Nigeria 2015: analysis of election issues and future prospects

Future prospects

1. Can Nigeria hold together?

2015: the nightmare scenario

In the short-term, there is a real risk that Nigeria will be further destabilised by the forthcoming elections.

The worst-case scenario is that President Jonathan’s re-election leads to violence in the north on a scale significantly greater than that witnessed in 2011, which was itself the worst for decades. John Campbell argues that Jonathan’s decision to stand in 2011 has “provided the space for Boko Haram to flourish”.⁵²

If powerful sections of the northern elite decide to throw their support behind post-election violence, large parts of the region could become completely ungovernable (arguably, Borno state already is). Given that Boko Haram’s position is much stronger in the north than it was in 2011, the region could then be engulfed by a fatal combination of political, religious and ethnic violence. With the Christian population in the north now a substantial minority, it could be a prime target.

A deepening political and social breakdown of this kind in the north might well prompt militant groups in the south to mobilise in response, above all in the Niger Delta, where security deteriorated again during the second half of 2014. This ‘southern mobilisation’ could also be triggered by a Jonathan defeat – which could in turn prompt a counter-mobilisation in the north. In truth, there are no safe options.

As its efforts to combat Boko Haram have illustrated, the army has lost much of its effectiveness since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999; it could struggle to contain the situation. Indeed, it could, as it has often done in the past, add fuel to the flames through heavy-handed interventions on the ground.

To compound matters, oil prices have been falling significantly since mid-2014, forcing a currency devaluation and downward revisions of the country’s economic growth rate. A continued depletion of oil revenues, along with heavy expenditure of state funds arising from an expensive election contest, could trigger a parallel economic crisis.⁵³

Avoiding the worst

What resources and capabilities do Nigerians possess that can help them avoid this nightmare scenario? In truth, more than enough. One immediate ground for hope is that both of the main parties have selected balanced – north/south, Christian/Muslim – tickets for the presidential contest. The defeated party might, as in the past, decide to pursue its grievances about the conduct or outcome of the elections through the courts.

There have been no shortage of predictions since independence that Nigeria is about to go to hell in a handcart. Only once have the direst predictions proven accurate – the Nigerian civil war between 1967 and 1970, which was fundamentally a revolt against northern dominance led by political leaders from the Igbo ethnic group in the east of the country, for which an independent Biafra was the only solution. A cohesive Nigerian army waged a brutal but successful military campaign to defeat the Biafran army.

Many have often argued that this near-death experience for Nigeria inoculated the country against relapsing into civil war. There may be something in this. As John Campbell has put it: “Nigerians have mastered the art of dancing on the precipice without falling over.”⁵⁴ However, it is now over forty years ago since the defeat of Biafra and memories can fade.

Understanding Nigeria’s current political settlement

Let us assume that Nigeria comes through the forthcoming elections in one piece. What are the country’s medium- to long-term prospects of holding together? According to some analysts, a crucial factor to consider is whether the current “political settlement”, which has (just about) held the country together since 1970, will continue to do so.⁵⁵

Colonial inheritances

Many historians have told the story of how under British colonial rule, the main component parts of what formally became Nigeria in 1914 in fact were never more than loosely stitched together. Almost up until the last colonial moment, southern, northern and eastern Nigeria were administered largely separately. British colonial power tended to favour the northern elite over those of other regions. Nigeria’s anti-colonial movement was weak and divided compared with many of its counterparts elsewhere on the continent.

All this means that today, most Nigerians’ sense of ‘Nigerian-ness’ can be somewhat flickering and intermittent. There are many genuine instances of widespread patriotic pride – for example, whenever the national football team, the ‘Super Eagles’, takes the field – but Nigerian national identity has no automatic privilege over ethnic, religious or regional identities.

John Campbell claims that federal institutions that in the past have been a source of national pride, including the army and the civil service, are now “in decline”⁵⁶ He also points out that ordinary Nigerians “distance themselves from government as much as they can”.⁵⁷

The political settlement that emerged post-independence – and which was more-or-less restored after the traumatic interruption of 1966-70 – largely reflected these realities.

Elite deal-making

Although Nigeria’s political settlement has evolved over time in all sorts of ways, it has also had some fairly stable features up to now.

Perhaps the most important feature has been the ability and willingness of different parts of Nigeria’s elite to make deals about the distribution of power and resources.

