SA Must Learn From A Collapsing Nigeria -Mpumelelo Mkhabela

There are too many articles from all around the world, all aiming at exposing the consequences of corruption which is bringing Nigeria to her knees, I will keep trying to bring to you the most thought-provoking and well captured ones. From the article below and so many other unpublished articles in peoples' minds, you would understand that the Boko Haram of today would have started earlier in Nigeria from the South-East of Nigeria if they (the Easterners) had not resorted to running away from the country to seek survival across the world. Please read:

"TWO seemingly unrelated and heartbreaking events tell us the tragic story that is Nigeria.

One is the failure of the government to mount a convincing rescue operation to save the lives of those trapped in the collapsed building of an alleged prophet.

Even the return of the dead to their respective countries, including South Africa, was like mission impossible. In fact, it IS mission impossible as we wait for the remaining 11 bodies. The families are unable to find closure.

The second is the ongoing genocide against innocent Nigerians by the terrorist group Boko Haram.

Not only are the blood-thirsty members of this group killing randomly, they are also enslaving people and seizing military assets from the Nigerian army. Both cases have political implications.

The Nigerian government failed to locate and quickly remove the remains of people trapped in a building.

It is unable to hit back at a terrorist group that is alive and moving around Nigerian territory.

Nothing can better illustrate a weak and collapsing state.

The senseless killing of people that has reached genocidal proportions and the Nigerian government's failure to defend its citizens against a known enemy suggest that the basis for any state worth the name - the capacity to maintain internal security - has effectively collapsed.

It makes a mockery of the ongoing election campaigns in that country. Elections are important as they give citizens an opportunity to elect a government of their choice. But what is the use of electoral democracy if its only outcome would be to provide a figment of legitimacy to a government that cannot deliver what should be the democratic dividend of a functioning state: security and stability. Or if it cannot provide essential emergency services.

South Africa and many other African governments should study the Nigerian case, not only with a view to help - which they must - in tackling Boko Haram, but also to understand why Nigeria has descended to this level.

There is a real risk that failure to understand some of the avoidable causes of the Nigerian tragedy could result in it emerging in other parts of the continent.

One of the possible many root causes is the failure of successive Nigerian governments to listen to the "clever blacks" of that country, intellectual giants like Wole Soyinka and the late Chinua Achebe. Common in their analysis of Nigeria over the years has been a warning about the growing problem of corruption.

In South Africa, it is common cause that those who complain of corruption are easily labelled as "neoliberal" and some other political terms deemed insulting.

But it is important for South Africans to understand that corruption is not just a problem because it diverts public resources to undue beneficiaries.

One of the most devastating consequences of corruption is that it weakens the state's ability to maintain security.

Corrupt leaders and corrupt governments are a security risk to their own country and people.

In his latest book Political Order and Political Decay, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama writes that Nigeria's corruption is an "entirely different magnitude". This corruption of the worst kind corresponds, according to Fukuyama, with "one of the most tragic development failures in the contemporary world".

On the failure of the Nigerian government to deal decisively with the kidnapping of schoolgirls, Fukuyama writes: "Boko Haram and other dissident groups find the country's corrupt government an easy target for their activities due to its extraordinarily weak legitimacy. The government's response to the attacks has been, in turn, slow and feckless."

"Nigeria's real institutional deficit," writes Fukuyama, "lies in the lack of a strong modern and capable state and the absence of rule of law that provides for property rights, citizen's security and transparency in transactions."

Fukuyama says rather than having a modern state that provides public services, the Nigerian government's main activity is predatory. (Could this be the type that Zwelinzima Vavi was referring to when he warned about the emergence of political hyenas in South Africa?) There is nothing entirely new in the analysis. Achebe had hit the nail on the head much earlier in a 1983 essay appropriately titled The Trouble with Nigeria.

Achebe wrote: "Although Nigeria is without any shadow of doubt one of the most corrupt nations in the world, there has not been one high public officer in the 23 years of our independence who has been made to face the music for official corruption.

"And so, from fairly timid manifestations in the 1960s, corruption has grown bold and ravenous as, with each succeeding regime, our public servants have become more reckless and blatant."

The cumulative consequences of corruption is there for all to see in Nigeria today: A state that is unable to defend its citizens.

Surely, we must learn from this."