NIGERIANS welcomed 2022 enveloped in uncertainty. In a world wracked by a record pandemic, meltdown, natural disasters, internal and international divisions, celebrations ushering in the New Year in many countries were phlegmatic. In Nigeria, gloom has been pervasive, discernible despite official posturing to simulate the boisterous merriment of the past. The reasons are obvious. Insecurity has pushed the country to the edge of state failure, economic and human development indices are dreary, famine looms and joblessness is dangerously explosive. Separatist sentiments compete with calls for restructuring of the polity.

Virtually all aspects of national life are in dire straits. As tensions rise and mass despair peaks, the President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), should this year provide leadership and accord utmost priority to four areas: security, the economy, energy, and restructuring of the country to a true federation.

Unlike the uncaring majority in the political class who remain fixated on the 2023 elections, seemingly inured to the misery all around them, Buhari should be concerned about his legacy. On his watch, the country is sinking, having teetered “for long on the precipice of failure.” He needs to mobilise all segments of the polity to rescue the ship of state.

Significantly, in his New Year message, the President alluded to consensus-building, security, economic and energy challenges, but typically, glossed over the enormity of the existential crises.

Such denial is a dangerous luxury. Take the rampant insecurity: a report said 101 persons were slaughtered in the week to December 26 by assorted criminals. Five died a day before Buhari’s scheduled visit to Maiduguri, when ISWAP terrorists rained bombs on the Borno State capital. The country is under siege from terrorists, insurgents, kidnappers, criminal gangs, and ferocious Fulani militia. In the first six months of 2021, said SBM Intelligence, 2,371 persons were kidnapped in various states. The Council on Foreign Relations’ National Security Tracker recorded 5,800 persons killed within the same period by non-state actors/kidnappers identified as Boko Haram/ISWAP, killer Fulani herders, bandits/terrorists, and ritual killers. On the average, it said 32 persons were killed and 17 kidnapped in Nigeria each day!

The toll is heavy. UNICEF raised a fresh alert in September that one million children could forfeit education as many Northern states closed schools in response to the mass abduction of school children for ransom. Over 1,000 were snatched in the eight months to August; over 60 crossed over to the New Year in captivity, said one report, apart from the several hundred captured and enslaved by Boko Haram over the years.

Violence has erupted in the South-East, where ‘unknown gunmen’ and soldiers sent to contain them are felling civilians and activists. Oil theft, illegal bunkering and refining and sabotage of economic infrastructure remain rampant in the Niger Delta, constricting crude production and exports and fuelling international piracy on the country’s coastal waters. Armed robbery, gang wars and kidnapping also destabilise the South-West. Farming has been disrupted, transporting goods and passengers is unsafe and prohibitively expensive, and the economies of the Northern states are vastly atrophied. Famine looms in 20 states with 12.1 million persons facing hunger, asserts the FAO.

Undoubtedly, the regime needs to change its containment strategy, reform the security apparatus, especially the politicised Nigeria Police and the State Security Service, and back sub-national security initiatives. The doctrine of necessity should be immediately invoked to amend the constitution, allowing states to take on the responsibility of securing their territories. Without security, economic activities and social life are endangered.

The economic situation remains tenuous, belying Buhari’s optimism over the 4.3 per cent GDP growth recorded in Q3, and 5.1 per cent rise in Q2. An economy where debt servicing drains 90 per cent of all revenue, necessitating borrowing that is projected to rise to N50 trillion by 2025, has 33.3 per cent jobless rate, 89.1 million persons (out of 206 million) extremely poor, and import-dependent, is wobbly. Although international agencies forecast modest GDP growth in 2022 as the global economy recovers from COVID-19, and oil prices remain slightly stable, the structural deficiencies of the Nigerian economy will likely only sustain the pattern of “growth-without-jobs;” non-inclusive swelling arising from higher commodity revenues that do not reduce poverty or create jobs.

Top on the agenda, the economy should be restructured and liberalised to address the dollar scarcity and high exchange rate, target single-digit lending rates, and reboot SMEs, non-oil exports, agriculture, mining, and manufacturing.

