a big Porsche. The tarred surface of the macadamized roads had curves and blackness that has no beginning nor end, for it emerges from trees and shrubs, and is at once absorbed and reabsorbed by them.

I saw a large and wide nation, a virile one, spreading wide and scattered. It showed there was no problem of space: pressure scatters people outwards, it does not force them perpendicularly. This country is so beautiful and fascinating! Attracting riches and misery–particularly misery. As the millennium machine and its crews display breathtaking and dazzling virtuosity, the nation was more or less looking like a virtual recluse and a damning exposé of waste, backwardness and planlessness.

On this trip I observed, that never had soil and the earth and its components been so misused! Thousands of thousands of acres of it, denuded, as trees denuded of leaves, robbed, fit for nothing. It exposed a nation in need of an education in pragmatic, civilised and modern values. One felt that the recurrent saga of its democracy, underdevelopment, unsettled national questions and the arguments of a nation that was not functioning as one, goes without saying, that the nation haphazardly put together from remnants of traditional life and synthesis needed new crops of men and leaders to create a new chapter and vista in the perpendicular unrolling saga of nationhood and national rebirth at the twilight of the 20th year of the third millennium. And to do this, the nation must give up its old attitude, its present piecemeal change and reforms, and of necessity, must, abandon tradition and sought to express in a futuristic way, energy and growth of a modern society.

And, so, slaving to a plan that depends on split-second timing to put meals on the table, I woke up this morning at Ipaja via Idogo, north of the Yewa capital, where getting used
to a new environment, new conditions was an uphill task. For my early morning aerobics, arms stretched back in a magnificent slow yawn, I retained that posture while rocking on the balls of my feet, arms still locked behind my head, I began a sort of shuffle dance to the music of the sakara exponent, Yusug Olatunji,aka Baba L’egba – a music that conveyed the atmosphere of its locale.

In the sunny dusty locale among fallen leaves; it was a crisp, bright morning, the sky was as blue, fresh as the sea: this idyllic seen moved me deeply. I sauntered, weight shifting from hip to hip with each step. It was a dance: buttocks sharply protruding and then withdrawn inwards after the prancing, lifting knees. Thereafter, I settled down to the local version of a meal of steak au poivre steak, fashioned by my adorable but doting wifey; steak covered with crushed peppercorns pan-broiled and served with brandy-and-butter sauce. The Brandy here came in cheap, because of proximity to the border where nocturnal smuggling thrives. A dessert of the local wafer (kokoro Egba) and sponge cake, soft light cake made with eggs, sugar and flour followed in quick succession.

I don’t normally live here, but I keep a pied-à-terre with a loggia with three open sides that formed part of the small house that has one-sided open to the garden and the other to the main broad street. It was from this vantage position that this early morning, I observed lots of women, almost every three in five with a baby on their back, (don’t they have access to the morning-after pill?) Some already far gone, with others protruded tummy in different shapes, poor women! Heavy child on their backs going to fetch water at the stream and or great sacks of haberdashery moving from house to house, on the roughly sketched avenues and the cul-de-sac design of the village marketing their wares.

Another woman sat down on a rotten log under the huge, leafy Meadows tree surrounded by greenish Willow plants, easing her strained back, as she moved her baby around under her armpit, still in its slings, so it could reach her breast. The ‘ritual’ went on for some moment, until the baby in sleep let the nipple fall from its mouth. Hmm! It take all sorts to make a nation. The woman got up, shrugged the baby into position in the small of her back, pulled her sack over her head, and walked off. Some others at their frontage shops, reclined, sleeping or lazily gossiping.

Added to the scenarios above were the city’s depressed people, a generation hiding behind jokes, alcohol, juice laced with Tramadol, Benylin with Codeine, “suffering and smiling”, crying inwards smiling outwards. Put together, the local incidents above and in sum the nonsense of hoping, year after, for some miracle that would provide amenities, enabling environment and mannah, subsistence and or sufficiency and other vanishing amenities of life were becoming stifling, killing inspiration, initiatives, ideas and talents of our compatriots.

