by Guy Arnold
On the subject of centralization in the Nigerian Federation another commentator draws attention to the impact of the military: ‘Centralist by organization and outlook, relatively unimpeded by local or regional claims and pressures, frequently guided by the ideals of nationalism or national greatness, and standing to advance their own careers considerably’, successive military governments in Nigeria have sought to promote integration ‘… by means of far-reaching and comprehensive – but not revolutionary – programmes of consolidation and centralization.’6 Awareness of the complexities of problems always appears to outpace the capacity to resolve them.
One of Nigeria’s most acute problems concerns its ever-growing population related to its resources and capacity to develop them. The rate of population growth is alarming: in 1953 the population stood at 31 million, in 1963 at 56 million, by 1985 an estimated 98 million. Thus, over 32 years the population increased by 42.3 million or 76 per cent. ‘In traditional Nigerian society, the wealth of an individual was assessed by the sheer size of his household. The household included several wives, numerous children, many relations as well as a significant number of indentured labourers’ while ‘Another index of a man’s wealth and status was the size of his herds of cattle, sheep and goats. Essentially then, the household was, in the past, the pivotal basis for assessing a man’s social relevance and importance.’ In many respects, despite increasing urbanization and other changes, such criteria still stand. At the end of the 1980s, ‘Those within the 0–15 years age bracket constitute about half, or more precisely 47 per cent, of the population while those aged 64 years and above account for about 2 per cent. The consequence is that every productive Nigerian is unwittingly saddled with the responsibility of feeding, housing, clothing and educating a child.’ (In developed countries, the ratio was two to three to one child.) For this burgeoning and comparatively young population to be productive, adequate health facilities and services were required – and too often were not available. Much of Nigeria’s population had little or no chance of securing access to educational institutions even on the assumption of spectacular improvements in the country’s overall economic performance and the surpluses that were created would always be instantly consumed by a population that was growing exponentially. The Dialogue pointed out how ‘… 27 years after the 1963 census, Nigeria has not been able to conduct an acceptable head count. In spite of the numerous and known benefits and advantages of a national census, it is sad to note the inability of succeeding governments, military and civilian, to successfully conduct a census exercise. Participants (in the Dialogue) agreed that the crux of the problem lies in the perception of the census exercise as a major factor in the distribution of amenities and the imposition of tax.’ As a consequence any counts were subject to fraud since no one trusted a Nigerian government, civilian or military, to be impartial.7
GHANA
Flight Lt Jerry Rawlings took part in the junior officers’ and NCOs’ coup attempt of 15 May 1979 and was imprisoned for his pains. But three weeks later, on 4 June, his followers freed him and this time they mounted a successful coup. On 16 June Gen. Acheampong and Maj.-Gen. Utuka were executed by firing squad and on 26 June Gen. Akuffo, Lt-Gen. Afrifa and other high-ranking officers were also shot so that three former heads of state had been executed in a dramatic ‘house cleaning’ operation. This did not stop at the top. Tribunals headed by NCOs were set up to mete out summary justice to those accused of hoarding, profiteering and corruption. Rawlings insisted that the soldiers would return to barracks once elections, as set by the previous regime, had been held. Five parties contested them and in the event a coalition was formed consisting of the People’s National Party (PNP), led by Hilla Limann, and the United National Convention (UNC). In separate presidential elections Limann won comfortably and was sworn in as President on 24 September. The Limann government lasted little more than two years and suffered from an impossible handicap: that it was seen to owe its existence to Rawlings and the military who came increasingly to be regarded as the final court of appeal. Rawlings himself retained his immense popularity. Limann’s administration was a weak one and in the course of 1981 its authority visibly collapsed. On 31 December 1981 Rawlings again seized power and created a Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), which would rule by decree. The 1979 constitution was suspended and the years 1982–84 became a time of upheaval with democratization and mass participation (the ideological tenets of the Rawlings administration) counterbalanced by dissension in the army, which was Rawlings’ power base.
