By Ismail Misbahu
Oh, you think they should have to say ‘sorry’? It is not a job well-done and it would be a blatant trashing of norms to expect them say ‘thank you’!
On the contrary, it is not too late for the Chief Security Officer of the nation—on behalf of those involved in the arrest and detention of these minors—to offer a word of apology. They’re not released only because of the pressure of popular opinions. They’re released apparently for the fear that this act of dehumanisation would most likely invite international pressure from the global community which regards humanity as a first priority.
The arrest and detention of these minors was not done on the order of the World Bank or IMF either. It was perpetrated under a system which gives stamp approval to official impunity. I argue, there’s a limit to which IMF and WB could be held accountable. As much as their trappings could be illustrated elsewhere in Africa, Asia and Americas, a lot more are particularly a consequence to Nigerian than a cause. Of course, everyone must be wondering whether the pronouncement of the senior vice president of the World Bank Group, Mr. Indermite Gill, was ‘a death sentence’ to the hapless poor, a phrase used by professor Farouq Kperogi to illustrate the latter’s anti-masses, anti-demographic and anti-children population growth policy. At the country’s ‘30th Economic Summit (NES #30) held between 14-16 October 2024; Gill spitted out a rather shocking statement:
Nigeria will need to stay the course for at least 10 to 15 years to transform its economy and become an engine of growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is the lesson from the past 40 years, as well as from the experience of countries as diverse as India, Poland, South Korea and Norway. (Business Day, October 15 2024).
Comparing Nigeria with Norway, he adds “the main difference between the Nigerian and the Norwegian experience is that Norway stayed the course for much longer.” He therefore still insists that Nigeria must stay the course! Gill:
Let me repeat that: Nigeria has to stay the course. It might take another decade to fully reap the dividends. But, if you stay the course, you will begin reaping them soon, as surely as night follows day. That is the end of the history lesson.
While this was rather an arrogant slip-shod—unfortunately unbefitting conclusion—it was not without context. Gill was fully aware of the country’s complete leadership failure and the nature of its corrupt political environment, something which in his position, might not have the capacity to expose on the ears of his audience. Yet, he still couldn’t have thought his words would add salt to the wounds of many Nigerians living in disastrous poverty. He might not know that his utterances were as deadly as the wanton killings by Boko Haram—as decapitating —as the brutal abduction and torturing of the poorly starved rural population of the North by kidnappers. His pronouncements were as excruciating as the ‘death sentence’ the administration continuously imposes on its citizens! Given his full knowledge of the life-impact of the draconian economic measures imposed on the people by the Tinubu administration, as well as the suffering and the wandering of Nigerians, he should have pitied his utterance, sympathise with Nigerians and choose to rather backstab the country’s shameful records of decades-old administrative corruption, erosion of corporate responsibilities, abuse of office and the lots.
Fret by the country’s corrosive regimes, I personally cannot blame the WB/IMF a lone, and the reason is simple. First, we need to direct our queries to the corrupt leadership that was, and still been, unable to quit from the subservience and puppeteering. I concur well with Ekpe that the “bitter or sugar-coated pills” are only recommended by the WB/IMF when the countries choose to sleep on their laps, often with stiff conditionalities. Ekpe:
The usual storyline is, IMF, WB and similar agencies are approached either by governments that have run down the socio-economic fabrics of their countries or those that inherit such from their predecessors. And then, bitter or sugar-coated pills are recommended with stiff conditionalities. If they’re accepted and administered, tales of woes especially by the downtrodden become the harvests. It’s a perfect picture of corporate captivity. Some nations only manage to escape the trap when pragmatic and visionary leaders emerge. Others never do. Whole schools of economics are built around establishing and propagating the notion that these bodies are, bluntly put, instruments founded by advanced countries, particularly in the west, to perpetually subjugate weaker ones. (This Day, 23 October 2024).
