27. Nigeria: thoughts on corruption and black on black exploitation

If you have been following this travel account for more than a few episodes you may wonder --as we have while editing it-- if we would ever go beyond just describing our immediate trip events.  In this section I must have been feeling fairly philosophical and perhaps disappointed because our volunteer gig had fallen through.  In any case I seem to have gone perhaps too far in the other direction. However, I realize as I read this today, that the trip up to this point was formative of opinions that I still agree with today. Rurrenabaque, Bolivia. 2013. 

                                                                       Jos, Nigeria. Tuesday, February 1, 1983

(DAN) Helena and I spent the day writing letters and catching up on the journal.

It seems that in general our journal has concentrated on our travels and events more than our impression of what we are seeing socially and politically. One of my problems is that I seem to have more of a problem communicating with Africans than I normally would with strangers in South America. There is the language barrier in the French countries, but even here I have not had a meaningful conversation with more than a couple of Nigerian persons, so that problems we have perceived are what Westerners consider problems. These may not be problems to the Nigerians at all.

Things are deeply troubled here, socially and politically, and I think that even Nigerians would tell you that it is not all due to ex-colonialism, to neo-colonialism or black-white racist economic manipulation. Some might say that it is due to the drop in oil prices, but I surmise that the problems go back farther and are deeper than that. What I keep feeling are the four words that I shall always hear in my Father’s voice, “Man’s inhumanity to Man!” The disparity is not just between the “developed world and this country”, but between the many rich and many more poor in this country itself. This will not surprise anyone, but I guess what I want to say -- or actually hate to say -- is that people here may be just as guilty of exploiting “poor black folk” as white people are in South Africa.

It is a more subtle or perhaps simply another form of exploitation.  As in no other country I have visited, there are signs of huge official infrastructure to set things right. There are countless buildings and vehicles for Rural Development e.g. “Federal Department of Agricultural Land Resources”, but by all accounts, nothing gets done. Why? Because “there is no money”, “no money for salaries”, etc. Yet you look at the national budget and by far the greatest amount of the very large budget goes to “development and education”.  We saw a newspaper article that indicated that over half of Nigeria’s national budget was devoted to education.  Yet in Zing the local agriculture agency did nothing and the grade school did not have classes for a year because “the teachers were not paid”. Yet the oil is pumped and real money is allocated, so somewhere, at the top, middle, and bottom, people are exploiting the cause of “Development”. On the outside they say “Yes, at least 50% of the budget should go to education." Then, at the moment of stealing they are really saying, “I am more entitled to this million than a million students.”

This is not very different from Bolivia’s problems, but the scale here is particularly loathsome. Every day there are headlines of “Money unaccounted for”.   Today there was an article about a check for N 4,500,000 or $us 7,000,000 that was to pay relief for drought-stricken farmers here in the north -- it has disappeared. Last week there was a fire that destroyed half of the ministry of telecommunications building in Lagos.  Mr. O says that four ministries have had large fires recently that destroyed similar evidence.

What is most disappointing is that this is not the tale of a military government but of a civilian government that has had several years of “democracy and freedom” to set things straight if they wanted. Thursday there was an article about thousands of students ("radicals") in Lagos hitting the street calling for a return to military rule![1]

It is not that I blame Nigerians specifically. I think this cynical exploitation (corruption) goes on in many of the third world countries. It is just disappointing because in terms of infrastructure and official priorities many of these countries would love to be where Nigeria is, yet Nigeria is not capitalizing on it; things are just getting worse. Just down the street is the Federal School of Soil Conservation that turns out 100 conservationists a year, some with two-year degrees, others with four-year degrees. (High school diplomas necessary for entry.) I have talked on the subject with various persons, including Nigerians, and nobody has mentioned this school. If I had not seen the sign and at least 4 vehicles around town, I would not have known it existed.

I went down today and talked a while with the principal, and he gave me a PROSPECTUS that included goals, purpose, and a course catalog. On paper the technical education they receive for a four-year degree is superior to what is required in my degree at Kansas State U. Yet…

When I talked with Pastor Peter in Zing, he said that the No. 1 problem with nutrition and agriculture in that area is not drought or soil or insects most years. Instead there are “al hadjis” (his term) that buy up the grain and yams at harvest, say for N 20 a bag when the farmers need to pay off their debts.  Then toward the end of the dry season, the farmers need the grain to eat, so they have to go into debt to buy the grain back at N 40 a bag[2].  The only result is ever increasing debt.   It is interesting, sad, that the term, "al hadji", a man who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, is equated with “big businessman” or “capitalist”! For fairness I should mention that traditionally the civil servants here have been Christian educated and are in turn the ones responsible for the government graft.

This is not exploitation from other countries, other races, or other religions, but from your own people[3]: exploitation that did not begin with the slave trade and did not end with either colonization or subsequent independence. It probably would not stop with a Communist government. People that have no conscience will continue to do it. As Cantinflas[4] once said  in his version of Don Quijote,  “En vez de ganar la vida con el sudor de la frente, ganar la vida con el sudor de el del frente”. Literally (alas without the Spanish puns), “instead of making a living from the sweat of one’s own brow, to make a living from the sweat of the person who lives opposite you.”

Jos street scene

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[1] Having grown up in a military dictatorship, this is still unconscionable to me.

[2] 25 years later teaching a course on Food and Water Security, our graduate students from around 30 countries on 5 continents agree that this is fundamental problem of rural poverty around the world. 

[3] We lived through Operation Condor and some of the worst years of military abuse in Latin America.  Many friends and acquaintances were illegally detained and some tortured.  But we never saw anything like the soldiers getting a lot of poor people off a bus and then charging them to get back on again, as we reported in Burkina Faso and Niger.

[4] A classic Mexican comedic actor