Rawlings was a new phenomenon in West Africa: young, dashing and handsome, he achieved huge popularity when in 1979 he swept away the corrupt old order that had become a byword. He was highly critical of the political and economic bankruptcy of the old regime and he had emerged as the spokesman for a new radical populism. His overthrow of the incompetent Limann administration, which had signally failed to combat corruption or deal effectively with the economy, heralded his ‘second coming’. He said, on his return to power, that he would restore democracy in which the needs of the people were heeded by the government and that this was not just a question of abstract liberties but ‘it involves above all, food, clothing, shelter and the basic necessities of life’. He told the members of the PNDC to see their appointments only as ‘a chance to serve the people sacrificially’. While Rawlings wanted mass participation in democracy as well as to democratize the army, his approach was not shared by everybody and inevitably he provoked conflict. There were ethnic confrontations to be faced and Rawlings, with a Scottish father and Ewe mother, came to rely more and more on his Ewe people for support and was thus unable to escape the tribal nature of Ghana’s politics. PNDC leaders from non-Ewe groups were forced out, sometimes accused of plotting, and a number of coup attempts were reported. Furthermore, Rawlings found that the People’s Defence Committees, which he had set up to decentralize power and encourage mass participation, were exceeding their powers and gradually he reduced their authority. Then the students, faced with economic hardship and austerity measures, became increasingly antagonistic to Rawlings.8 Later, when he abandoned his earlier Marxist approach to the economy and turned to the IMF for more orthodox assistance he embarked upon a paradox for it was a contradiction in terms to proclaim a revolution and expect the IMF to forward it.
Opposition to Rawlings came from many different groups in Ghana and especially those he had ejected from power at the end of 1981 in favour of ‘people’s power’ since this was anathema to them. The opposition became all the greater with the revolutionary implemented Western-style economic recovery programmes (ERPs). A coup attempt in 1982 highlighted the fragility of his position. In any case, democratization was a double-edged weapon: people’s summary justice that bypassed the courts and an increasingly hostile and vociferous student body forced Rawlings and the PNDC to rethink some of their policies. During much of the 1980s difficult relations between the PNDC and the army were to be paralleled by a slow but relatively successful economic recovery programme that enjoyed the endorsement of the World Bank and the IMF.
When Rawlings broadcast on the morning of the second coup, he said: ‘Fellow Ghanaians, as you will notice, we are not playing the national anthem. In other words, this is not a coup. I ask for nothing less than a REVOLUTION – something that will transform the social and economic order of this country.’ His revolution had three objectives: to restore the economy, to eliminate corruption and to promote the interests of the little man.9 Rawlings had appointed Kwesi Botchway, a lawyer, economist and academic, as Secretary for Finance and Economic Planning and ‘By December Botchway was ready and in a nation-wide broadcast on 30 December 1982 he announced the basic principles and outline for a four-year ERP. The devaluation issue was presented as a subsidy on specific exports – timber, minerals, cocoa, coffee and manufactured goods – while imports, apart from oil and basic foodstuffs, were to be surcharged.’10 In January 1983 Nigeria announced that it was expelling all foreign worker
s without valid immigration visas and in just over two weeks 1.2 million Ghanaians were evacuated home from Nigeria. ‘Over the next few months, in an exercise which amazed the international aid agencies, Ghana managed to reabsorb into national life nearly one-tenth of her normal population.’ It was a stunning achievement and it was carried out just as Botchway presented his first budget. ‘It was under these circumstances that on Thursday 21 April the Secretary for Finance and Economic Planning, Dr Kwesi Botchway, announced the toughest austerity budget of any government since independence. The minimum daily wage was nearly doubled from 12 cedis to just over 21, and the prices of rice, maize and sugar remained unaltered, but virtually everything else went up by between 100 and 300 per cent as government subsidies were slashed to reduce the budget deficit and import surcharges were imposed on all but the most basic essentials.’11
