Misery zone

 Nigerians were a more miserable lot over the past year than the year before it, a new global research index has revealed. Hanke’s Annual Misery Index published early last week computed indicators in 156 countries and showed Nigeria dipping to the 11th spot among the world’s most miserable nations in 2021, from the 15th place where she was ranked in 2020. In other words, the level of misery worsened and pushed the country four ranks up among the world’s hellholes. The misery index is calculated on macroeconomic indicators in respective country such as the unemployment rate, cost of access to funds as reflected in the lending rate, inflationary trend indexed by spiralling cost of goods and services, and dwindling level of consumption evidenced by  low gross domestic product (GDP) rate. 

According to research data published on Twitter by Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at John Hopkins University, Nigeria was the fourth most miserable country in Africa last year, trailing only Sudan, Zimbabwe and Angola. The report showed the five least miserable countries as Brunei, Switzerland, China, Taiwan and Japan. The United States ranked 95th overall on the global index and as the 14th among least miserable nations.

The misery index was reckoned on the wobbly performance of the Nigerian economy that saw the GDP growth rate at 0.51 percent as at the first quarter of 2021, high inflation rate at 18.17 percent, and prime lending rate at 11.24 percent as at last April. Economic growth rate averaged at 0.68 percent, which is dismal in comparison with a population growth rate of about 2.5 percent yearly since 1999. Misery can’t but grow amidst a high population rate in the face of weak economic growth that saw unemployment rate hit 33.3 percent in the last quarter of 2020 according to figures computed by the official national agency, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), up from 3.79 percent in 1999. Besides, there have been two recessions between 2016 and 2019; and the NBS did confirm the consumer price index (CPI), which measures inflation, to have risen to 15.92 percent year-on-year in March, this year. Those indicators added up to push Nigeria’s misery index points to 49.22 – a significant leap from 41.12 index points recorded at the start of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency. Put in other words, Nigeria experienced a higher misery level in recent years and is facing the worst hardship under the current administration.

Hanke’s misery index may seem remote, but it corresponds with a more prominent index, the World Happiness Report by United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which ranked Nigeria 118th country on happiness indicators out of 146 nations surveyed in 2021. This was two spots lower than Nigeria’s position in the preceding year and located her among the 20 least happy countries of the world. The World Happiness Report is based on indicators from six categories of assessment namely GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity of the general population, and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels. 

In the 2022 World Happiness Report published to commemorate UN’s International Day of Happiness in March, Nigeria ranked behind 20 other African countries on the happiness index, with Mauritius taking the lead on the continent and ranking 52nd on the global scale. Libya ranked 86th in the world and second in Africa. Other top 20 countries in Africa include Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Senegal, South Africa, The Gambia, Algeria and Liberia. Others like Congo, Morocco, Mozambique, Cameroon, Ghana, Niger, Benin, Guinea and Burkina Faso also ranked ahead of Nigeria, though no African nation numbered in the top 50 spots. Nordic nations retained their dominance on the happiness index, with Finland remaining the world’s happiest country for the fifth consecutive year. Neighbouring Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland were also well placed on the happiness index: Denmark held the second place followed by Iceland in the third place, with Sweden and Norway in seventh and eighth position respectively. Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were ranked fourth, fifth and sixth while Israel held the ninth place, and New Zealand rounded out the top 10. As in the preceding year, the annual index ranked Afghanistan the unhappiest country, followed closely by Lebanon.

“Misery index: Nigeria experienced a higher misery level in recent years and is facing the worst hardship under the current administration.”

So, Nigeria slipped on both the misery and world happiness indexes in the past year. And it isn’t that the country has always fared badly on those indicators. In 2018, Nigeria ranked as the fifth happiest country in Africa and 91st globally on the world happiness index. A year before that (2017) when 155 countries were surveyed, she was the sixth happiest nation in Africa and the 95th in global ranking. At the last count however, Nigeria trailed no fewer than 20 African countries on the happiness index. An obvious point to make of this is that the misery of citizens is deepening in the face of economic hardships fuelled by rouge inflation that has seen more than 90million Nigerians fall below the poverty line, and a high level of insecurity that makes the safety of ordinary citizens a lucky dip of survival on daily basis. To be sure, it isn’t that this country is poor considering the ease with which political actors throw in humongous sums in pursuit of their aspirations regarding the 2023 poll. But the wealth is far from being fairly distributed. They are the proverbial one percent, and the sociological environment – economic and securitywise, among others – in which the 99 percent operate is crushing and stretches general discomfiture. The misery and world happiness indexes are reliable pointers to the pervasive mood of the citizenry and windows for reality check on the status quo. In short, there is deepening misery in the land and government has the duty to relieve the misery.

ASUU strike and the threat by NANS

University students under the auspices of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) have threatened to disrupt primaries planned by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) unless the public university system that is currently shuttered is first reopened. The major political parties have scheduled primaries for selecting their candidates in the 2023 general election for late May 2022, but public universities are presently under lock owing to an industrial action by lecturers in the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) who have now been joined by the non-academic staff unions. The students deplored the seeming preoccupation of officials of government who should be responsible for resolving the labour crisis with 2023 political aspiration. For instance, Labour and Employment Minister Chris Ngige and Education Minister of State Emeka Nwajiuba have thrown their hats in the ring for the presidential race.

In a statement early last week, NANS president, Sunday Asefon, said the threat became necessary following “failed peaceful attempts” to ensure that officials concerned heed the union’s calls for resolution of the crisis “We have given mediators time to prevail on the Federal Government to resolve issues with ASUU and ensure that our students resume on their different campuses, but it seems all mediation failed or is failing as the case maybe. We have also in the past weeks seen those saddled with great responsibility in the education sector and…responsibilities of resolving labour crises declaring interests to contest for the seat of the President come 2023,” the NANS statement said inter alia, indicating that the planned disruption of primaries is a desperate recourse.

Timelines for electoral activities towards the 2023 poll are a statutory matter, and it will be a needless run-in with the law for students to interfere. But NANS has a good point about officials taking responsibility. In other climes, public officers resign their portfolio for failings they may not be directly responsible for, but which fall under their oversight. Ngige and Nwajiuba have a moral baggage overhanging their respective presidential aspiration, and the least they can do is resign their ministerial job to free themselves up for that aspiration if they can’t do much to resolve the closure of the university system.