How Nigeria Underdevelops Itself: The Politics of Wasted Potential

**How Nigeria Underdevelops Itself: **The Politics of Wasted Potential

Despite being the fourth largest economy in Africa, over 133 million Nigerians, which is 63% of Nigerians live in multidimensional poverty, therefore lacking access to housing, education and clean water. The paradox is unavoidable: how does a country rich in human capital, fertile land and oil remain deeply underdeveloped? For so many years, Nigerian leaders have blamed colonial legacies and unequal global systems as the perpetrators of this underdevelopment. Although these external influences are important, Nigeria’s lack of progress is mostly internally generated, which is a painful reality. The country continuously undercuts its own potential via inadequate diplomacy, myopic policies, persistent corruption, and ineffective leadership.

Given all of Nigeria’s potential Nigeria, ought to serve as a role model for resource-based development. Rather, oil money has exacerbated institutional deterioration and dependency. Crude oil exports provide for almost 80% of the nation’s government revenue, although fundamental services are nonetheless consistently underfunded. Despite billions of dollars being invested, the electrical supply is still unstable, public hospitals lack necessary medications, and schools collapse due to a lack of infrastructure. The government justifies fuel subsidies, which cost billions of dollars a year, as a means of maintaining the affordability of petrol. In practice, the only advantage is to smugglers and wealthy people and they deprive the money to provide healthcare services, education, and infrastructure. In the meantime, oil theft and lack of transparency in the collection and management of revenue undermine the trust in government.

This is what is known to political economists as a resource curse: rather than stimulating progress, resource wealth establishes corruption, elite grasp, and myopic thinking about economic matters. Nigeria has not been able to diversify beyond oil production simply because that is what the elite, who live off rents and patronage, thrive on.

Corruption is the thread that has run consistently through Nigerian history. Public offices are not regarded as a duty but as an occasion for self-enrichment. Nigeria is annually ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International and this is due to numerous scandals. Even the infamous Abacha loot, which was stolen by the late military dictator and is being returned many decades later, and billions unaccounted for in oil revenue, are only a few of the examples of how corruption has eaten into the state. The examples of subsidy fraud, over-budgeted contracts, and ghost workers on the governmental payrolls demonstrate how taxpayers money could be lost without significant punishment.

Even democracy has not sabotaged such a cycle; elections are still characterized by violence, election-rigging, and corruption in the form of the purchase of votes. Instead of serving as a means of accountability, Nigerian democracy is more of a ceremony of periodic elections, devoid of governance between the elections. People have become powerless as the core agencies created to safeguard them such as the judiciary, the police and anti-corruption units are actually undermined. There is always an increasing and widening breach between what states can or do promise, and what people can actually enjoy. In addition to this corruption, good policy choices are also lacking in Nigeria, self-sabotaging the country itself. Successive regimes are counting shortcuts over reforms. On the one hand, restrictive foreign exchange policies deter investment and on the other hand, black-market arbitrage. Import restrictions on basic goods hike inflation and do not add any benefit to local production. The entire fixation on oil exports has led to neglect of other sectors and this has resulted in zero resilience to global shocks in Nigeria. Agriculture which used to be the central part of the economy is now a distant memory; now, this nation spends billions of dollars importing food even though there is vast fertile soil. Manufacturing has remained stagnant and organizations are shifting to other neighboring states due to unreliable electricity provision and infrastructure.

Most harmful of all is the collapse of social services. Education and health care remain underfunded and the results are mass emigration. Indeed, the World Health Organization records that Nigeria has one of the lowest supply ratios of doctors to patients in the world, whereas UNESCO notes that there are enormous educational differences. The consequence is a gradual brain drain as knowledgeable workers (doctors, nurses, academics, and engineers) go abroad to Europe, North America and the Middle East. This hemorrhage is a loss of exactly the talent that the country stands in need of in reform.

Nigeria has a long tradition of conceptualizing itself as the Giant of Africa on the international front; however, the vulnerability of its domestic state weakens its foreign policy aspirations. Although it dispatches troops and funds to peace operations in the region, Nigeria has had trouble translating this into any form of diplomatic bargaining power. Climate policy is one of such examples; it ranks as one of the most climatically vulnerable nations in the globe; it is already threatened by desertification in its northern region, floods in the south, and rising sea levels that batter the coastal cities such as Lagos. Three years ago, at the international summits, Nigeria vowed to be ambitious, including a net-zero commitment in 2060. However, on the domestic front, the government keeps on adding fuel to fossil fuels as it focuses little on renewable energy investment. This discrepancy makes it collapse in the international community. On the same note, internal insecurity erodes the capacity of the country to lead in the African Union or ECOWAS. A nation that is yet to govern itself successfully should not expect to have a viable leadership in transforming the continent.

The case of Nigeria is not exactly destiny. However, countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Botswana which are also facing the same resource challenges, have turned around to success by undertaking reforms. In Nigeria, the same can be achieved, but it takes political will as one cannot wait long for governance reforms, improving anti-corruption institutions, ensuring a transparent system on matters of finance and holding leaders accountable would send a strong signal. One of the possible ways technology can be used is to minimize leakages and to empower the citizens by providing them with greater oversight on government actions particularly through e-governance platforms.

Economic diversification should be taken beyond rhetoric; the agricultural sector, manufacturing, the digital economy, and the green economy are the areas of growth that are clear. The large number of youths in Nigeria is an asset yet to be utilized. It is possible to unlock the new sources of prosperity, facilitating entrepreneurship, vocational training and access to finance. The foreign policy will also need to focus on development-oriented policy by emphasizing trade, climate finance, technology transfer, and the use of the diaspora. It is also an untapped resource which Nigeria can mobilize not only in terms of money, but also skills, investment as well as global advocacy through the vast diaspora which sends billions to the country. Finally, it is people (not sterile statistics) who are the focus of development. There is no alternative to investing in education, healthcare, and infrastructure, as this is the only way that Nigeria can get out of the stagnation it has imposed on itself. Devoid of these investments, the poverty, insecurity and migration processes will only be exacerbated.

The paradox remains stark: Nigeria underdevelops itself by weakening its potential. It is no longer viable to accuse colonialism or the global systems. The major setbacks faced in the country are domestic, including corruption, mismanagement and the failure of visionary leadership. Nigeria can afford not only to go to waste but to lose the most valuable resource available to the country, its people. Every doctor who eschews the country, every farmer who was forced to flee due to insecurity, every student who did not get a quality education the nation loses its potential. Nigeria is endowed with many resources as one commentator touched decades ago but the problem is not how to use the resources wisely, but how to harness them. With that will emerge, that travesty of civil war, wasted potential will continue and the so-called “Giant of Africa” will continue to be chained with the chains it has made of its own making.