2023 in retrospect: The Nigerian journey so far (1)

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER

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2023 is a year of mixed feelings for Nigerians and it is about time we took stock of the events that have defined this particular calendar year and that may continue to characterise subsequent years for ages, for Nigeria and Nigerians. The year holds so much in feelings of pain and hope for the country. The country, as we all know, is inundated with countless trials and tests in 2023 – some familiar, others we might not have imagined even before the general elections and for sure, there appears plenty of reasons for both citizens and country to rejoice and despair.
Now, is the time to dissect and summarise the nation’s socio-economic condition during the year period; with respect to the government and governance scorecards, in response to the groaning need of the national system; the attitudes of the citizens to many issues of national relevancies; and what went wrong and what positives to take from the year and built upon. And for what we did not do well, it is also about time. We make positive corrective projections into the immediate future to organise a better 2024 and years beyond for Nigerians and Nigeria.
Nigerians came into the year 2023 already groaning under the heavy burden of increasing living cost, prices of staples consistently on the rise, and dollar exchange rate at almost #500. Insecurity was making things worse as its consequential effect on food stability occasioned by the inability of a larger number of farmers to go to farm, or to proceed to harvest crops as a result of threats from bandits and similar forces became the norm across the national food producing belts.
However, the hope of change of banners at all levels of governance gave hope to many as Nigerians looked forward to the February and March elections in the year. How successful were the elections? To what extent did Nigerians participate in the 2023 elections and what would that say about the citizens’ trust in the Nigeria project and many other sensitive issues would also need to be analysed for the sake of the future.
As a country, ethnic and geopolitical divides have made our national problems solving ever more difficult – and sometimes impossible. In the course of the year and as part of the materialised anomalies from the elections, Nigerians refusal to align with each other and insistence to stick to ethnic identities more than national coherence is more visible in the context, nature and messages of the election campaigns in 2023. As a result, we saw the country drifted more apart along ethnic lines and the centre got weaker as a result of the same. We saw high standing contestants engaging such divisive lines and others, to woo support to the detriment of national cohesion.
In the course of the year and also in the aftermath of the elections, the level of non-committal of Nigerians to Nigeria issues came to the burner. The level of apathy recorded during the 2023 general elections was unprecedented and seriously calls for a national response to the need for healing on a lot of fronts. The total number of voters that cast their votes for the four major presidential contestants in the election barely represents about 30 percent of all registered voters, and less than 20 percent of the country’s voting age population. This is a pointer to the extent the citizens can go to work against the interests of the country and definitely the reason why we talk about JAPA syndrome without any remorse. Citizens that have given up on the systems of the country would not care if there remains or not even one medical doctor in the country.
Going into 2024, if there is any issue and developmental projection the government needs to prioritise above others, it should be congregating Nigerians to a united front. I think this is a time the country needs a national peace and unity dialogue. This is a time to plan to convene a national meeting to discuss the healing of this nation with regard to the so many critical destructive segregating lines we have created over the years. The need for governance structure and deliverance to be redesigned to provide absolute and adequate dividend of democracy to Nigerians must be seriously discussed in an inclusive manner. We cannot have a country going forward without citizens’ trust and complementary actions towards national growth and development.
The cost-of-living crisis is hitting hard on the citizens and inequalities are growing as well – affecting the larger population of middle- and low-income earners in the country. It is a reality that the poor are getting poorer. Inflation continues to soar high; some staples to as much as 500 percent over the previous year. Imagine a measure of beans sold for as low as #300 three years ago, now being sold for a minimum of #1500. Dollar rate has risen to an average of #900 – or we may even use #1,000 – forcing prices of almost every other product to rise with it. And then, subsidy was taken off PMS midyear and the price of the product jumped up to approximately #650 all the way from #195. This also came with increased transportation cost and effects on prices of commodities in the market; all these, while income of an average citizen almost remain constant, and little or none affective palliative from the government.
To begin the steady climb back to normalcy, we must resolve the national food insecurity challenge; all development begins from there. Firstly, the government must find a solution to the continuous terrorising of the farming population across northern Nigeria. Secondly, the Local Government Area, as a unit of government at the grassroots, must again become relevant in the national, federal governance scheme to coordinate the national feeding system as well as the first line of response to national insecurity. Of course, the best approach to combating insecurity will be grassroots-filled engagement.