But, why not? Why wouldn’t they hope and expect? What had they not hoped and expected! Allow the dreams and dreaming, of a free, amiable life released from the tensions and the pressure of modern existence. Dreams quite absurd – but then, if no one dreamed their dreams the nation would remain underdeveloped and everyone making their own life, as they could. These were people who year in year out thrived in a remoteness afforded by a vast grassland which had hitherto made for uneven control of resources. Added to this was the character of life itself in a land of seemingly unending reach and riches. In such circumstances natural conditions promoted a tough individualism, as people became used to making their own decisions far away from Abuja, and allow, conditions of anarchy often prevailed.

Such hovels, it was all positively hopeless, as long as the political system kept churning out
politicians with loose values, loose lifestyles. If the political leaders were morally bankrupt, decadent individuals and are ipsofacto, corrupt, the system would be languishly and “fantastical”(ly) corrupt. Today, nothing is more remarkable than this democratic phenomenon, where the nation’s pattern had shown that its elected Representatives, public/civil servants, loves being, like a cat, a complacent cat, made a fuss of.
While they spend all their time and energy earnestly exhorting the Commonwealth: they should however, have some sense before it is too late; if they do not let the nation use enough money to house, feed, cloth and educate these people and their children, deprived and left to their own devices, would, rise and may become daring and devilish. Every action has its causes and rituals.

The vertical and horizontal dysfunctional dynamics of the social movement of the nation’s political history and the steady growing sense of disenchantments left on its trail was a stick of dynamite. The songs, hymns and choruses of marginalisation and the litany on restructuring, self-independence and or resources control, which were more of an undercurrent in the people’s mind than a part of their thinking, and at first rumours and or hearsays, have taken up the toga and spirit of fear of war.

Life is becoming threatening and dangerous. Perchance, the threats and deep basic insecurity all around becoming a reality, all sorts of people were going to get hurt in all sorts of ways, all for nothing. As it is fast becoming a matter of conjecture and a big doubt, if the vision of the future, the old socialist one: that, everything would slowly get better and better; and one day the working man would get into power by the automatic persuasion of common sense, would be realized in this mullennium — yet time is no man’s friend.

In the meantime, the nation was trying to make sense of the complicated, cynical movements of power politics; while the familiar pattern of life dissolved into the slogans and noise of war. But the ordinary people don’t want war. Yet, the politicians soap-box rhetoric would come and talk – words that brought no conviction to its people. With the deep sad knowledge that it was all talk, what was really happening in the nation was something vast and terrible, beyond their comprehension. The people, permanently sad and tired, too, could never hope to understand, so they had better get on with life as they see and get it, and live life as best as they could.

The people seems to be priming themselves not to be afraid – even with the virtual blackouts, poverty, lack and deprivation which were like a weight on their minds and spirits. Their looks of bewilderment but patient courage; that it seemed the development of society in a democracy was a long, black, noisome tunnel from which they would never emerge. And an emptiness they could not pretend to themselves that there was not.

As a conscience of society, you looked upwards, or sideways, beyond the politicians defections
and recurrent snipping at each other to score cheap political points, all you see was a crack in the tendons that held the nation’s ‘marriage of convenience’, the feeble handshake across the nation, the love growing cold and kisses far in between, ungainly air of camaraderie. Through the crack one could see the black, solid shape of doom, not boom, beyond which there were no silhouettes of feelings, only grey sky spurting red tinge of: Operation Gama Aiki, Crocodile Tears, Python Dance I, II etc was settling through the air.

Amidst the no love lost, but, the FAAC was a kettle still boiling on the gas( VAT, Oil receipts and other taxes), the kettle and the pans stood as they had ever since one could remember. You think, its alright for the nation. Look, the gas is still working. If the gas is all
right then things isn’t too bad, that stands to reason, doesn’t it now! With over 95% of Nigerians living below the poverty line, surviving on less than $1.90 a day, that summation would be preposterous.