Since independence in 1960, Nigeria’s elite has mainly coalesced politically around political binaries such as Muslim/Christian, north/south, Hausa-Fulani/Yoruba-Igbo, not to mention military/civilian, with other social groups either attaching themselves to the coalitions which form or remaining aloof.⁵⁸

Alex de Waal has suggested that political life in countries such as Nigeria is “a patrimonial marketplace, which operates according to socio-culturally determined rules.”⁵⁹ There has been a shared – if sometimes grudging – acceptance across the groupings that made up Nigeria’s elite that a ‘winner-takes-all’ politics, in which defeated parties are left with next to nothing while the victorious enjoy a virtual monopoly over state power and resources, would be disastrous for the country.

The elite deals reached have often lasted one or more electoral cycles while simultaneously being subject to almost permanent (re)negotiation and adaptation.⁶⁰ Different parts of the elite have at points been ascendant (although, overall, the northern groups enjoyed the better of things during the first 40 years of independence) and therefore able to secure advantageous deals, but other groups with significant leverage have usually not been left empty-handed (although claiming that they have is a common negotiating ploy).

The political economy of patronage

Elite deal-making in Nigeria has been sustained by broader patronage systems which have durable constituencies of support amongst ordinary Nigerians, who are also sometimes its beneficiaries, or clients.⁶¹

While highly asymmetrical in terms of the power relations involved, patronage can and does involve reciprocity and is often viewed as legitimate by many Nigerians.⁶² For the poor, patronage networks can be a vital means of survival.⁶³

Wale Adebanwi and Ebenezer Obadare have written: “While Nigerians are general socially supportive of anti-corruption efforts, many are politically or economically connected to the corruption complex, directly or indirectly.”⁶⁴

But the biggest beneficiaries are the ‘Big Men’ – or Ogas, as they are known in Nigeria – at the top.⁶⁵ There is an uneasy and fluid hierarchy within the ranks of the Ogas, who can be found across the military, political and business spheres.⁶⁶ The country’s president may be at the top of the hierarchy, but not necessarily.

Campbell describes some of the ground rules that have regulated relationships amongst the Ogas:

• 
  there should be no ‘presidents for life’;
  
• 
  money accumulated in office cannot be reclaimed;
  
• 
  Ogas should never kill each other, “although their clients are fair game”.⁶⁷
  
• 
  state and local levels of government may be more attractive spheres in which to operate because levels of accountability and transparency there are even weaker than at the federal level.⁶⁸
  

Political and economic marginalisation

Many northerners currently feel politically and economically marginalised.

The political settlement in Nigeria has been gravely tested by events since the death in 2010 of President Umaru Yar’Adua and the violation, in the eyes of many northerners, of the informal ‘zoning arrangement’, whereby a two-term southern PDP president should be succeeded by a two-term PDP president from the north.

Zone-by-zone data analysis of projects approved by the Federal Government in 2014 produces the following striking figures:

• 
  south-south: Naira 639.3 billion
  
• 
  south-west: N256 billion
  
• 
  Federal Capital Territory: N193 billion
  
• 
  south-east: N111.3 billion
  
• 
  north-central:N101 billion
  
• 
  north-west: N62.2 billion
  
• 
  north-east: N23.8 billion⁶⁹
  

Kate Meagher has provided further analysis of the economic dimensions of this marginalisation:

The pressures of restructuring and globalization that have made Nigeria so attractive to global investors have exacerbated rather than eased long-standing patterns of regional inequality […] In the post-independence period, economic opportunity in the educationally disadvantaged northern states was dominated by agriculture and formal sector employment, both of which have declined dramatically over the past few decades. Pressures of high population growth, recurrent drought and a lack of investment in small-scale farming have undermined the agricultural economy, haemorrhaging youth into the urban centres. At the same time, the North’s urban economy has been gutted by deindustrialization and reduction in public employment […] Unemployment in the northern states is three times the levels in the south-west of the country. Poverty levels in the north are 40% higher than those in the southwest.⁷⁰

Today, Nigeria is an extremely politically polarised country. At the top echelons of power, a group of advisors – many of them, like President Jonathan, members of the Ijaw ethnic group and with roots in the Niger Delta – is currently entrenched in Aso Rock, the presidential residence in Abuja.⁷¹

This group of advisors has powerful memories of the time when northerners held sway at the federal level, particularly during successive periods of military rule, benefiting (as these advisors see it) disproportionately from oil revenues generated in the Niger Delta. Many other leading figures from other ethnic groups – most notably, Igbos who recall the Nigerian civil war and its aftermath – share this view. With the boot apparently now on the other foot, it is unclear how far those around President Jonathan are willing to address northern marginalisation today.

