It rained at the wedding. The birthday cake
was baked with sour milk. There was a skunk at the garden party. Pick a
metaphor – any metaphor – and you will be describing the past few weeks in
Nigeria. This month was supposed to be the country’s coming-out party. The
glitz, power and wealth that descended over the country’s capital, Abuja, for
the World Economic Forum, was meant to be the crowning ceremony for a country
that had come into its own. The statisticians had come out and declared that
Nigerians were at the top of the African heap, and the continent and the world was
coming to town to help them celebrate.
But there are some who did not get the
script. The biggest fly in the ointment, if you need reminding, is the
terrorist group, Boko Haram. The homegrown (but rapidly internationalising) group
of putatively Islamic radicals decided to carry out a series of attacks in the
weeks leading to the conference. I’ve never been one to assume that terrorists
are stupid, so I must assume that the kidnapping of the schoolgirls from their
school in Chibok on April the 14th was calculated to garner maximum
attention as the world’s great and good were about to congregate in Nigeria.
Abubakar Shekau, the group’s leader (who looks either totally nonchalant or
utterly unhinged in his video appearances) must have calculated that with the
world’s cameras and notebooks trained on the country, the kidnapping would fuel
attention to him and his group (which it did).
What no one could have choreographed,
however, was the fact that Nigeria’s was going to be declared the continent’s
largest economy after a long-due re-basing to include sections of the economy
that had been long overlooked. Despite South Africa’s snarking, there doesn’t
seem to be much by way of dubious numbers, so one must assume that Nigeria is
indeed primus inter pares in Africa. But the nature of its economy, population
and society means that this is the parable we must look at to comprehensively
understand the past few weeks.
Let’s re-hash some arguments. Does it
matter whether a country is first in the economic-size leagues? Yes and no.
Yes, because the raw numbers do count when some investors are looking at where
to put in their money. Nigeria also counts when it comes to another metric – it
has Africa’s largest population (between 150 and 180 million people, depending
on who you ask). This means that it is of interest to anyone selling anything
from Porsches to potatoes. Also, claiming the continent’s leading economy means
you get a seat at the table at some of the world’s more important
conversations, such as the Group of Twenty, climate change talks and the like.
(Does this mean South Africa gets disinvited? I don’t know).
On the other hand, is the argument that
between late March (when Nigeria was still second) and early April (when she
pulled ahead of South Africa), nothing changed for most of Nigeria’s people.
The beleaguered residents of the Niger Delta still have to contend with
polluted land and water, and the horrific traffic jams in Lagos and elsewhere
will not move an inch. It’s like your birthday, some would argue – you are
statistically a year older, but your body feels exactly the same (bar the odd
hangover from the celebrations themselves).
What then should we take away from the
Nigerian experience? Should the prevailing hashtag (this is the world we live
in nowadays, after all) be #NigeriaRising, or should it be #BringBackOurGirls?
That is the conundrum, unfortunately, for all of us. In the same way Nigerians
would hope that it is the former and not the latter, we in Kenya would like to
be known for the dynamism of our economy, and not for corruption, or the court
cases of our leaders, or terrorist attacks.
The problem is when the latter issues (in
Kenya and Nigeria) impugn the competence of the leadership. The anger behind
the #BringBackOurGirls campaign is directed at Boko Haram, yes, but also at a
government that didn’t seem to care about the fate of its own innocent citizens
until the world forced it to act. Kenyans are angry with Al Shabab, but also at
a government which doesn’t seem to put the fight against terrorists as far on
the front burner as possible. Or which seems to infantilise its citizens when
they ask too many uncomfortable questions about potential corruption in
large-scale projects.
The hope, for both Kenyans and Nigerians,
is that these are part of our growing pains, like pimples and awkwardness in
adolescence. That the scrutiny that comes from having a large economy (we shall
be re-basing ours in the next few months as well, remember) means that we
develop some world-class governance, communications and competence standards
both within government and elsewhere in the economy.
And for Nigerians, the hope is that the
party mood wasn’t ruined too much. The big men and women of the world did come
over, and they did see a Nigeria which, despite itself, is the growth story of
the future.
Also published in the Business Daily on 13 May 2014, and online at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/Nigeria-new-economic-status/-/539548/2312088/-/item/0/-/ji560a/-/index.html
Comments
Post a Comment