You’ve got the whole weight of the nation relying on that kettle. The nation has always survived in that manner, and right for the wrong reasons. So nothing’s changed. A tale of all motion no movements; standing, jigging in excitement and rooted on the same spot. And, indomitable figures like a kind of waifs, staring out of sad, tired eyes, under the near-ruins of their nation and its countryside. One knew a great deal about nervous strains; about shock, recession and depression, but one couldn’t put words around what one know, but still felt strongly there was something very wrong with the composition and the complexion – cameleonic complexions the nation had assumed and was taken on.

Looking up at the yellow glow of the candle, staring at the wall in my mind’s eye, the crack in the ceiling had perceptibly widened. A people had been maliciously deprived of the good things of life the nation with its embarrassment of riches has on offer. Something had been taken away from the people – that was what and how one felt. That image of a silent, companiable silent, deprived people, frightened and helpless lots. And their politicians, listless spoilsports talking away, people who talk so they can’t hear themselves think. I can’t get the English language word for that description.

Yet, the people are dying because they could not help it. Never would I allow the word, dying, to form into images of death. Particularly, if they had been ordinary deaths, deaths one could understand, it would have been different, people dying of illness or age in bed; and then the neighbours coming, and then, the funeral – that was understandable, that would have been different. But not this senseless Boko and herdsmen attacks, of black bomb falling out of the bosom of some heartless, brainwashed bigots aka suicide bombers ( I read somewhere, that,whoever sold the idea that suicide bombers make heaven, would have long gone. Think of it!).

One felt that:
(a) underneath the surface of living was a black gulf, full of senseless horror.
(b) the nation’s sense of unity, oneness, dignity and decency outraged and flouted.
(c) the people dismayed and unhappy because their happiness was so precarious it could vanish overnight, and,
(d) needed warmth and support.

But, notice that, whenever in our political space remarks connected in anyway with the prospects and future of the nation, the national question, the Boko war, the wars of attrition, the unstable exchange rates, unemployment, general insecurity, economy, were raised, a blank nervous look came on the leaders faces. They do not know what to say about not knowing what to do. It was like a ‘national jam question’ hanging in the dark.

Yes, face a fusillade of questions, whenever they are forced to mouth their laconic tirades and sweet nothing’s to sooth the nation at the blitz around, it was always a statement rock-bottom disbelief, a basic indifference to themselves and the nation by giving simple replies to the national question, the facts not the spirit which the nation wanted; and theoretical statements that always confused and irritate even the leaders.

With such a situation the odyssey into democracy looks freakish with strange bedfellows who sit and share experiences they hardly understood. Everything was wrong, when the nation could not make its democracy served the general interest of the mass of the people – meaningless to the heart and life of the individual. In retrospect, its easy to see where the nation’s leaders went wrong and its version of democracy a meaningless metaphor of a people submitting to the state and unable to manifest the transforming power inherent in its great potentials.

As emotions ran deeper, the crack in the nation’s ceiling kept bulging heavily downwards from the weight of the over bloated NASS’s overhead and public servants emoluments on top of it, and, with every strain, bits of plaster flakes down in a soft white rain, the three great beams filled with dead water slanting into it. One imagined it and shut the vision. It stands to reason that the leaders and the leds had to do something.

Here one had the feeling that with the operation Python Dance, the nation must come up with another operation Spitfire, proper spitfire, so as to be able to halt the nation’s slides over the edge of a dangerous cliff. While it struggled with common sense – that ceiling – it might fall; and no point glossing over it. Thinking about the dangerousness and the sadness of life, the dance of death, and looking down from the high window at the by now darkened streets – a nation darkened with the shadow of uncertainty. I looked upwards at the sky change through moods of cloud and rain and tinted light, gazing at the greyish light at the window.