The 2014 National Conference: an opportunity for reform?

President Jonathan has supported the establishment of a nationwide conference of delegates from all over the country, known as the ‘National Conference’, to discuss all aspects of the country’s future direction.⁷² It began work in March 2014 and submitted its final report to the president in August.⁷³

Inevitably, some have viewed Jonathan’s support for the National Conference through the prism of his own political ambitions, suspecting that he was using it to pave the way for a second term in office.

Recommendations

Among its recommendations were:

• 
  The creation of 19 new states, which would bring the total number to 55 (plus the Federal Capital Territory);
  

There has been a steady expansion in the number of states in Nigeria since independence. Each phase has tended to create new minorities and grievances. Some wonder whether a process designed to improve the legitimacy and effectiveness of government across the Federation ultimately leads to ‘balkanisation’ – the break-up of the country.⁷⁴ But with the genie out of the bottle, it may now be an unstoppable process which the National Conference felt unable to resist.

• 
  There should be further consideration of the percentage of revenue generated by oil and mining that should be returned from the Federation Account to the state where the economic activity is based;
  

Known as the ‘derivation principle’, this originated primarily in attempts to address grievances in the Niger Delta about the fact that its people benefited little from the oil being produced in the area. A percentage of 13% was agreed in 1994-95 and it was proposed in 2005 that it be increased to 17%. This increase was never implemented. Northern representatives have tended to oppose an increase in the percentage on the grounds that the region will lose out. The National Conference passed the buck on this issue, asking the Government to set up a technical committee to consider the issue further.

• 
  Presidential power should rotate between the north and south and among the six geo-political zones and governorships should rotate between the three Senatorial districts within each state;
  

The National Conference has proposed that the informal ‘zoning’ arrangement on the presidency, which appears to many to have collapsed, should be restored and formalised. It did not specify what implications, if any, this should have for President Jonathan’s candidacy in 2015.

Other proposals included requiring the President in future to pick a Vice-President from the National Assembly, making Representatives and Senators serve on a part-time basis, the elimination of immunity from prosecution of public office-holders where a criminal charge has been laid, and the introduction of special courts to speed up the prosecution of corruption cases. An attempt by northern delegates to scrap the Nigeria Delta Development Commission and the Niger Delta Affairs Ministry was unsuccessful.⁷⁵

The ghosts of conferences past

President Jonathan has promised that the recommendations of the National Conference will be implemented, setting up a ministerial committee to look at what the next steps should be. But his attention is currently elsewhere, so little is likely to happen in response to the recommendations until the 2015 elections are over.

Sceptics note that Nigeria has seen several such initiatives in the past (2004 and 1994-95) whose recommendations were honoured more in the breach than the observance. A minority has long argued that Nigeria needs a ‘sovereign national conference’ directly elected by the people, rather than top-down affairs of the kind preferred over the years by Nigeria’s elite.

How far this latest National Conference ultimately plays a part in reforming or stabilising Nigeria’s rickety political settlement remains to be seen. There are many who would contend that too great a focus on piece-meal reform is ultimately undesirable. According to them, if Nigeria is to achieve long-term stability and prosperity for the majority of its citizens, the fundamental ‘rules of the game’ must change.

Prospects for a better political settlement

Nigeria: a ‘neo-patrimonial state’?

The academic Atul Kohli would probably take this view. He contrasts “neo-patrimonial states” – which have a record of poor economic performance in many developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa – with ‘developmental states’ in other parts of the world, whose economic records have been much better.

Kohli identifies Nigeria as a classic neo-patrimonial state. Here is his definition of the term:

These states are labelled here as neo-patrimonial because, despite the façade of a modern state, public office holders tend to treat public resources as their personal patrimony. These are therefore not really modern rational-legal states. Whether organised as a nominal democracy or as a dictatorship, state-led development under the auspices of neo-patrimonial states has often resulted in disaster, mainly because both public goods and capacities to pursue specific tasks in these states have repeatedly been undermined by personal and narrow group interests. Of the cases analysed in this study, Nigeria best exemplifies this ideal-typical tendency.⁷⁶

Kohli locates the origins of Nigeria’s ‘neo-patrimonialism’ in the pre-colonial and colonial periods before turning to the post-independence era. Kohli asserts that it was not so much that efforts after 1960 to promote economic development failed, “but that they were never really made”.⁷⁷ When it came in the 1970’s, the oil boom “created an illusion of economic dynamism”.

