In early July 2009, as the global financial crisis ravaged the local banking sector, an official of one of the industry’s regulatory agencies admitted their failure. “We messed up,” the official said, in answer to why they were suddenly in the news.
These institutions’ weaknesses and the “mess” they create have expanded and now threaten the nation’s political and economic stability. Growth and development have been stunted because there is hardly an acceptable way of addressing these targets. Nigerians have allowed so much variableness in their national life that it is difficult to agree on a standard way of life.
Consequently, Nigerians’ dream of enjoying economic prosperity will continue to elude them until the country tackles the challenge of institutional failure. That will come when the political will to strengthen institutions emerges. This calls for the declaration of, say, a decade of institutionalisation for national turnaround.
Indeed, it appears that Nigerian institutions are structured to fail or underperform. In most cases, our institutional arrangements have loopholes, often intentionally created to be exploited to enable someone to circumvent standard procedures. You have heard this expression several times. And what is that? “It does not matter. It depends on how you look at it.” It has become a common refrain in our national life and polity, even on issues that should be considered fundamental to our national identity.
Arising from this, we have reduced our national life and ways of doing things to acts like men measuring a city with elastic rulers or tapes. In such a situation, the dimension you get certainly “depends on” what you want to report or what you want your audience to believe. If you want to go to the whole length and report the complete distance, you need to pull the elastic ruler to its limit. Reporting the length requires that every detail be considered, which is how it should be done. However, the man who insists on doing so could be labelled an enemy.
Our political system is in danger because we cannot organise elections based on generally acceptable rules. Often, the official conduct and pronouncements of the electoral body’s officials on election days are at variance with the provisions of the electoral law. But does it matter? Everything goes. Our educational system is not better; it is tottering because there are loopholes in standards. Do we talk about the judiciary, where pronouncements now complicate rather than resolve conflicts? Or is it better in religion, where leaders and followers alike have handed themselves over to the vices they initially condemned?
These things are so because Nigeria has mistaken the cult status of leaders, big buildings, and the razmataz of office for institutional effectiveness. Those who occupy positions now define acceptable standards and procedures rather than institutionally recognised standards driving our quest for national greatness. “Institutions are as good as the capacity of the State that upholds them,” Alma Kanani and Marco Larizza declare in their paper on the role of institutions in modern economic growth and prosperity. Explaining further, they assert that “Institutions are embedded in a country’s social context, which affects the way they function as well as their effect on economic outcomes”.
Their views tally with those of Douglass North, the American economist and Nobel Laureat known for his eminent work on institutions. North viewed institutions as the ‘‘rules of the game’’ that set the boundaries in the economic and political spheres. Such rules must not be set in the interest of some people.
Nigeria is currently paying the price for the failure of institutions that should define how things are or ought to be. The hallmark of modern societies is the institutionalisation of ways of life or doing things. Based on this, nations, groups, and communities can say, “This is the way we do it here,” or that these are the rules that govern our operations here.
This failure explains why at our National Assembly, we used a voice vote to determine two-thirds of the Senate and the House to decide on a crucial national issue. That makes a mockery of the provision in Section 305 (6) (b) of the Nigerian Constitution 1999, as amended. Pray, by what technology do you determine two-thirds of the chorus echoed by 109 Senators and 360 Honourable members? If the Constitution of the land could be so shabbily treated, where else is our standard of living as a nation guaranteed?
Over time, accepting or accommodating such infractions stunts a country’s progress. It does this by delaying the process of habitualisation, the act through which norms, practices, values, and other aspects of institutionalisation take root through repetition. So, the next time similar occasions arise, there may not be a common ground on which everyone would stand to demand that the proper things be done.
Thus, Nigeria is now at such a point where no situation can be described in black and white but depends on how everyone sees it, according to the following anecdote. The first umpire, who was a “realist,” remarked, “Some is strikes and some is balls, and I calls them as they is.” Another, with less faith in the infallibility of the professional, countered with, “Some is strikes and some is balls, and I calls them as I sees them.” But the wisest umpire said, “Some is strikes and some is balls, but they ain’t nothing until I calls them.”