The nation, weak, non-existence philosophy stringed together by complexities can’t deny there were enormous anger, resentment, discomfort and disaffection in the land. It can’t answer its own questions, about nationality, equality, fear of ethnic/religious domination, free press, freedom of information, resources control and allocation, security, economy and free enterprise. That the process and dynamics of developments were slow in initiation was the effect of the nation’s leaders mindset to the ideals of social integration and they they hardly understood the relationship between economics, history and politics and at the interface between the three, they seemed lost.

The nation and its widely differing peoples were yet to find any basis for true unity. The prevailing circumstances were far from normal, given the complexity, diversity and uneven nature of the nation’s development, which made it difficult to bring the various peoples closer together and provide a firm basis for the arduous task of establishing closer cultural, social, and religious ties among the people – ties which are vital for true unity.
Indeed, there, arguably, can never be true national development in a fussing nation without a recourse to solving the problems engendered by power equation, distribution and the power politics. While there may not be a step by step procedure in the surgical operations needed to deal with the problems and differences, but it must be focused on what the nation’s disposition should be. The issue, however, should no longer be about what went wrong, not anymore! It should, henceforth, be about what the nation is putting right. As the people have been rendered unproductive. In the dynamics of development, energy follows thought. The nation could only move forward, but not beyond what it can imagine, and what and where and how it was led.

There is sourness in and around the country, the leaders are expected to apply a combination of strategy and character, in the believe that, economic factors are the prime movers of change; that the living and development of the people takes paramount importance; to prime the pump to encourage the growth of new and weak industry by investing money in them, not outright sales. Presently the issue of globalisation comes in, and I’ll soon come to it.

Solution presupposes problem, it has, therefore, become imperative that the nation’s political class and leaders must address issues and problems posed by the nation’s unanswered questions. Even, now that its people are currently battling with the realisation, and, thus, clamouring that the economy isn’t in charge of their lives; that there can’t be enough jobs anywhere; and, that, their world as they know it without crude oil and NNPC would come to an end. If the government can think outside the box, this is the ideal time to capitalise on the people’s prevailing self-help ethos, to save the future in the post-COVID years, in particular.

As I put this piece together seated in my library, I was trying to formulate an impression of the nation’s “local politics” and the burning cauldron that the APC’s imbroglio had became. The Party’s beautiful frail crisis revealed a sore point about
a. the state of the nation’s ever nascent democratic experience,
and,
b. the relevance, efficacy of its inbuilt elixirs and internal mechanisms to settle feuds in the big family of the APC and by extension and inference in the larger and extended family across the Niger.

I’ve earlier herein above referred to them as strange bedfellows, with like frailties and like dispositions. And, Mister president, an obvious sort of person — always have been, with the air of one producing the ace of trumps, thoroughly business like and efficient, took a posteriorly decision – a rather suburban one, which, probably his handlers and publicists thought was the best for the ruling party in the circumstance. By so doing, Mister president fell the party with a feather and had it apostrophised in a glass. But there, there are more ways than one of amusing yourself.

From the look of things, it appeared it was the quislings that were at work trying to turn the party to a Heath Robinson contraption, and had taken over the party, that had taken charge, not Mister president. They had surreptitiously led him to, arguably though, weakened the party, and kept it dangling on a thing line on the fringes of the borderline of unsuitability, and with such a fussing dynamics, it’s been viewed by the world as incapable to lead a dysfunctional society. And, whether the party could come out of this political delirium unscathed and back to its pole position or not, only time would tell, save to say that, it could either be its death knell, the be all or the beginning of their end, (ask the PDP).

That horribly horrid situation could have been avoided, if:
i. the president had not been caught napping by leadership absence.
ii. If he had not been harangued and coerced to take a decision which political watchers see as illegal and also, in a wrongly constituted meeting.
iii. If he had encouraged an
interface of the internal mechanisms and the feuds and the feuding lords, after all disagreement(s) were bound to rear their heads in all human enterprise, endeavour and interactions,
iv. If he had taken time out to use the soft powers the constitution guaranteed his office to douse the tension through dialogue and compromise.

