A Stunted Polity

THE HORIZON BY KAYODE KOMOLAFE      kayode.komolafe@thisdaylive.com

Two pieces of news – one at home and the other abroad – should be chilling reminders about the urgency of tackling underdevelopment in this land. The issues thrown up may appear disparate, but the point of convergence is in the lack of or failure of policy.

The first is the sad story of meningitis, which is spreading in parts of the country. At least 300 deaths have been recorded since the outbreak of the contagious disease. Viruses and bacteria spread the disease, which can be prevented through immunization, according to the experts. The epidemiology of meningitis clearly shows the link between poverty and the disease. Victims are to be found more in the neglected rural areas. In more developed climes, meningitis has become history because of vaccination. But in Nigeria, the cost of vaccination is very high.

The vaccines are also scarce. At a N18, 000 per dose the drugs are too costly for the poor rural folks. The outbreak itself is one of the symptoms of the malaise afflicting the healthcare delivery system in Nigeria. And it is only in a tragic season like this that attention is paid to the poorly funded Centre for Disease Control. Now, how to manage the healthcare delivery system to stamp the episodic shame of outbreaks of meningitis is a matter of policy.

The second story is about the war declared in United Kingdom on diesel in the interest of the health of the residents and their environment. The London Economist reported two days ago that Westminster Council would henceforth charge diesel drivers 50% more to park their vehicles. This is all in the bid to control emission of carbon dioxide. It is estimated that more than half of the vehicles on the road would be affected. It is a part of government’s efforts to improve air quality as a matter of policy. Why should that bother Nigeria? You may probably ask. The British war on diesel should be instructive to Nigeria because the Nigerian economy, “the largest economy in Africa”, is actually run on diesel. The toxic fumes from generators supplying power for industrial and residential uses in Nigeria constitute a greater health hazard and environmental pollution.

Making diesel as a source of power in factories and home history is also a matter of policy. However, Nigeria is sadly not in position to declare any war on diesel despite the risks to health and the environment inherent in the burning of diesel. A war on diesel in Nigeria would have to be preceded by the declaration of a state of emergency in the electricity sector so as to drive home the urgency of the solution to the power supply problem that has been with Nigeria for decades. You cannot do without diesel when you have not made electricity supply steady.
It requires a politically developed atmosphere to appreciate the policy imperatives of stamping out meningitis and diesel. That is the point at issue.

In a clime where organic poltical parties exist, such issues would be matters of party programmes of action. Those would the issues dominating public conversations. Members of the party in the executive would focus on the implementaion while those in the legislature would be busy giving the legal framework and responsible oversight for the purpose of public good.

Perhaps unconsciously, discussions on Nigeria’s backwardness tend to focus on the economic and social spheres to the virtual exclusion of the polity. Hardly is political underdevelopment made an issue. Yet Nigeria is afflicted with the stuntedness of the polity as much as it suffers from socio-economic underdevelopment. The indices of socio-economic underdevelopment such as the statistics on human development and poverty rates are readily available. It is not quite so measurable when it comes to the indices of political underdevelopment.

To be sure, advocates of restructuring of the federation often draw the link of the decline in the political arena to the distortion of Nigerian federalism. The logic is that once each federating unit assumes an appreciable level of political autonomy, development would be fast-tracked. However, the point remains that whatever structure emerges eventually would still require the factor of those in power to govern in the interest of the common good.

Here comes the element of governance. Regardless of the relative autonomy that is enjoyed by each federating unit, without proper competent policy conception and execution, you would only be having devolution of poor governance to the units. Here, the function of well-organised political parties becomes obvious. There is a lot of wisdom in not having a zero-party provision in the constitution. Political parties are central institutions of liberal democracy. The political parties have roles to play beyond selling forms to candidates seeking nominations to contest elections. The failure of political parties to perform their roles has left a huge vacuum in the poltical landscape.

The poor organisation of the political parties is surely a manifestation of political underdevelopment. All the parties suffer from acute lack of capacity. Since its victory at the polls 24 months ago, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has not been able to muster the capacity to hold a proper meeting on policies, on what the party promised during the election. The APC could not even manage its stupendous success at the polls. Presumably, the electorate voted for APC on the day of election based on its manifestoes from which policies and programmes were supposed to be distilled for governance. On this score, APC has more or less become still born. The APC is not a party in the organic sense of the word. In its political metamorphosis, it has not grown beyond being a coalition of disaffected political forces united in the resolve to get the PDP out of power.

It is obvious that getting the PDP out of power was the easier part of the job. Now, the hard part is for the APC to demonstrate the competence of a party in power. Pray, does the John Odigie-Oyegun’s APC have the capacity to review the party’s strategy of development (if any) and monitor how those in government are delivering on the promises made to the electorate two years ago? No. The party still remains a vehicle some persons rode to power in 2015, which now seems poorly serviced. But enthusiasts might insist that the party is still a strong vehicle available for those seeking power for whatever purpose.

The voice of APC is not loud on any policy. The party is not engaging President Mohammadu Buhari and his ministers on policy implementation or lack of implementation. None of the squabbles in the party is traceable to policy disagreements on health, education, security, power supply or mass housing. Yet some of the minsters were not in APC when the party sold its manifestoes to the electorate two years ago. And APC has no ideology to which any minister could be asked to be committed. The party is not tasking its members who are in the majority in the National Assembly to pursue a legislative agenda that would be in synchrony with the policies the party favours for implementation.

The case of the major opposition, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is probable worse. There is a raging war of attrition for the soul of the party that once boasted to be in power for 60 years. In its 16 years in power there was no ideology that united PDP members. The passion was power and the struggle for it also stunted the growth and development of the party. So the PDP has not got the organisational respite to talk of articulating alternative policies to those of the APC in power.

The other smaller parties are more or less franchise for hire by those who could not secure the tickets of the two big parties to contest elections. And that completes the tale of arrested poltical development.
The Nigerian reality has proved again the correlation between progress in the political realm and socio-economic development. That is why social scientists say that the issue is really that of a political economy.