We should note that the problem with Nigeria is best discussed
using the theory of post-colonial state. The British colonial masters left
Nigeria on a one-sided contraption. Dividing the state into two major groups
(the North and South) was the problem created by the British masters that has
left Nigeria in a perpetual motion of weakness and stagnation, in that Nigeria
has been revolving around the under-listed problems as contained in Achebe’s the
trouble with Nigeria: tribalism, false Image of ourselves, leadership,
Nigerian-style, patriotism, social injustice and the cult of mediocrity,
indiscipline, corruption, the Igbo problem, etc. One of the problems
post-colonial state presents is that, Nigeria, as big and vast as it is, is
majorly controlled by one side – the North. And based upon this false notion
that this side constitutes half population of the Nigerian people, it then
becomes a thing of squabble when issues are handled behind them.
However,
the problem here is not what the British colonial masters left of us, rather
the problem is, as a nation which is no longer governed and colonised by the
British, Nigeria has failed to understand the true concept of independence, the
Nigerian state is weak today and weaker tomorrow because the ideas and remains
of the colonial administration have not been left behind. The country is still haunted
by the ghost of the colonial formations. Nigeria peoples are strong enough to
pull the nation to any level required, but the institution of the state (i.e.
the formality) does not in any way encourage the eagerness of the masses. A
struggling individual in the Nigerian weak institution is conformed, engulfed,
and entrapped by the forces of failure which confront him in his environment.
Onuoha suggests that underdevelopment as poverty is like a tree with its root
to the ground, and for one to step away from poverty; one has to uproot it from
the root. Nigeria has not been able (or has refused) to uproot what we know are
our problems: corruption, tribalism, preference, mediocre, to mention but few.
Hence “strong men and weak institution”
In
analyzing the trouble with Nigeria, Achebe writes:
I am not here recommending ruthlessness as a necessary
qualification for Nigerian leadership. Quite on the contrary. What I am saying
is that Nigeria can change today if she discovers leaders who have the will,
the ability, and the vision (2).
For Nigeria to
discover good leaders or for good leaders to have the will to build a stronger
institution for the Nigeria state, the nation must put aside the formalities of
the functionalism that have glued it, objectively, to its problems. Formalities
like innate corruption and tribalism: Achebe defines tribalism in his book The Trouble with Nigeria,
as a discrimination against a citizen because of his place of birth.
Nigeria lives primarily on the problem of how we think of a tribe. Nigerian
citizens are mainly subjected to the consciousness of tribalism and ethnicity.
This amounts to the point where a government official is admired and shouldered
high by his ethnic group alone. Nigerians should see themselves as Nigerians
not as a south-westerner, south-southerner, northerner, easterner, and so on.
The country has found it extremely difficult to adapt to development because it
has failed to see the world as amenable to change and has clung to what it
thinks is a well established procedure even when it is no longer appropriate. This
has prompted an American psychologist, David McClelland, to define Africans as
a people with low need for achievement. Meanwhile, professor Onuoha’s theory is
on the fact that the process of underdevelopment in the Nigerian state is the
failure of the components of its institutions (by institution, he does not mean
academic institution) to harness the potentials of the strong men in the state.
My prospect is that, for the country to be free of this developmental
death-dance (one step forward, two steps backward) in the form of
underdevelopment, the said weak institutions (government institution, public
administration, respective companies, academic institutions etc) should first understand
their weaknesses, and by understanding their weakness and finding lasting, but
not one-off, solutions to these problems, the country will be transformed – probably
– from the theory of ‘strong men and weak institution’ into a nation of ‘strong
men, stronger institution’ – a theory that will be propounded on its emergence.