What would Nigeria be like if it was a ‘developmental state’? There are many competing definitions of the term. Thandika Mkandawire says that it is “one whose ideological underpinnings are developmental and one that seriously attempts to deploy its administrative and political resources to the task of economic development.”⁷⁸

A ‘developmental-patrimonial’ regime in Nigeria?

Can Nigeria move beyond neo-patrimonialism?

There is no state on the planet that has eradicated patronage and corruption. Given this, the real question is whether the Nigerian state has the potential and capacity to become much more ‘developmental’ in its orientation.

While Nigeria currently faces many formidable challenges, there is no reason to believe that this is impossible in future. Mkandawire has argued:

[…] neither Africa’s post-colonial history nor the actual practice engaged in by successful ‘developmental states’ rule out the possibility of African ‘developmental states’ capable of playing a more dynamic role than hitherto.⁷⁹

A group of researchers based at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has recently identified several hybrid “developmental-patrimonial” regimes in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa – most notably, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

One of the ODI researchers, David Booth has described some of the most important factors that have helped to create these regimes. However, he also issues a warning that democratic forms of governance can hinder rather than help.

In both cases, long-term vision is accompanied by strong leadership and at least some degree of institutionalised political competition. Whatever one’s view on these kinds of exceptions, the big question today is whether democratic politics can deliver a sufficient level of elite consensus on the fundamentals for economic transformation to occur. The risk is that African democracies will get locked into political short-termism to such an extent that the transition from economic growth to economic transformation is delayed indefinitely. There is no more important challenge on the horizon than this.⁸⁰

Booth and his colleagues have looked at the conditions under which such a transformation has been possible in East and (to a lesser extent) Southeast Asia since 1945. Without expecting sub-Saharan Africa to imitate parts of the world with different histories and cultures, they ask themselves whether there are elements of this experience that could be transposed. They do not believe that there are insuperable obstacles. Booth goes on to say:

The key requirement for establishing a ‘national vision and shared sense of purpose’ is that ruling elites are relieved of pressures to respond to short-term political exigencies and acquire an incentive to look to the long-term. This happened in a number of countries, first in Northeast Asia, and later in Southeast Asia, as a result of national crises or threats, often including large amounts of violence.⁸¹

So, could a hybrid ‘developmental-patrimonial regime’ emerge in Nigeria? For all its problems, the country’s annual economic growth rates are good and there are large pockets of political and economic dynamism, albeit mainly concentrated in the south-west. The recently-retired governor of Lagos state, Babatunde Fashola, is widely credited for doing much to promote economic growth there (continuing the work of his predecessor, Bola Tinubu). There are undoubtedly a significant number of genuine reformers within the federal and state governments – and within the civil service, despite its many weaknesses.⁸² And Nigeria is surely experiencing a ‘national crisis’ at the moment which could act as a catalyst for change.

However, Booth laments that what he hopes for “has rarely happened in sub-Saharan Africa”.⁸³ Writing in 2011, he did not rate Nigeria’s chances highly. Viewing Nigeria as a “winner-takes-all democracy”, he argues that:

Under current arrangements, all of the contenders and their supporters face a significant risk of being completely excluded from the spoils of office under the next government. As a consequence, none of them can afford to suspend or moderate their pursuit of short-term gains.

[…] The question that really needs to be posed is what, if any, variant of power-sharing or compacted democracy would be capable of liberating all contenders from the compulsion to sacrifice long-term national interests for short-term partial interests.⁸⁴

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that this is their view, Booth and company are also highly sceptical of the value of most aid programmes, which they believe “miss the main point”.⁸⁵

Whether Nigeria today is a winner-take-all-democracy is open to question. Earlier, we suggested that its political culture has not, as a rule, been ‘zero-sum’ in the past. But it is true that Nigeria’s political culture strongly encourages short-termism and corruption.

The ‘developmental-patrimonial’ concept deployed by Booth and his colleagues will not convince everybody. Some may wonder whether it adds much to our understanding. However, the explicitly hybrid character of the concept does have the virtue of challenging the either/or terms – that is, specific African states are either inherently neo-patrimonial or inherently developmental – in which the debate has often been conducted.