The incarceration of the minors and the general suffering we all experience today are not only determined by WB/IMF but by a more acidic system that perpetuates corruption, accomodates criminal justice, glorifies money-and-power as well as keeps the nation on a vicious quest to the former. Of course, as Ekpe points out, ‘pragmatic and visionary leaders’ could escape from the WB/IMF trappings and make a change. However, to Nigerian leaders, pragmatism and foresightfulness are just a question of choice. Visionary, pragmatic and concerned Nigerians and experts proposed and recommended viable home-market strategies that are capable of diversifying human capital investment but corruption and lack of political commitment have abused their ideals and patriotism. Tellingly, the ongoing NNPC-Dangote rigmarole, must have exposed the fact that corrupt and vested interests are the culprit not the WB/IMF.
It’s either way: avoid corruption and invest in human capital or keep the nation on subservience to WB/IMF. Nigerian leaders would surely choose the latter and would always be ready to sip the IMF sugar-coated pills while mouth-feeding the poor with the bitter ones. The reality in taking the first option will be too harsh for the types of leaders Nigeria produced. They must be stressed with multiple options and priorities as to what is possible to be fixed, what to come first, who (or which region, religion or ethnic group) will benefit from this or that, and what significance will this or that have on the image of a, b or c politician, etcetera. This irrational stress is what abused the rationality of Nigeria’s domestic economic policies. The pressure of borrowing and investing in politics, and the stress of ‘what to do’, and ‘what to get out of it’ is what is making the nation vulnerably irresistible to WB/IMF. It becomes therefore easier for Tinubu administration to accept and act upon their imposed policy instructions—most of which are informed by their presumed ‘superior knowledge’ about the country’s current situation—especially the country’s official exchange rate, subsidy removal and oil-price-based fiscal rules.
The price for this subservience is all far too cheap than the ‘always as friends’ the country’s leaders choose to costly subscribe to these global financial mafia. If, as is currently the case, these minors and the rest of hapless children and youths die of swallowing the ‘bitter pills’, so what? The population, the leadership would say, is unsustainable, much bigger relative to its oil wealth and so ‘we need to reduce it’. This has always been the gesture for all excuses, real and imagined. Therefore, organised killings, kidnapping of these minors for brutal ransom, starvation in respect to hunger and malnourishment while in the trial await centres has become the response of the country’s fraudulent economic governance and institutions!
In a country where power is derived through intense hubris, ‘Fir’aunic’ and ‘Qarunic’ possession of wealth must have remained the hustling principle of the political class. Being the consequence of cabal politics that has emerged to objectify ‘survival of the fittest’ as well as give credit to official malfeasance at the expense of law and order, this hubris to power has jeopardised rational policies and has given way to cruelty and fragility. A leadership which respects its citizens must not bury the very clear fact that Nigeria, by the nature of its age and physical demographic characteristics, is a country that belongs to these minors without whose votes the president could not have been in office despite the mistreat: ‘I used money to win election’! A leadership which prioritises ‘humanity first’ must be aware that as a country of young people with almost half the entire population—about 180 million active labour force—46 percent of which is currently under the age of 15, Nigeria is one among the few countries blessed with human potential reasonable for human capital investment, growth and development. Yet this category, obviously the largest and the most productive percentage of the country’s population has been deactivated, made to wonder across desert, jungle across thick forests—exploit or be exploited—kill or be killed!
It is a fact indisputable that there’s been a ‘baby boom’ in the face of children demographic explosion (about 7 million babies are born each year) with the northern region maintaining unequally substantial percentage! (UNICEF Nigeria, last checked October 5 2024). The number of children has been unsustainable in the region often more than what families can look after and at the same time life expectancy has increased over the past 50-100 years. This is in addition to religious ideas which until now, have defied any rational population management policy. This however, cannot, and will never be an excuse for resorting to policies that sentence to death many of these vulnerable children. After all, the menace perceived to be caused by these minors—the Almajiri and the rest of other abandoned children, must have been the subject of address (directly or indirectly) in the country’s loan applications to the World Bank or IMF as well as to many grant applications addressed to many world donors by various NGOs and CSOs. Where’s the money?
