Of late, there has been a conversation among some African leaders about asserting independence from entities external to the continent. This was around the time a summit took place in May between France and African nations in Kenya. Political leaders talk of partnership, not dependence. They talk of using African resources to develop Africa. They talk of an African solution to an African problem. I was pondering the likelihood of this, considering the situation of most African nations, when Charles Onunaiju, the director of the Centre for China Studies, Nigeria, spoke in a recent TV interview. Onunaiju, who has worked as a journalist, expressed his concerns about dysfunctional states on the continent. According to him, these are “hollow states” that are not delivering on their mandate for African people.
This situation makes one ask: can political leaders achieve their newly professed aim within the context of the state that Onunaiju describes? States in Africa, as currently constituted, are the creation of European powers that launched a war of conquest across the continent in the 19th century. They, arbitrarily, carved the kingdoms, chiefdoms, empires, and emirates of the pre-colonial period into modern states. Earlier in the 18th century, kingdoms and principalities in Europe had been transformed into states, and the same idea was brought to Africa. By definition, a state is a body of people that is politically organised, especially one that occupies a clearly defined territory and is sovereign. The term state could also be applied to a political system that governs such a body of people. And it could mean one of the constituent parts of a nation, as in any of the 36 states in Nigeria.
A fully sovereign state has some key features: a defined territory, a permanent population, a government, the capacity to enter relations with other states, a monopoly on the use of force, and international recognition. Also, a state has permanence, i.e. unlike specific government administrations, which can change or be overthrown. Outlining these features allows for a measured, not anecdotal, assessment of the condition of states in Africa. So, one could ask: in what sense can we say states in Africa are dysfunctional, ineffective, hollow? I cite current happenings across the continent. For instance, a state has monopolistic control over the use of weapons and, as such, should provide security of life and property for citizens who have no weapons. Is this happening in most African countries?
Since a state is sovereign over a defined territory and people, it should see to the welfare of the people. It should provide conditions where people can have the opportunity to earn a decent living, have good health, have access to education, and pursue their dreams. For me, the reason a state exists is the people. If the people are in bad condition, as we mostly see across the African continent, this indicates the ineffectiveness of states in delivering on its mandate. A glance at the Western nations for comparison brings this point home. Citizens have access to basic things of life such as food, shelter, education, healthcare, a job, security of life and property, opportunity to earn a decent wage, as well as a welfare package for the jobless. At least, states purposefully create opportunities for citizens to access the most basic things. Governments out there measure their performance by how well citizens are doing on these indicators. And governments win and lose elections based on their performance in these areas.
Do governments win or lose elections based on these factors in most African countries, where the poverty level in the population is sometimes as high as 70 per cent? Do most governments win or lose elections based on the high level of insecurity that is witnessed across the African continent? In Burkina Faso, for instance, the leader in a military uniform has just told citizens to forget about democracy. This means that whether the state does well for people or not, the government will continue to rule. It’s the same story across the continent where sit-tight leaders organize election and win over 98 per cent of the votes, even though the economic condition of their people is horrible. Only in Africa, where free and fair elections are scarce, leaders aren’t accountable and responsible to the electorate, do such things happen. Meanwhile, leaders here talk of wanting to be independent when everything from aid, loans, debt, security hardware, vaccines, grains, etc., points to dependence on foreign nations.
Having laid this backdrop, I make my contribution to Onunaiju’s observation by submitting that the state as an entity isn’t hollow by default; those who run it make it what it is. A state is as effective as the characters running it. Though a state is an intangible entity, the term also refers to the government or administration in charge of it. Humans constitute government. Government runs the state. So, can a state be any better than the humans running it? As such, it’s the men and women running a state that should be our focus, rather than the intangible entity called state that can’t run itself. I’ve expressed a similar opinion on this page over the years, and it’s mostly been in connection with the often-quoted words that Africa needs “strong institutions, not strong men”. I’ve asked while making contributions in some setting: who makes institutions strong in the first place? Or, do institutions just become strong of themselves?
Furthermore, what is an institution if not the people who work in it? Or, does the concrete building, the office complex, constitute the institution? I think an institution cannot become strong if the people running it are not people of strong character who stand up for what is right.
An institution can’t be strong if it doesn’t have people who follow processes as stipulated under the law. The strong institution executes law to the letter, is no respecter of persons, and it’s filled with dedicated people of integrity, incorruptible people. It’s the people in an institution who exhibit these traits, not the concrete buildings, and this way, the institution acquires a reputation of being strong. In the recent past, I stated here that at one stage or another, a strong institution must have strong men who acquire for it its reputation. I mean, at one stage or another, an institution needs strong men to build it up to the status where we can say, it is strong.
Regarding this submission, I’ve cited the example of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation that had a strong man – J. Edgar Hoover – as its first Director. The FBI is a strong institution respected across the world, but the traits exhibited by one strong man and his dedicated team laid the foundation of that reputation. This leads back to the state and how effective it is. Still on Onunaiju’s observation, I ask: to what extent can we separate the effectiveness of the state from the people running it? I don’t think we can viably do such a separation. As such, when we blame the state for non-performance, we essentially blame the characters running it. This raises the issue of quality leadership. If the quality is poor, it impacts the state. If the political leadership is captured by outside influences, the state is captured, and citizens lose big. In French-speaking West African nations, for instance, the allegation that their political leaders are under the control of their former colonial masters is common. No outsiders serve the interests of citizens; everything done is first in the interest of outsiders.
Many African nations are caught in this vicious cycle. Nothing happens for the citizens, especially in states where the political leadership is corrupt. Among the leaders, there’s mostly no consensus as to the direction in which to take their nation. Such a state isn’t better than a flat tyre; it’s useless in moving the car forward. Many political leaders in Africa are more concerned about ruling forever than providing good governance. Once survival in power is the focus of the political leadership, the machinery of state is tuned towards achieving that and nothing more. The state can’t deliver anything worthwhile to citizens. As such, the “hollow” African state refers essentially to Africa’s political leadership. The state can only deliver what its operators wish to deliver. This clarification indicates where the focus – the call for change and the effort to bring about change – should be. It helps us know exactly who to hold, so that we don’t continue to focus on the intangible state that cannot be held.