One commentator has also criticised Booth’s “rather lazy dismissal of both democracy and citizen action”.⁸⁶ In addition, many activists and donors are unlikely to view with much enthusiasm his argument that some types of corruption can, in the right context, promote economic growth.⁸⁷

Few would argue that Nigeria has experienced too much of the ‘wrong type’ of corruption. Wale Adebanwi and Ebenezer Obadare have argued that the return to civilian rule since 1999 has coincided with unprecedented corruption: “Indeed, instead of being eroded, existing networks of patronage and clientilism have consolidated, even expanded.”⁸⁸ They have also asserted that corruption has killed off three previous attempts to democratise Nigeria.⁸⁹

Are we asking the right questions?

Some observers go so far as to wonder whether the value of all such existing policy prescriptions is fatally undermined by the fact that they have a shared origin in teleological “theories of development”. Patrick Chabal, claims that:

Theories of development, whatever their guise, made two clear assumptions: the first was that there is a path to (economic and political) development, which all countries follow, if in different ways; the second was that Africa is merely behind on that path but that it will eventually catch up.⁹⁰

De Waal broadly endorses this perspective, asserting that “[…] states can function in a different way indefinitely, albeit with less desirable outcomes for most of their citizens.”⁹¹

While acknowledging just how hard it can be to avoid “the Western gaze”, Chabal advocates instead trying “to write about the Africa that stands before our eyes” and to do so “without recourse to a given political theory.”⁹²

To follow Chabal on Nigeria would require us to view it through an entirely different set of political lenses entirely to those that have featured in this discussion. In a recent book, Chabal preferred to take as his point of departure the politics of being, belonging, believing, partaking, striving, surviving and suffering.⁹³

While Chabal has issued an intriguing injunction that could lead to policy prescriptions that chime better with the lived experience and everyday struggles of ordinary Nigerians, it does require busy policy-makers to make substantial changes to their habitual frameworks of reference. Critics might respond that he is asking the impossible – not least, because it is beyond the capability of human beings born in specific societies at a particular time and place to operate “without recourse to a given political theory”.⁹⁴

Conclusion

So, to end where most commentators begin on Nigeria – with Boko Haram. Its brand of Islamist terrorism is an extremely potent symptom of Nigeria’s current crisis, rather than one of its causes. It is playing a major role in deepening that crisis today to the point where it could become life-threatening for Nigeria; but most analysts agree that, if Boko Haram is defeated militarily – an outcome far from guaranteed – without being accompanied by appropriate structural reforms, the country’s underlying pathologies will almost certainly re-emerge before too long, whether in a similar or different guise.

What might replace Nigeria should it break up? Inevitably, the picture is hazy. The creation of new countries might take place around the three main regions that currently comprise Nigeria – the south, north and east. An optimist might even hope for a loose Nigerian confederation or ‘Commonwealth’, but is far from clear that it could work, given that the south would be much wealthier and better-resourced than the north and east.

The creation of three new states out of what was once Nigeria would not guarantee stability: past experience of state formation in sub-Saharan Africa suggests each of the new governments would likely soon be faced with internal challenges to their authority and legitimacy.

For now, committed separatists are a small minority within Nigeria. They tend to focus on the independence of their group or region without thinking much about how the fractured pieces might relate to each other in future. But while those who want Nigeria to stay together may take heart from these facts, once again experience from other parts of the world shows how quickly this can change.

The US National Intelligence Council stated in a March 2005 report: “Nigeria’s leaders are locked in a bad marriage they all dislike but dare not leave.”⁹⁵ Writing eight years later, John Campbell argued that the break-up of Nigeria remained unlikely. However, he added that it was on a distinctly downward trajectory:

A more realistic alternative is that federal authority will continue to decline, while power will gravitate to the state governments. The danger is not the emergence of an independent Biafra or a Nigerian version of South Sudan with defined boundaries. Rather it is of national fragmentation in the context of hollowed-out or irrelevant federal institutions with the prospect of localised ethnic and religious conflict dominated by warlords.⁹⁶

Of course, the situation has deteriorated markedly since 2013. Nigeria certainly can hold together, but in current circumstances it is flirting with disaster. The danger of the country breaking up is certainly greater than it has been since 1970.

But perhaps this conclusion is an unwarranted counsel of despair – there are some commentators today who are remarkably upbeat about Nigeria’s future. They are not so sure that the kinds of political impediments discussed here are necessarily inimical to rapid growth, placing less emphasis on the need for structural reforms and more on the massive potential of Nigeria’s ‘factor endowments’ – potential which is beginning at last to be realised.⁹⁷ Next we review the credentials of such arguments.

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