It was not surprising, even when Rawlings had turned to the World Bank and IMF for assistance with the economy, that such a radical and revolutionary figure should attract the deep antagonism as well as subversive activities of the United States whose policy then and later was to oppose any regime that sought genuine independence from Western tutelage. ‘An ominous and unpredictable element in the opposition to Rawlings and the PNDC during the early years of the revolution was the clandestine involvement of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Early in 1983 documents came into the hands of Special Security Adviser Capt. Kojo Tsikata, which showed clear CIA involvement with dissident Ghanaians who were trying to destabilize and overthrow the PNDC regime. It came at the height of US attempts to subvert the Nicaraguan government, with whose revolution the PNDC felt a strong sense of solidarity.’ Ghana’s close links with Libya and Rawlings’ anti-imperialist rhetoric put him among the select group of bêtes noires of President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. In most of the abortive coup attempts against the PNDC in 1983 and 1984 the hand of the CIA was to be found lurking somewhere, providing weapons, money or contracts through their offices at the US embassy in Accra or in Lomé.12 The story did not end there. In 1985 a Ghanaian, Mike Soussoulis, was arrested in Washington on charges of helping a dissident African-American officer of the CIA. At the same time, however, documents that had fallen into the hands of the PNDC named US CIA agents as well as Ghanaians working for the CIA. The government was therefore able to arrest a number of Ghanaians in Accra who had been working at the US embassy. They admitted passing information and were tried and sentenced to prison terms. There followed the extraordinary spectacle of a spy swap in which eight Ghanaians were stripped of their citizenship and exchanged for Soussoulis who arrived home in December 1985 to a hero’s welcome. Reacting to the US bombing of Libya in mid-April 1986, Rawlings said uncompromisingly: ‘… if the US wants to assume this position of power over the rest of the world, then we should all have a say in who gets sent to the White House. The US seem to need help in order to understand the reality of international affairs.’ In 1991 Rawlings was to attack Saddam Hussein for invading Kuwait, prophetically it would seem, in relation to the US war of 2003 that would overthrow him. ‘It was not so much for his violent resolution of a territorial dispute that he condemned Saddam, but rather for his betrayal of Third World independence by playing into the hands of the United States and allowing the US government the opportunity to intervene in world affairs wherever it saw fit.’13
THE GHANA ECONOMIC ‘MIRACLE’
Rawlings executed a major U-turn when he decided to adopt an orthodox ‘Western’ approach in tackling the country’s economic problems. This meant a rapprochment with the World Bank and the IMF. By 1984 the economic position was improving but this meant meeting demands from the TUC for higher wages. Much of the decade saw a contest between the demands of popular radicalism and mass participation on the one hand, and the need for Ghana to come to terms – by accepting an IMF-inspired economic reform programme – with the economic realities of the world in which it lived on the other hand. In part, this meant a choice between rhetoric and orthodoxy. During 1985, when economic recovery was going quite well, Rawlings listened to his economic advisers and then launched ERP Mark II against powerful opposition from the PNDC and the Committee of Secretaries. Although he had originally hoped to implement a Marxist economic programme, Rawlings had allowed himself to be persuaded by Kwesi Botchway to realign economically towards the West leading to his acceptance in 1983 of IMF conditions and a devaluation of the cedi. As a consequence of this decision, Rawlings ran the economy on orthodox lines and, for example, brought about a rapid expansion of local food production. One critic of the original approach to the economy under Rawlings, argued that ‘In Ghana … only belatedly did the PNDC begin to address the deteriorating social conditions that preceded the crisis of 1983 and agreements with the World Bank and IMF, by means of the Programme of Action to Mitigate the Social Costs of Adjustment (PAMSCAD).’ According to the Commonwealth Expert Group (CEG 1989), Ghana lost over half its doctors between 1981 and April 1984 and in 1983, for example, only one of the graduates of the University of Ghana Medical School at Korle Bu remained in the country while one-twelfth of the country’s nurses left in 1982 and cutbacks in financing health in Ghana at the height of the economic crisis in 1982–83 resulted in inadequate infrastructure for the basic health programme.14 Health was only one of the sectors that required massive recovery assistance.
