2012, Good or Bad Year for Nigeria?

With few days remaining in the year 2012, we can look back at the year and see how it went, sincerely speaking, the joy of Christmas has taken flight from many Nigerian homes. Instead of marking the season in high spirits as in years past, Nigerians are struggling under a heavy yoke of fear arising from violence (armed robbery, kidnapping), terror attacks, a terribly-rundown economy, road and air crashes.

Although there may be a muted celebration, the general fear of insecurity and erosion of personal income is weighing heavily on most families.

 

The Goodluck Jonathan Administration set the tone for 2012 by yanking off petrol subsidy on New Year’s Day – when many were still in bed – thus pushing up the price of petrol from N65 to N142 per litre.

 

Two weeks of protests headlined by Occupy Lagos made the Federal Government to beat a retreat: the FG scaled down the price to N97 per litre, but businesses and the citizens have yet to recover from the crisis, which later led to a full-blown fuel scarcity across the country since September.

 

Today, petrol sells for as high as N120 per litre in the South-South and South-East, and N140 in the North-East.

 

With the economy contracting to 6.8 per cent from a peak of 8.6 per cent in 2010, job losses were rife in the course of the year, an act that reduced the income of the average family.

 

In the banking sector alone, more than 7,000 workers were sacked as a result of mergers and acquisitions.

 

The Occupy Lagos spun a rash of probes, with the House of Representatives and the Aigboje Aig-Imokhuede panels indicting major firms and individuals, who were said to have collected about N300bn in subsidies for fuel that was not supplied.

 

While corruption marred the year in many areas of national life – Transparency International rated Nigeria as the 35th most corrupt nation in the world – no serious effort has been made to punish the alleged offenders by the FG, including the offenders who stole about N200bn pension funds.

 

As the economy contracted, violent crimes, and terror instigated by the murderous Boko Haram Islamist sect made many cities, especially in the North, difficult places to live. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the terror attacks, which began early in January when Boko Haram launched a massive operation in which about 200 residents were killed in Kano. Nigeria will be the worst place for a child to be born in 2013.

 

During one of such simultaneous terror attacks by Boko Haram in Kaduna and Yobe states in June, President Jonathan, who could have inspired hope among the citizens, travelled to Brazil, literally junketing as the country burnt.

 

Since the beginning of the year, Boko Haram – Western education is an abomination – has killed more than 800 Nigerians, with the group employing several devious methods, including killings on the streets in broad daylight in the North.

 

Strikingly, the high level of insecurity made Jonathan to first sack Hafiz Ringim as the Inspector-General of Police, and later the late Gen. Andrew Azazi, who died last Saturday in an air crash, as the National Security Adviser on his return from Brazil.

 

Nigerians, going through a tough economic time, suffered a huge loss on June 3 when a Dana Air plane flying from Abuja crashed some minutes to landing in Iju-Ishaga, Lagos, killing all the 153 people on board and no fewer than 10 others on the ground.

 

The country has also witnessed two major helicopter crashes: DIG John Haruna and others died in a crash in Jos, Plateau State, in March, while the second one on Dec. 15 claimed the lives of Kaduna governor Patrick Yakowa; Azazi and four others.

 

Taraba governor Danbaba Suntai is still in a German hospital receiving treatment after a plane he was flying crashed in Yola in October.

 

As terror-related killings rage in the North, armed robbery and kidnapping mar the landscape in the South, forcing many South-Easterners not to venture to return home for the annual Christmas rituals.

With the situation on the ground, many citizens are also cautious on the way the country is headed under the leadership of Jonathan, who convincingly won the presidential ballot for a four-year term in April 2011.

 

However, several commentators believe it’s not a lost cause for the country.

Jiti Ogunye, a lawyer, says that in spite of the hydra-headed problems facing the country, “it is worth celebrating that we’re alive.”

 

“The hope is that Nigerians will one day be free of this heavy yoke on their shoulders and will see the resources of the society harnessed for the development of the country,” Ogunye said.

 

He added, “Yes, things appear miserable in the country: life is nasty, brutish and short; people are dying on the roads, they are dying in the hospitals, they are being killed by Islamist insurgents, people are being kidnapped, and there are people who can’t go to their own part of the country.

 

“But Nigerians individually must do a lot of soul-searching because no government is powerful enough to hold the people in perpetual chains if the people themselves are not complicit. Nigerians themselves have the responsibility – in our churches, our homes, schools and the workplace – we must ask ourselves the kind of society we want.

 

“Colonialism wasn’t strong enough to keep us in perpetual bondage; it was not even near enough to keep slavery from being abolished, so why do we think that bad governance is strong enough to hold our people to ransom?”

 

 

But in his analysis of the year 2012, Prof. Pat Utomi, an economist and presidential candidate in the 2011 general elections, said, “There were opportunities for improving Nigeria, yet one in which by acts of omission and commission, we’re trying very hard to roll back the progress.

 

“As I said a few weeks ago, the future is looking so bright for Nigeria that if we don’t all wear eyeglasses we’re likely to get blind.

 

“But the danger is that we’re being badly managed that we run the risk of snatching the defeat from the jaws of victory. We may, out of our own doing, prevent the extraordinary future before us through the failure of leadership.”