By Namdex
To say that 2023 has been a challenging year in Nigeria would be a gross understatement.
The economy seems in terminal decline, with the Naira at an all-time low against foreign currencies, poverty rate increasing, and the government on the verge of financial meltdown, with a reported 90% of the country’s annual budget being spent on debt service alone.
Faith and confidence in the political system in Nigeria are all but dead, with almost every key organ and institution of the nation, from the election body INEC to the federal judiciary, marred in one sordid scandal or another.
For a country that specializes in finding new lows even when it has reached the nadir of its moral and ethical barrel, the current circumstances are dire.
What is petrifying about the country today is that there was always a sense that while Nigerians might be the architects of our gradual demise, we were still in control of the destination of our ‘national ship’ as it were. Alas, we now have as much control over our national ship as a fly has over the wind.
Nigeria has long ago ceded its fate to a political and economic system that we created called the ‘Turn-by-Turn’ system. The turn-by-turn system does not fit along the spectrum from democracy to theocracy, nor from capitalism to communism.
The Turn-by-Turn system is so far from political and economic orthodoxy that it can only be found in Nigeria and in the psyche of Nigerians.
Turn-by-turn can be characterized as an implicit agreement, and social contract between Nigerians that whoever wields power has the right to chop, steal, abuse, lie, cheat, and behave with impunity while everybody else waits their turn to do the same.
This system has turned our sisters and daughters into prostitutes in broad daylight, made beggars of some men and animalized others, criminalized our children, and stolen our national dignity, yet we persist with it.
Nigerians persist with the Turn-by-Turn system because we all tragically believe in it and are complicit in one way or another in its preservation.
We believe in it because it is the only system we have ever known since the country’s independence and because we have conditioned one generation after the next to believe that it is the only system that can work in Nigeria.
As such, even if we eliminate all the political and economic elites who abuse the masses in the country today, there will still be a new batch of Nigerians ready and willing to take their turn.
The only hope for salvation for the well-meaning Nigerian masses who see the fallacy of the Turn-by-Turn system is to vigorously resist it and the incentive structures that power it.
But how can one fight back against a system that allows those in power to engage in state capture to such an extent that the system seems impenetrable and its elite guardians invincible? The answer to that question is the responsibility of every Nigerian to discover. There is no angel coming to save us, we must all become our own heroes.