Abstract
This paper takes a historical foray into the prevailing conditions that form the bedrock of collective actions and organized violence against the Nigerian authority. The analysis here presented situates the problem with the Nigerian state since independence in reference to corruption and mismanagement of the country’s human and natural resources. Thus, in the quest to understand the economic predicates of Nigeria’s current security challenges, this paper provides a general description of Nigeria’s political economy and its tendency to fuel violence—including terrorism, as presently observed in the country and threatening its very existence. Presented differently, we conclude here that the historical trajectory to date of Nigeria’s political economy has fueled terrorism in its geopolitical space through its characteristic alienation and frustration of its citizens, due mainly to the general lack of accountability and systemic corruption.
A predatory capitalism has bred misery turned politics into warfare all but arrested the development of productive forces. The Nigerian ruling class has assaulted the masses with physical psychological violence thwarted their aspirations particularly their escape from underdevelopment poverty. Legitimacy has receded to the background making way for relations of raw power the perception of right as being coextensive with might.
Claude Ake
Claude Ake—During his Presidential Address to the 1982 Convention of the Nigerian Political Science Association in which he criticized the Nigerian society, politics (cited in Marenin 1985).
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Notes
- 1.
The imposition of the taxation system (paid in British currency) practically necessitated that subsistent producers abandon agriculture and become part of the capitalist system by taking up paid employment or sell their products to earn the currency for tax. As Olaitan (1995, p. 127) avers, “the essence of this development was the monetisation of the Nigerian economy and the creation of social relations of exchange”. More so, the Nigerian economy practically became a foreign-oriented economy as it was “assigned the subservient task of production of agricultural produce and other raw materials for manufacturing concerns in Europe while depending on the European economies for manufactured goods” (Olaitan 1995, p. 131). This characteristic of the economy was unfortunately not only maintained but consolidated by the indigenous post-colonial leaders, with the adverse implication that the price values of Nigeria raw material remained determined by the metropolitan economies, given the nation’s tenuous relationship to production. Local bourgeoisie classes, who were practically “underdeveloped, dependent, corrupt, unproductive, undisciplined and unpatriotic, wasteful and highly fractionalised” were created and incorporated into the services of the foreign-oriented economy (Ihonvbere 1988, p. 10).
- 2.
Terisa Turner (cited in Olaitan 1995, p. 132).
- 3.
It would be overambitious, if not impossible, to capture the entirety of historical factors that are of explanatory efficacy to Nigeria’s current situation. Therefore, only aspects pertinent to the ensuing discourse are encapsulated herein. Defining epoch in Nigeria’s history when key economic policies underlying the present socio-economic conditions of Nigeria were taken is underscored herein. For instance, the decade between 1983 and 1994, during which the various political and economic reformations such as the SAPs were undertaken in Nigeria is of particular relevance, given the skewing political economy that marked the regimes hitherto. Beyond the need for a manageable analysis of Nigeria’s complex political and economic history, the pertinence of the focus on this particular epoch relates also to its unprecedented socio-economic impact which have only been aggravated today.
- 4.
This Act was essentially purported towards reducing public expenditure, curtailing imports using import restrictions, monetary control and financial instruments. It led to: about 2 % increase in interest rates; import duties imposition where they were non-existence; the rise in tariffs and gasoline prices, inter alia (Olukoshi 1995, p. 141).
- 5.
Alternatively the Shagari administration approached private international financiers for a loan of US$2 billion, which however delayed in coming thereby prompting him to merely withdraw ₦314 million and ₦170 million in a Special Drawing Rights (SDR) from its reserve with the IMF without necessarily involving the latter in its economic recovery efforts. Sadly these efforts only yielded little in addressing the dwindling fortunes of the economy.
- 6.
Suffice to note that the administration’s jettisoning of some of the conditionalities of the IMF had bolstered their unpopularity among many Nigerians including students, academics, labour, civil servants and some professionals, perhaps because these were among those who mostly felt the pangs of the austerity introduced by Shagari’s Act (Olukoshi 1995, p. 142).
- 7.
Among the proscribed were the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), the Nigerian Medical Association NMA, the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD).
- 8.
Based on the previous experiences of countries like Ghana and Brazil, among other reasons, the public was averse to this option after the president opened the debate as to whether or not the country should take the IMF Loan with all its conditionalities. Sadly this gesture of involving the citizenry was merely superficial if not deceitful as it did not fully influenced the regime’s decision. Just as the debate was going government was discreetly negotiating on with World Bank concerning an adjustment programme for the country (Olukoshi 1995, p. 145). Hence, this populist approach that improved the state legitimacy was short-lived.
- 9.
Corruption has been widely construed as the abuse of public office for private gains for the benefit of the holder of the office or some third party (Transparency International).
- 10.
Three forms of corruption have been identified namely: incidental (individual), instrumental (for instance, the public service) and, systemic (societal). Systemic category comprises the situation whereby corruption is endemic and pervasive that it becomes routinized and accepted in society as a modus vivendi, affecting both institutions and individual behaviour at all spheres of political and socio-economic system.
- 11.
Transparency International annual Corruption Perception Index available at http://www.transparency.org. TI’s corruption perception Index rates countries on the scale of 0–10. 0 refers to the most corrupt countries while ten refers to the least corrupt country. In producing the index, the scores of countries/territories for the specific corruption-related questions in the data sources are combined to calculate a single score for each country.
- 12.
The Economist, (May 28, 2011) “A Man and a Morass”, available at http://www.economist.com (also cited in Forest 2012, p. 27).
- 13.
Interestingly, this rather rapid growth is driven not by oil but non-oil sector (the remarkable of which is the telecommunications sector) (World Bank 2011, pp. 2 and 9). Witwack’s (2013, p. 7) study for World Bank reveals that this trend can be interpreted as implying that “the Nigerian non-oil economy is now 240 % times higher than a decade ago”. Accordingly then, the annual growth rates that average over 7 % in official data during the last decade has placed Nigeria among the fastest growing economies in the world (Witwack 2013, p. 2). For example, Nigeria’s annual real GDP growth averaged 9.20 % between 2001 and 2009 as compared to an average of 2.5 % between 1995 and 1999.
- 14.
The HDI assesses a country’s average achievements based on (1) long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy of the total population of a country at birth, (2) Knowledge production as measured by the adult literacy rate (with tow-third weight) and the combined primary secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio (with one-third weight), (3) a decent standard of living, as measured by GDP per capita in PPP terms in US dollars. Available at: http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/103106.html [Accessed on 23 August 2013].
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David, O.J., Asuelime, L.E., Onapajo, H. (2015). Political Economy of Nigeria. In: Boko Haram. SpringerBriefs in Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21230-2_3
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