Those ‘rehashed’ figures

President Dilma Rousseff got Brazilian-styled troubles on her hands not long ago. That’s the same female president who had visited Nigeria in February. Her troubles were not unlike the troubles Nigerians had caused for their leaders weeks before her visit. And the causes of the troubles in both countries are no less reflective of why the Nigeria government recently took shots at the African Development Bank over some disputed development figures. But Rousseff’s had been three in one: The FIFA Confederation Cup had been on in June, Pope Francis was visiting, and at the same time Brazilians were in the streets protesting. Their government hadn’t thought possible such large -scale street protests, just like Nigeria’s leadership hadn’t back in January, 2012. Rather Brazil’s government had been going about the business of the 2013 Confederation Cup, eager to use it as a launch board for 2014 World Cup, the 2016 Summer Olympics as well as prepare for its 2020 bicentennial national independence celebration, the same way Nigeria is busy preparing for the 2014 centenary celebration. And to think that Nigerian Super Eagles could have been caught in the Brazil’s crisis on that occasion as any observers would recollect.

Footballers and their handlers had gone to Brazil to play in the Confederation Cup but some Nigerian embassy officials out there had thought it was cool to take them on a jamboree to a restaurant downtown. That at a time when there was unpredictable chaos in the streets. Officials knew, but they didn’t care; maybe some had cared more for the currency notes they would make for their pockets in the process, instead. It had taken an order from FIFA that Super Eagles should better stay in their hotel rooms to put a check on the thoughtlessness of the plan. The plan itself is typical of how some government officials plan here at home, while thoughtlessly leaving out variables that should ensure it has maximum benefits for the greater majority. It turned out that Brazil’s government officials had been operating in the same mode at the time of the Confederation Cup. That was the reason youths in that country had already turned into the streets –  in protest of how their officials go about the business of running government’s business – before government officials realised they had been dreaming about their self-professed fabulous economic performances. The street demonstrations were sparked off by something as little as an increase in bus and subway fares in São Paulo. Midway into June, the protests had spread to several cities in that nation of 200 million people. And new issues that surfaced had included inadequate infrastructure, education and health care, high cost of living, increasing government funding of major sports events and embezzlement, among others.

The protests were not just against Rousseff’s  federal government, state governors and lawmakers were included, as well as the politicians that had served under the immediate former President Lula Da Silva. Those ones had manipulated the judicial process such that they wouldn’t go behind bars long after courts had convicted them. Although Rousseff  had enjoyed 57 per cent approval among her people earlier on, polls taken after three weeks of protests gave her just 30 per cent. In the chaos, Rousseff announced that she had heard “the voice of the streets”, adding that public transport fares would be reduced, more doctors for the public health service would be hired, and that fight against inflation was being taken care of.  She thought of some landmark proposals to back it up. One was a national plebiscite on a political reform meant to make elections more representative. She couldn’t get it through as lawmakers developed cold feet, and judges pronounced the measures unconstitutional. Pope Francis who was visiting his home country, Brazil, for the first time after he became pope had rebuked vandals who infiltrated the protests, and after he left for the Vatican, the protests continued. Core to the protests is the dissatisfaction with how elected governments conduct the business of managing economic policy and the attendant socio-economic infrastructure. So Brazilians consider the political class as the main problem. And as a priest close to Pope Francis said, “The protests are against the government and unions that have not known how to interpret the public demands.” In essence, the protests sum up how Brazilians have over time silently watched their government push them to the wall while officials erroneously think they are performing miracles, the type that leaves majority of Brazilians in the backroom. All of that bring to mind the situation in Nigeria.

One direction to look in Nigeria’s case for similarities with Brazil, is the kind of argument officials put forward against some economic development figures that are as revealing as they are obvious. This is because a Nigerian looks around, sees the appalling condition of living and wonders where most of government’s economic development figures emanate from. Nigerians know that a report that the AfDB released recently does reflect the reality they see on the streets, yet Nigerian officials say AfDB’s figures are outdated. And sometimes what officials point to as the truth is more worrisome than the figures they go to the high heavens to deny. AfDB says the proportion of people (Nigerians) living below the national poverty line has worsened from 65.5 per cent in 1996 to 69.0 per cent in 2010. A Nigerian government official says, “In the first place, the Nigerian economy is doing much better than any other of its size on the continent, and the poverty statistics which were rehashed by the media from the 1996–2010 figures on which the AfDB report is based have been overtaken by the various interventions by President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration in the last two to three years.” That’s overstating it. Truth is, some figures such as in the area of foreign investment have improved, but the figures with regard to poverty reduction haven’t in a situation where the government can’t claim to have significantly reversed in two years the poverty line that had grown for more than 10 years, and at a time the population has been so much on the rise since 1996. And maybe the government will provide the exact figures of how far the interventions have reduced poverty line in the last two years. It’s better than the arm-chair theorising on the economic condition of Nigerians that officials claim has improved.

AfDB also says Nigeria’s prospect of halving poverty by 2015 seems weak, and that poverty is higher in rural areas at 73.2 per cent than in urban area at 61.8 per cent. To that, official reaction was that AfDB presents its figures without appropriately placing it in global context. That’s fine, except that when Brazilians took to the streets, it was only that nation’s political leaders that developed headaches and risked losing their jobs, not the entire globe. And there was that citing by the same official of South Africa’s unemployment rate of 26 per cent compared to Nigeria’s 24 per cent; this overlooks the fact that Nigeria lacks data that is comparably reliable and that South Africa doesn’t have Nigeria’s 160 million people. Of course, any Nigerian who comes face-to-face with fifty thousand applicants jostling for one hundred job slots will wonder if he has heard right when told that only 24 per cent of Nigeria’s working age is not gainfully employed. Place that side by side with AfDB’s report which further notes that an average of 1.8 million Nigerians had entered the labour market every year over the past five years. And further quoting statistics from the Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, AfDB has projected that the number of entrance to the Nigerian labour market annually would have grown from three million in 2012 to about 8.5 million in 2015. That points to gloomier poverty figures than what government officials say are rehashed, doesn’t it?

Add that to officials quoting jobs created only in thousands for both the public and private sectors. Obviously how precarious, living on the edge, economic condition of Nigerians has been is not appreciated by some in corridors of power, the same way their counterparts in Brazil didn’t until a matter as little as hike in bus fares pushed the silent sufferers in Brazil to occupy streets, and had refused for long to be persuaded otherwise neither by the lure of Confederation Cup that their national team won, nor the Pope’s visit. One could recollect that when Nigerians had displayed the Brazilian type of protests last year January, it was especially over how government had  poured so much fund into subsidising fuel and the larger part of the populace benefitted nothing. At the moment, one should rather think coming up with strategies that bring significant turnaround in the economic condition of the larger segment of the populace is what officials should concentrate on, rather than engage in routine denials that Nigerians have learnt to throw up their legs and laugh at.

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