One must state that the happenings in the APC further showcased
the manifestation of the level of impunity, reckless abuse, disrespect for rule inherent in the system, and it was at best impolitic and hopelessly inartistic. One ought, to see things better, fairly and dispassionately when you are high up. It ought to be like lifting off the top of a doll’s house and peering in. Relying on other people’s judgement, impressions were as good to you. They might be just as true as yours but you couldn’t act in them. You couldn’t as it were, use another person’s angle of attack.

It is curious! how one’s instincts rebel at the thought of a man being haunted and hunted down.
Meditating on these questions, I sighed impatiently. Well, PMB wouldn’t have been an easy person to get to know otherwise. In any case, that was APC’s red herring!
However, PMB owed the nation’s
dysfunctional dynamics a whole gamut of fresh new look, into
a. the fresh challenges presented by its democracy in a post-COVID
new world – a world of globalism.
b. the global commerce scenario and how it could further propel exponential growth of the nation’s business.

The motivation here should be, to correct the pervasive imbalance in trade, investment and growth in the real sector. It is high time for the nation to make an efficient use of globalisation, not, the grandiose déjà vu on the part of the political class, that serial illusion of having previously experienced something actually being encountered for the first time, would no longer hold water. The new global bride is globalism. Globalisation is a complex phenomenon that is reshaping the world’s future. While it offers unprecedented opportunities for countries that act swiftly to grasp them, it simultaneously heightens the opportunity costs for countries that are lagging behind and thus risk becoming marginalised.

Now that the political scenarios in Nigeria is changing almost overnight with the concomitant infusion of encouraging ideas such as the fight against corruption and heists, most people tend to look at globalisation as if it was an entirely new phenomenon. To all intents and purposes, globalisation is not an event, rather it is a process that began at the dawn of history with the quest for a one-world geography, and lately, the search for a new world order were all links in the process of turning the world into one global village.

There is no gainsaying the fact that rapid technological changes and global, political vertical and horizontal changes have helped accelerate the course of the new globalism. It must be stressed here that the dream of globalisation is coming true not necessarily because it is new but because the technology is breathtaking and wonderful! Modern technology has made it possible to effortlessly transfer large volumes of capital and information across national boundaries, without reference to the national laws or regulations of the territories over which they move.

How is Nigeria and Nigerians coping with an intercontinental world? It is easy to detect that, the suite of solutions to the nation’s economic and social ills, some of which I highlighted above, reside not only within but also in how well the country connects to the pace of global economic integration – the widening and intensifying of international linkages in trade, finance and communications that has accelerated in the past two decades, underpinned by the liberalisation of economic policies.

Generally, the phenomenon of globalisation involves the integration of economies worldwide through trade, financial flows and widespread adoption of information technology (IT) and
inter-networking. This has resulted in changes in trade linkages, the development of capital markets, movements in both capital and labour maximising global output and promoting international efficiency.

Globalisation has quickened world economic growth in the last two decades, and there are still prospects for further expansion in the future. New technological advances have reduced costs and integrated markets at the global level. This is evident in the interdependence of countries through increase in the nature and volume of cross-border trade in goods and services. International financial institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund have attributed these changes to the structural reform, which has enhanced the role of the market forces strengthening the basis for sustained growth.

It is often taken for granted that globalisation must be accompanied, if not preceded, by liberalisation in order to be effective. Liberalisation in this context means total deregulation and minimal government intervention. But it must be stressed that full-scale liberation and deregulation cannot always protect the weak and may, in fact, strengthen the already strong.

In a world of globalisation, the challenges facing the nation are daunting. First, time is of essence and not in her favour. The changes in the world scene, dynamic, and are advancing all the time and the nation cannot sit and watch the changes, without making suitable adaptations. But these adaptations must come mostly from within and must be organised in a way that will engender domestic growth. This is no rocket science, in the more than 500 years of globalisation, the driving force had always been from within the countries that sought to improve their productivity and extend their domination.