Although economic recovery under Rawlings during the 1980s was impressive, yet at the beginning of the 1990s Ghana still had a long way to go to achieve its true economic potential. Total external debts stood at US$3,078 million in 1989 (equivalent to 59.9 per cent of GNP) while debt servicing was equivalent to 48.9 per cent of export earnings. Rawlings had defended his resort to the World Bank and IMF in 1987 as follows: ‘Given the resources at our disposal, and the current international economic atmosphere, we could not have come all this way without the financial support of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other countries. But we have not swallowed hook, line and sinker all the prescriptions of the multi-national financial institutions.’15 He was sufficiently justified when in February 1989 the fifth Consultative Group for Ghana meeting in Paris pledged US$900 million in aid. However, the contradictions of a revolution that owed its recovery to the world’s leading international financial institutions could not be glossed over. The liberalization and improvement of the economy was matched by increasing restrictions on free speech at home. Leading members of the Ghana Bar Association, for example, were arrested to prevent the delivery of a series of lectures about former high court judges who had been killed in 1982.
Despite international financial assistance, 1989 was a difficult year for Rawlings and Ghana as the PNDC kept to its reform programme. Although there was expansion of output in major sectors of the economy, world prices for gold and cocoa fell drastically to reduce Ghana’s foreign exchange earnings. The activities of the 18 District Assemblies, which the PNDC had created, confirmed its belief that a genuinely democratic system could only be built on the foundations of local government structures. However, evidence of renewed corruption in high places had an unsettling effect. There were hints of discord within the PNDC and Rawlings used the tenth anniversary of the 4 June Revolution to say: ‘Some of us are showing signs of losing our self-discipline and are being attracted to the old ways of the powerful in our society. June 4th must remind us that such arrogance will breed a reaction, often uncontrollable reaction, from the downtrodden.’16
On 22 September 1989 Lt-Gen. Arnold Qainoo was relieved of his post as GOC of the Ghana Armed Forces although he retained his position on the PNDC and was made Chairman of the New National Planning and Development Commission. Apparently Rawlings had been forced to act against Qainoo as the result of a petition from the ranks that he should remove Qainoo if he wanted to avoid trouble.17 A number of arrests took place in rapid succession, including that of Maj. Courage Quashigah, Squadron Leader Akapo and others in connection with ‘activities which could have jeopardized t
he security of the State’. The aim of the plotters had been to assassinate Rawlings during a visit to Ho, the Volta Regional capital. Until that time Quashigah had been intensely loyal to Rawlings and had foiled two coup attempts in 1982. He was, moreover, an Ewe as were several other plotters. The media then launched a campaign to discredit Quashigah.
Although on several occasions during 1989 Rawlings highlighted the inequalities of the international economic order, he continued to eschew more radical solutions for Ghana. In his January 1990 speech to the nation, Rawlings expressed careful optimism about the momentous events then taking place in Eastern Europe. The PNDC remained close to the countries holding out against the new changes, especially Cuba and China, which offered a US$80 million interest-free loan for projects employing Chinese technology. In February 1990 the PNDC sponsored an Investment Promotion Conference at which the International Finance Corporation representative, Mr Houvaguimian, said Ghana had to make more concessions: ‘Success in attracting foreign investment depends on matching the incentives and tax conditions offered by other countries competing for foreign investment, since profit-maximization is the force driving foreign investors.’ In reply, Rawlings was equally blunt: ‘The PNDC would always welcome investment that was for mutual advantage, it would not tolerate the use of the Investment Code to defraud Ghanaians.’ He called for a code to control transnational corporations and left World Bank officials aghast.18 This Rawlings line exposed both the World Bank and other International Financial Institutions (IFIs) but it also laid bare the dilemma of developing Africa and its weakness: Africa needed the investment more than it could afford to wait for the IFIs to reform themselves.