Buhari’s reference to the energy crises was superficial, celebrating the passage of the controversial Petroleum Industry Act and hoping to raise gas production. This year, the inanity of retaining the four state-owned loss-making refineries, thereby depending on imports for refined petroleum products, should be addressed swiftly. In 2020, said OPEC, Nigeria spent $71.28 billion importing refined petroleum products while it exported $27.73 billion in crude, gas, and condensates, translating to a $43.55 billion imbalance. This national folly must give way to the rational option of domestic refining beginning with the immediate sale of the four idle refineries that cumulatively lost N1.64 trillion 2014-2018, and N270.51 billion 2019-2020. Structurally, the industry should be liberalised to facilitate private sector investment and end the stifling state control.

The power situation demands emergency action. Available supply hovers at 4,000 megawatts for Africa’s largest economy compared to the 59,063MW generating capacity in Egypt and 58,095MW in South Africa, the second and third largest economies respectively. Both the Federal Government and the groups that took charge of 17 power companies in the rigged power sector privatisations of 2013 must be pressured to let go and make way for competent internationally recognised investors that can mobilise the much-needed investment to upgrade infrastructure. Egypt’s dogged revamp saw it jump from 145th to 77th position globally in electricity production, raising capacity in generation, transmission, and distribution. Urgently, the sole transmission grid should also be privatised transparently and additional national, regional, state-wide and mini-grids approved and vigorously encouraged.

Revamping the economy also requires privatising operations at the ports, airports and railway rolling stock. The railway sector should be liberalised to facilitate foreign direct investment instead of the frenetic borrowing favoured by Buhari and his Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, who said last week that he needed $36 billion to construct the national railway network. Buhari should send an executive bill to the National Assembly repealing the anachronistic Railway Act 1955 and inaugurate a liberalised regulatory framework based on extensive work already undertaken by the Bureau of Public Enterprises.

But the greatest test for the regime is the question of the resilience of the country as a going concern. Its centralised administration in a natural federation hobbles development in every aspect. As the year began, South-West and South-East groups warned that elections may not take place in the regions unless imprisoned separatist agitators are released and restructuring addressed. From the South-South comes renewed agitation for resource control. Sabre rattling over which region or ethnic nationality should succeed Buhari has further deepened divisions. Nigeria should begin the process of restructuring in earnest this year.

There is no alternative. Nigeria, declares The Economist of London, “is sliding towards ungovernability.” It cited intense growth in jihadism, crime and political violence, and the institutional inability to tackle these. Research finding by CFR and the Harvard Kennedy School was less restrained. The country, it said, had reached “the point of no return,” having moved from being a weak state to “a fully failed state.” It said Nigeria had manifested all the signs of a failed country.

Beyond the insecurity is the lack of national consensus on the appropriate response to it and other national challenges. Never since the Civil War (1967-1970) have Nigerians been so divided. Threats and counter-threats are rife. Poorly managed at best in the past, Buhari has thoroughly mismanaged the country’s diversity. Some sections of the polity want out. Most prefer a return to true federalism overthrown by the military in 1966. Buhari’s riposte to the “whole nation standing together” to meet the challenges in his speech rings hollow.

A top priority to rescue the teetering edifice is to immediately kick-start practical steps to remodel the country along truly federal lines. First steps should address the most urgent needs that threaten national corporate existence through administrative measures, and emergency constitution amendment. Next is to mobilise all stakeholders to eventually replace the military-imposed 1999 Constitution altogether.

State policing can no longer be delayed. The regional and state security agencies should be immediately empowered to arm, equip, and train personnel to confront the criminals killing, raping, kidnapping, and controlling territory across the country. Instead of opposing, Buhari should partner with the state governors to formulate protocols for multi-layered policing as it obtains in every other federal polity.

States should share concurrent responsibility with the centre for power, railways, ports, and mining. Derivation from minerals should be raised to 50 per cent and the revenue sharing formula that gifts the Federal Government 52.68 per cent of federally collected revenues changed accordingly. The centre should drop its appeals against federalism-leaning court rulings that advance the rights of the states to Value Added Tax, marriages, inland waterways, hospitality, and lottery. The states should be unfettered to run self-sustaining economies.

In the 17 months he has left in office, Buhari should pursue this four-point agenda above all else: security of lives and property, retooling the economy, tackling the energy sector crisis, and leading the charge for restructuring. The country’s future is at stake; he must avert the feared implosion by acting like a true statesman.

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