Chilean Miners and the Nigerian State

The joyful news of the rescue of the miners trapped under the earth in Chile for months should be a good news for everyone everywhere. But not in Nigeria. This great news has turned into a sad fable about failure of the state in Nigeria.

On Thursday, I received an email with these words: “Last night I dreamt that 33 Nigerian miners were trapped underground and the government decided to send a capsule down to rescue them one after the other.

When the miners knew of the rescue plan, they began to argue amongst themselves on who goes first. Zoning was suggested but they could not agree on which zones will go first. Eventually in a struggle to determine who goes first, several of them got injured and MEND issued a threat message warning that they would set off a bomb if any South-south miner was critically injured. Meanwhile, the FEC had awarded the capsule contract to JB and we are still awaiting delivery three months later.

There is a probe going on to unravel this and retrieve the award sum before we get to the issue of what formula to adopt for the rescue and which miner comes out first. In the mean time, traditional rulers from the miners’ town are paying solidarity visits to the president to thank him for his efforts to rescue the miners.

And the first lady had just invited the wives of the Nigerian miners to Abuja for dinner at the Hilton! The first ladies from the 36 states will also be in attendance. All including the wives of the miners will wear the Goodluck for President Ankara.

CNN reported early this morning that after 10 months underground all the 33 Nigerian miners have died and the Nigerian government has declared seven days of mourning during which the Nigerian flag will be flown at half mast to honour the dead. Meanwhile, JB has sued the FGN for the balance of the contract sum”.

I think this is a wicked joke about Nigeria. I was more shocked when I read this fiction on Page Three of THISDAY newspaper of the same day. I found it distasteful that this comprehensive put-down of the capacity of the Nigerian state found its way into a well respected newspaper like the THISDAY. I was horrified about how foreigners would think about us after reading the fiction about the rescue of miners in Nigeria.

But my distress and horror were limited when I realized that going by media reports of how Nigeria has managed disasters in the past, this fable may not be as surreal and unimaginable to foreigners as I initially thought.

But the truth is that this story captures the problem of the last 50 years of Nigerian independence and the challenge of the next 50 years. Nigeria’s major problem is the absence of the sense of citizenship. Modern states are built on the conceptual foundations of citizenship. If there are no citizens there cannot be modern states as we understand them today. Democracy is possible where we have citizens.

Accountability is imaginary if citizens do not exist. It is not a happenstance that Saudi Arabia is not a democracy. There are no citizens there in the proper sense. There are of course nationals, but not citizens.

Only where people have rights that the states are ready to protect even against the leaders and ruling elites can we begin to talk of a modern democratic state.

So, the heroic effort of the Chilean government to dig the depth and rescue the miners quagmired under the earth is a clear demonstration of both the democratic disposition of the government and its capacity to deliver on its commitments. The central issues here are citizens and the capacity of the state. And this is where the sad fable about Nigeria calls for serious attention.

Chile could go this far because it values its citizens. The state exists for the citizens hence it could expend every resource to make sure not one of those miners trapped under the earth remained trapped. Even the United States marveled at the feat accomplished by not so rich Chile.

Now imagine what could have happened if the leaders (sorry, rulers) in Chile cared no hoot about the fate of those dispensable miners. Or like President Obasanjo at the bomb blast in Lagos, the Chilean President had shrugged off the concerns of the citizens and berated them for not being grateful that he managed to visit the tragedy sites.

In these circumstances we would not be talking about a historic and courageous rescue operation. We would have forgotten these miners and wished their widows and children God’s grace.

The real problem in Nigeria is not ethnicity as many people propogate. The problem is that there are no true citizens. No group of Nigerians is treated well as citizens. If the tragedy happened in Sokoto or Kano and all those trapped were Hausa-Fulani, the wheel of rescue would still be clogged. If it happened in Aba or Akure, the result would have been the same.

The problem is not that our leaders care only for people from their ethnic group. The problem is that they care for no one. The state is not for the citizen. The citizens are to sustain the state. Actually, the state is another name for a shifting oligarchy of those who have captured the state.

The lesson from Chile is simple and clear. The state becomes capable as it focuses on the welfare and wellbeing of the citizens. State capability means nothing if the state does not bother whether its citizens live or die.

A country that has won a natural lottery and can open the tap to get oil revenue without the contribution of its citizens may not care much if some of its citizens are trapped under the earth because it does not need the people to produce. Even when the state does not suffer from oil curse, its institutions and directive principles of state policy may dispose its elite to disregard the citizen. Such is the Nigerian case.

When such is the case, the tragedy like the one that happened in Chile will end disastrously. That is the message in the sad fable.