There have been so many downs; many challenges that would literally make Nigerians want to throw up their hands and totally give up on the country, and indeed, a number of people have given up, but we must also insist and find strength to realise that we are not at liberty to jettison the country for whatever reason(s). It is absolutely wrong to have our people and citizens celebrating the popular “JAPA syndrome,’’ by abandoning the sinking ship as we choose to call it. If the Chinese had abandoned their ship those years when the country was a dumping market for the Western production giants and poverty was synonymous to the largest populated nation, would they be where they are today? Definitely not. It does not make sense that we would forget the doctrine of patriotism at a point when it is most needed. How the country would almost freely train its medical students only to have them moving out in droves and leaving the hospitals unmanned without the needed medical practitioners. I think, while the call is on the government to change gears on the structure of governance, the call is also on all of us, to recognise this is our country and we owe it to Nigeria to continue to build it together.
Regardless of all that has befell us as a people and a nation, there is still an overriding conviction; a conviction that this is not the time to abandon this country. A conviction that this is not the time to sit on the fence or the sidelines, but a time to come together, as Nigerians, to resolve with determination, and yes, hope that all is not lost for our nation, and that together and working with the government, we can salvage our motherland and build a nation that we dream of.
This is because despite all the limitations and apparent distressing odds, there are ongoing efforts to push back against the seen and unseen deficiencies that hurt Nigerians and Nigeria. The removal of fuel subsidy is one policy the entire global economic experts have applauded as a positive move in the right direction for the Nigeria economy. The World Bank, IMF, and recently the rating agency Moody’s, revised its outlook on the country from stable to positive, citing indices of possible reversal of the deterioration in the country’s fiscal and external position due to the nation’s leadership reform efforts. In August of this same year, S&P Global Ratings had also revised its outlook on Nigeria to stable from negative and affirmed its rating at ‘B-/B.’ These ratings and new outlooks of the national system as seen by experts should be a source of hope that should urge us to do more to take the country to the eventual Eldorado.
The 2024 proposed budget is another pointer to what is to be expected. The appropriation bill, beaming with possible hope of seriousness on the part of the government, is by so many standards an aggregate of many key points that resonate loudly with the yearnings of the average Nigerians, and if implemented to the letter, are capable of creating a shift that would take a sizeable population of Nigerians back to the place of a healthy survival and trust in both the government and the future of the nation. The budget presentation speaks of commitment to job creation and poverty reduction, of increased and improved social security. If the election campaign promise of the President on the same critical issue is anything to go by, then, this is the beginning of the fulfillment of a promise that Nigerians have forever looked forward to. The bill makes a case for conscious spending aimed at overhauling the national internal security framework in all ramifications to improve upon the physical safety of lives, investments and properties of Nigerians in Nigeria. Then we see the element of investment in human capital development, with a focus on education of the younger population of Nigerians and also accessible and affordable quality healthcare infrastructure.
Yet, much needs to be done to prevent the budget implementation from not going the way as it was in the past that brought no much gains to the people and the nation. To ensure this, it is critical and necessary that Nigerians, for once, get interested and engaged in the performance of the 2024 budget document; what resources are released as per the document, and what the deliverables are by the budget implementers across ministries, agencies and parastatals of the government; that is, the talk of public real time monitoring of the national budget implementation and performance. For once, we should see coalitions of structures to follow the document and lay bare, to the public, implementations that put the implementers on their toes all through the budget year.
As much as we desire progress, the continued failure of the larger section of the country to realise the damage ethnic and religious over fixations is doing to the fabric of Nigeria socio-economic and cultural survival and unification, would forever remain our undoing. 2023 sees the elevation of religious segregation above national development as well as ethnic and regional identifications as more important than national patriotism. Leaders, most especially, political leaders destructively engaged the rhetoric of religious affiliations to gain the support of voters and ended up setting Nigerians against themselves along the lines of religious sensitivities. Going forward, we must add to the national conversation on what we should do with religion and how we would effectively demarcate religion from national life, our politics and coexistence.
As I conclude this week’s piece, I will suggest that regardless of the downs of 2023, Nigeria’s issues need attention not just from the government but all Nigerians. We need solutions to many challenges to come from all; it may not be perfect solutions, yet may not even be pretty solutions, but practical solutions that could make meaningful difference to the generality of people’s lives in Nigeria. Here, we are talking about bold solutions that would put us on a pathway to a better and more peaceful future. Doing this, all hands must be on deck, and there should be no room for back-sliders, green washers, blame-shifters or repackaging of announcements of previous hurts.
May God Bless The Federal Republic Of Nigeria!