NIGERIANS might be forgiven for thinking they have
travelled back in time. Their president, Muhammadu Buhari, has revived
some of the economic policies he favoured when he was last in power, as a
military dictator in the 1980s, such as restricting imports and
propping up the currency. Such retro thinking has failed to rescue
Nigeria from its first recession in 20 years; indeed, it has probably
made it worse. And now
social policy is going back in time, too. Under
a new “national reorientation” campaign called “Change Begins with Me”
Mr Buhari wants to tame Nigerians. Moral “degeneration”, he says, is the
reason that drivers run red lights and militants blow up pipelines.
“Our value system has been badly eroded,” the president lamented in a
speech that plagiarised Barack Obama’s 2008 victory address. A
presidential spokesman blamed an “overzealous” speech-writer who will
face “appropriate sanction”.
Others may face
the same fate. A “War Against Indiscipline” brigade, first drafted by Mr
Buhari in 1984, was relaunched last month and is hunting for funds for
its 150,000 volunteers, who are patriotically clad in green and white.
According to the National Orientation Agency (whose Orwellian
departments include one for “Behaviour Modification”), their job is to
restore order and “inculcate the spirit of nationalism in all
Nigerians”.
Nigeria’s public services have been
hollowed out by years of corruption, and some locals remember the era
of military rule as more orderly. Others remember it as brutal. During
Mr Buhari’s first War Against Indiscipline soldiers used horse whips to
beat those who littered or jumped queues and punished others by making
them jump like frogs. “It became totally arbitrary,” says Clement
Nwankwo, a human-rights campaigner. One of his friends, he recalls, was
jailed for owning an unlicensed telex machine.
The
dangers of unleashing the moral police are manifest. One man has been
arrested for naming his dog after the president. In Kano, a mostly
Muslim northern state, an Islamic unit called the Hisbah has long terrorised people accused of committing adultery.
Mr
Buhari’s critics gripe that, if he wants to make Nigeria a more moral
country, he should start by cleaning up the government. Police officers
regularly extort bribes with menaces. The army is accused of killing and
torturing civilians. In Lagos the state government’s “Kick Against
Indiscipline” enforcement team demands weekly bribes from long-suffering
roadside vendors.
Matthew Kukah, a bishop in
the northern city of Sokoto, doubts that Mr Buhari’s campaign will work.
“Chaos is a function of scarcity,” he argues. “You cannot expect hungry
people to line up for a few bags of rice.”