Through an agency named ‘Integrity Vice Presidency’ (INT), the WB/IMF could only investigate and possibly sanction allegations of fraud and corruption related to projects they either loaned for or funded. Under the oversight of the Audit Committee of the Executive Board, the INT supports the main business units of the World Bank and external stakeholders, mitigates fraud and corruption risks through sharing investigative findings, advices prevention and outreach efforts etc (INT World Bank, last checked, October 5 2024). Hardly does this agency has the mandate to prosecute corrupt leaders who squander or misappropriate the monies loaned to them especially when the latter could even issue concocted facts-sheet and present it before these monetary agencies. Although through the INT, WB/IMF may sue, or perhaps, collaborate with national and international agencies, NGOs and CSOs to expose corruption, prosecution and punishment may still remain outside their mandate. Nonetheless existing conspiracies, excessive display of power, debt imprisonment and lots more could breed severe measures that may in turn, inflict more suffering on Nigerians.
When leaders choose to borrow and squander, the burden careers would be the hapless poor upon whose meagre resources the current ‘T-pay tax’ is haunting against all-and-sundry! Over one in three of this young population lives below the poverty line. Yet, so-called value-added tax is currently underway to bury alive their misery because, they’re the remnants yet to be killed by BH or kidnapped by bandits! Among children this proportion surges to 75 per cent, in addition to 40 million women of childbearing age (between 15 and 49 years of age) currently suffering a disproportionally high level of health issues. There is nothing good in all these and it worth nothing good for a leader that promised under the Oath of Office to protect the lives and properties of his citizens. ‘Demography is a destiny’, says David E. Bloom, professor of economics and demography at Harvard University’s T. H. Chan School of Public and a columnist for the IMF Finance and Development Magazine. The destiny of a nation lies in its human potentials. It is an interesting irony to see that while highly developed economies are currently facing fertility declining and population aging, Nigeria and the rest of the Global South are experiencing a remarkable demographic shift. This suggests that in the coming decades, demographics will be more favourable to economic well-being in less developed regions than in more developed ones despite the obvious fact that less developed regions tend to be more fragile politically, socially, economically, and ecologically.
Currently as Bloom observes, the country with the highest population in the world is China with 1.44 billion people. It follows by India, with 1.38 billion. By the end of this decade, Bloom predicts, “India will be the most populous country, with a projected 1.50 billion people, compared with China’s peak population of 1.46 billion and between 2020 and 2050, Nigeria [is] projected to overtake the United States to become the world’s third-most-populous nation [in the world]” (David E. Bloom). The hope is that there’ll be more skilled manpower beneficial to the country in question, and of course, to the highly developed Western economies who, according to this prediction, will most likely quest for skilled man power as currently demonstrated by Germany-Kenya bilateral agreement, where the former agrees to allow Kenyan semi-skilled workers into the country in a controlled and targeted labour migration (BBC News Nairobi, 13 September 2024).
However, Nigeria is contrarily the case as corruption, massive exploitation of the hapless poor, as well as the profiteering and WB/IMF puppet regime of President Tinubu and others before him, have defied all sense of priorities. In a country where population poses challenges such as the need for more food, clothing, housing, education, and infrastructure etc., human capital investment (as opposed to disaster laissez-faire) in respect to making available sufficient jobs for large cohorts of young adults largely prone to social, political, and economic instability, may be the only solution that leaders at all levels should commit to realising. Argues Bloom, “both demographic trajectories and their development implications are responsive to economic incentives; to policy and institutional reforms; and to changes in technology, cultural norms, and behaviour.”
Released after months of custody in congested await centres, where, contrary to the provision of the law, juveniles are usually not separated from adults and hardened criminals, words of apology is the least in the violation of children’s rights to health, nutrition, education and recreation.
