The way to tell what is really happening by reading newspapers – which is not always very easy, is it? – is to look for what both sides in arguments agree about. And in Africa the reports which I read from time to time all seem to agree that educational standards are falling. The only argument is about whose fault that is.
Take this report, which I found on a google hit list from typing in, as is my occasional wont, “education”:
Principals in secondary schools in Ebonyi State have been identified as responsible for the falling standard of education in Post-Primary schools as they contribute significantly to examination malpractices in the state.
This was the view of members of State House of Assembly who spoke when the planning committee on the forthcoming Ebonyi State educational summit paid advocacy visit to the House in Abakaliki on Monday.
The House members frowned at the prevailing situation where many principals allegedly collect money from students and aid them during NECO and WASC examinations and even negotiate deals between the students and examination supervisors.
Sounds like Nigerian business as usual is proceeding as usual. I do not know anyone with direct experience of Nigeria who does not regard the place as the world capital of anarcho-capitalism, in a bad way. In London – which is now, like the Internet itself, infested with dishonest Nigerians – our default attitude is: crooks the lot of them, until an individual can prove himself an exception to the rule. Anyone not totally prejudiced against Nigerians, from the trust point of view, is totally ignorant.
At first the link to this report didn’t work, and my immediate inclination was to blame a Nigerian somewhere for taking a bribe instead of doing his job, but that may have been somewhat unfair. (And when I checked the link again before posting this, it was back to not working again. Bloody Nigerians!)
Not that those “House members” who “frowned” at all this are going to do anything about it. They are just higher up in the bribery chain.
My solution: make Nigeria anarcho-capitalist in a good way. Stop trying to have a government that does anything, because whatever government there is will be totally corrupt. Make the system that everything is for sale and everything negotiable official, including law and order. Then the place might work semi-reasonably.
But then again it still might not.
In defence of the Nigerians, I think that one of the major reasons their society is so corrupt is given by Thomas Sowell:
The corruption of the political and justice system there has filtered down into almost every aspect of life.
It would be interesting to know how old the Nigerian reputation for corruption is.
My guess is that the seriously bad corruption dates from that appalling moment when they discovered oil there. Oil seems to do countries about as much good as huge amounts of foreign aid does to them, i.e. a large minus quantity.
Basically oil turns the government into a huge bucket of money, and saves it from the tiresome business of having to preside over a country that actually works reasonably well, and will thus generate sustainable tax revenue. Just like foreign aid.
See Perry’s recent postings about foreign aid.
Not sure oil has much to do with it.
It’s true that according to Transparency International, Nigeria is the second most corrupt country in the world (scoring 8.4 out of 10) — but the prize-winner is Bangladesh, with 8.8 points. And Bangladesh has about as much oil as Wales. At any rate, oil and crookery don’t go together like a horse and carriage. You can have one without the other.
More here:
(Link)
I’m sure Abiola will chip in on this but he had a very interesting post back in January about how stability eludes countries such as Nigeria, comprising as it does many competing ethnic groups.
There is no such thing as Nigerian nationalism, you are either Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa (or one of a smaller grouping) thus the primary concern is to make sure that “your lot” doesn’t lose out compared to one or other of “the other lot”s Such issues don’t arise if a country is partitioned along recognised ethnic lines.
Frank hits Charles’ hot button again …
Glad to see you’ve become an Enoch Powell fan, Frank. For ‘recognised ethnic lines’ read ‘recognised racial lines’.
You’re making progress.
Actually Bangladesh has huge natural gas reserves. Up to now there has been little market for them. However, there is an increasing effort worldwide to establish a system for liquifying and shipping gas in large supercooled tanker ships. I am reserving judgement on how well this will work, although I no longer find the idea as dubious as I once did. If it works, the hydrocarbon economy of the world will change as the oil rich countries are not the same ones as the gas rich countries.
As far as corruption goes, I suspect the respect for law of the culture is of prime importance. If a culture has been eradicated and replaced with nothing as happened with the European colonization and decolonization of many parts of the world, something little better than barbarism is to be expected. Perhaps the Nigerians are actually doing relatively well compared to say, Ruanda.
As Frank has already mentioned, inter-ethnic competition has a lot to do with the rampant corruption in Nigeria. Add oil into the mix and it’s no mystery that the place is as it is.
When people see their leaders brazenly looting and getting away with it, the message they’re naturally going to take away is that it’s OK to steal. In the early 1980s Umaru Dikko stole $1 billion before fleeing to London, where he was graciously granted asylum by Margaret Thatcher’s government, and now he’s back in Nigeria strutting around as a Northern “leader”, as if nothing ever happened. Ibrahim Babangida, despite his egregiously corrupt dictatorship, is now regarded as an elder statesman looking after Northern interests. Sani Abacha’s family very generously offered to return some $1.2 billion in stolen funds in agreement for being allowed to keep the rest of the $3 billion or so he stole in his 4 years in office; even then, Obasanjo still managed to raise the ire of the Northern leadership, who accused him of pursuing an ethnic vendetta against Northerners! Worse yet, many in the North actually swallowed this scenario as an honest description of events. As you can see, one can get away with almost anything in Nigeria under the cover of ethnic chauvinism.
Where does the rampant international e-mail financial fraud game fit into the pattern of corruption?
It seems like every mom and pop scam operation is trying to get those escudos, pounds and other curencies into Nigeria.
Nigerian business can’t be proceding as usual. I’m not getting as many people who’ve stashed millions and want my help to get it out of the country.
Glad to see you’ve become an Enoch Powell fan, Frank. For ‘recognised ethnic lines’ read ‘recognised racial lines’. You’re making progress.
I’d wait a while before sending me out the EP fan club application form just yet, if I were you.
For starters, I was paraphrasing Abiola’s argument which I consider is relevant for countries which contain pre-existing ethnic divisions but less relevant for liberal capitalist democracies with a “volunteer” immigrant population. If you are a Northern Ireland Nationalist, your primary concern tends to be your community’s prestige relative to the other lot. If you are a Briton of Italian descent, the prestige of the “Italian community” is a less pressing concern.
Secondly, “recognised ethnic lines” do not mean “recognised recognised racial lines” as should be obvious by the fact that we are talking about the decidedly monoracial Nigeria.
Frank,
Strictly speaking, you’re right.
OK it was a bit of a troll on my part. But my real point is that if multiethnic groups belonging to much the same race can’t live side by side, how does one expect multiracial societies to survive peacefully — in particular if interracial cognitive skills differ to such an extent that some gifted groups inevitably run the show, while others end up collecting the garbage and complaining about ‘institutional discrimination’?
Once again, Charles you beg the question, assuming what you seek to prove.
What makes you think that being the same “race” is any guarantee of empathy?
..how does one expect multiracial societies to survive peacefully
One might ask why if competing ethnic groups who all listen to pop music cannot live together, how can we expect people who like different types of music to get on?
For someone who parades an interest in IQ you seem to have great difficulty understanding sets. Indeed you would probably strugglee with some of the questions in an IQ test such as:
How ’bout those “cognitive skills” now Charles?
Mutli-ethnic (NOT multi-cultural) communities can live peacefully together if individual human rights trump group rights. The minute that group rights take precedence over individual human rights, that’s when the ethnic resentments start to build and the blood starts to flow. In Nigeria (which probably never had true individual human rights over group rights to begin with) or in a liberal capitalist democracy (we once had individual rights, but are being pushed into group rights by the “progressives” at an alarming pace.)
My two cents’ worth.