What the nation was witnessing today is externally induced globalisation and not a locally propelled initiative. Incidentally this can be counter-productive and its
economy will the worse for it. While the benefits of globalisation among the developed countries of the world are enormous, the attempt to woo less developed countries like Nigeria to introduce market structural reforms in order to attract foreign direct investment, portfolio investment has not been convincing in the main, and so the gains of globalisation have not trickled down to these countries too well.

The world is currently being driven by the forces of globalisation which no economy can escape from. It is therefore, necessary to harness these forces in order to advance
the development of the Nigerian economy in the 21st century and beyond. These forces of globalisation are three-fold:
i. Technology – especially the stupendous growth in telecommunications and information technology;
II. Economic liberalisation – as shown by the open market, competitive system;
iii. Democracy and its associated concepts of human rights, transparency, accountability,
zero-tolerance for corruption etc.
The extent to which Nigeria can be an active participant in the globalisation process depends to a large extent on the following:
— the extent to which the economy is market driven;
— the extent of competition in the domestic economy;
— the extent of openness and liberalisation in the economy;
— the capacity of its institutional framework to support the market economy;
— the extent to which the political, economic and social infrastructure are aligned to the market economy, and,
— the extent of the change process which is required to fine-tune the economy.

The globally successful trend is for the private sector to be the engine of economic initiative, with the government acting as a catalyst by providing the necessary enabling environment that will allow private sector initiative to flourish. This is relevant as Technology and globalisation have thrown up a lot
of challenges for individual economies, and in particular, financial systems, by shrinking the world further into a global village and providing a reservoir of information through a wide range of interconnectivities.

It would be good for those countries that understand the imperative of designing new approach to governance. Globalisation is a complex phenomenon that is re-shaping the world’s future, and Nigeria cannot afford to stay put. It offers unprecedented opportunities for countries that act swiftly to grasp them, it simultaneously heightens the opportunity costs for countries that are lagging behind and thus risk becoming marginalised.

Globalisation has important implications. First, as distinctions between international and domestic policies become less relevant, sound domestic policies acquire key importance. With greater external sources of capital it is essential to retain the confidence of international capital markets. Second, managing globalisation represents a challenge in social terms — globalisation causes tensions between the market and broad sectors of society, those who benefit less.

Since the globalisation is unavailable, the only issue is what domestic policies to adopt in order to adapt to the realities of change while minimising the social costs. There is no doubt that the Nigerian economy in general have much to gain from globalisation, but in order to reap a proportion of the worldwide welfare-enhancing benefits of global integration, they will need to act rapidly to adopt more outward-oriented policies and increase the flexibility of the economy.

But is Nigeria adequately prepared for the new challenges. The political will and determination to make an immediate, visible and positive impact on the quality of life of the generality of Nigerians and the pursuit of a strong, virile and broad-based economy with adequate capacity to absorb externally generated shocks. Hence, the PMB’s administration efforts at putting the economy right should promote the private sector as a broad strategy for achieving rapid economic growth and development.

Specifically, measures be put in place to address the twin problems of low economic growth and high poverty incidence and tailor the character of growth to meet the needs of the poor. The measures should, inevitably, ensure the prevalence of the right macroeconomic environment for sustained economic development and growth.
Monetary policy shall rely on indirect instruments of control that promote growth, optimal liquidity in the system. Its policies should ensure a stable single exchange rate and a strong naira that will become a controvertible currency in the medium-term as Trade policy should aim at maximising the benefits from globalisation, promotion of domestic industries and value added exports and encourage the real sectors, as used here, consist of agriculture; manufacturing; steel; water resources; which have the highest potential for achieving a
broad-based economy. Their performance like government’s has been unimpressive. They should be repositioned to play the role expected of them.

PS
Time now for the government to correct the opinions that the nation is in an age when politicians twist the truth to enhance the bottom line.

#JimiBickersteth.
Jimi Bickersteth is a writer and a blogger.
He can be reached on Twitter @BickerstethJimi
@alabaemanuel
@akannibickerstet
Email: jimi.bickersteth@gmail.com