LAGOS — In Nigerian Pidgin English (Naijá), there’s a word to describe the problems and difficulties that plague daily life: wahala. That expression was on everyone’s lips one recent morning at a popular market in Lagos, the country’s economic capital.
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“Before the economy was on its knees, now it’s in a wheelchair!” says Samuel, unloading crates of onions from a truck. “A few weeks ago, you’d pay 700 naira ($0.41) for a bag of rice, but now it’s 2,000 ($1.19) or more!”
The day after his election, the new president, Bola Tinubu, decided to devalue the naira, the local currency, which had been artificially supported. Since then, the inflationary spiral seems unstoppable, in an economic cataclysm in a country where almost half the population lives below the poverty line — and sometimes more in the poorest northern states.
Endemic corruption
A few meters from the market stalls, a row of battered minibuses wait for travelers. Backwards cap and imitation sunglasses on his head, Femi tries to attract customers.
“You think the bus ticket is too expensive? Go complain to Tinubu!” he shouts to passers-by, frantically counting and recounting a thick wad of bills. That is Tinubu’s other economic measure: to eliminate fuel subsidies, which cost the government billions of dollars a year. An unpopular but necessary decision according to the new administration, which has tripled the price of a gas tank, plunging the population into misery.
Nigeria’s population is resilient, but we may soon reach a breaking point.
After a few minutes, Femi’s minibus, packed with a dozen passengers, starts up with a bang. “Never give up! Work and pray!” reads the message on the rear window.
“Nigeria’s population is resilient, but we may soon reach a breaking point,” warns Lagos-based political analyst Ikemesit Effiong. For this expert on of Nigerian society, the economic crisis could lead the country straight into a democratic crisis. Democracy in Nigeria is a recent experience: since the country’s independence, coups d’état and military regimes followed one another until 1999, when the current Republic was born.
The National Theatre, a building in the shape of a military kepi built in Lagos in the 1970s, serves to refresh the memory of any Nigerians who may have forgotten their country’s political history.
Despite the arrival of democracy, economic disparities have never been greater in the country, where almost half of Nigerians live on less than a day. The cause: a corrupt minority, enriching itself at the expense of an economically destitute population. In 2023, the country ranked 145th out of 180 in the NGO Transparency International’s corruption index.
The extraction and sale of oil allows the embezzlement of billions of dollars, which end up in the pockets of private players and the ruling economic elites instead of bolstering state coffers. According to a 2018 Ifri report, the federal government “lost” more than 4% of the 9 billion it earned from its oil windfall between 1999 and 2008; .6 billion “literally evaporated into thin air”.
Ballot box destruction and vote rigging
In a cramped room of an apartment in Lekki, a residential district of Lagos, a few journalists are busy at their keyboards. On the wall, an old newspaper cover is framed. On the front page: Bola Tinubu, the country’s new president and former governor of Lagos, nicknamed “the city’s godfather” because of the opaque business links he forged there and still enjoys. Yusuf Omotayo covered the election campaign for The Republic, a local magazine launched five years ago. “Many Nigerians believe that the election was rigged by Tinubu,” he says today.
All democratic indicators are at half-mast, and voter turnout for the 2023 presidential election was at its lowest since the country’s return to democracy in 1999.
“Nigerians’ confidence in the political class has eroded,” says Nigeria specialist Marc Antoine Pérouse de Montclos. “Political parties are empty shells. There is no program, no ideology, nothing. Power belongs to the richest.”
A glaring illustration of this selection by money: Tinubu’s presidential campaign is said to have cost nearly billion, according to Ibrahim Jibrin, a political science researcher at the Centre for Democracy and Development in Lagos.
The sound of boots
Yet Nigeria is one of the few remaining democratic regimes in the region. Over the past three years, coups d’état have multiplied in West Africa. After Mali in 2021, and Burkina Faso in 2022, it was the turn of Niger — a neighbor with which Nigeria shares 1,600 kilometers of borders — to fall into the hands of putschist generals.
Tinubu, then President of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) attempted to restore order by threatening military intervention. His determination that reflects the nervousness of Nigerian authorities in the face of this epidemic.
The army doesn’t want power.
For the time being, the sound of boots is unlikely to be heard on the marble floors of the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja, the country’s capital.“The army doesn’t want power,” says a Lagos-based security consultant. ”The situation in the country is so chaotic that they have no desire to get involved.”
For Pérouse de Montclos, the Nigerian army would have too much to lose financially by overthrowing the civilian government. “There’s a tacit deal with the military: the civilian government lets them get rich and, in exchange, the army doesn’t attempt a coup,” he says.
Democracy nowhere to be found
On one of the arterial roads running through Lagos Mainland, the popular mainland part of the city, travel agency posters abound. They sell their potential customers Japa, a word in the local Yoruba language that means to flee.
Faced with a political and economic stalemate, middle-class Nigerians — those who can afford a visa and a plane ticket — are leaving the country. “The first question I asked myself when I woke up was: How much longer will I last in Nigeria?” says Ifiok, whom I met in a restaurant in the Ikeja district. “All around me, people are leaving to try their luck in Europe or the United States, but if there’s no one left here, the country will collapse,” he says.
For his part, Yusuf, a political journalist with The Republic, tries to be optimistic: “The country has had 25 years of uninterrupted democracy, with six elections. This is the first time this has happened in our history. Let’s be patient, we’re on the right track.”
We might have to invent our own system.
Professor Laja Odukoya, who teaches political science at the University of Lagos, disagrees. For him, democracy in Nigeria is an impossible equation. Sitting on the leather sofa of his office overlooking the thick greenery of the campus, the white-haired professor wonders: “What if democracy is an ideological product that the West is trying to sell us? In that case, we might have to invent our own system.”
He has coined a term himself: to replace a democracy that cannot be found, he proposes demo-louwabi, from the Yoruba word louwabi, meaning a virtuous man of integrity and charisma. A leader who would not seek to enrich himself by monopolizing the country’s wealth to the detriment of the population. It remains to be seen whether this man of integrity will come to power through the ballot box or by force of arms.
The professor evades the question with a smile: “For that, I’d need a crystal ball. But in this country, anything is possible.”
