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Ayo Olukotun
There is unanimous agreement that the cascading level of insecurity with boarding schools and universities reportedly closing down in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja for fear of attack has reached emergency proportions. Given that Niger State, the FCT’s neighbour, now warehouses under duress Boko Haram settlements and flag, and with security institutions appearing overwhelmed, grandstanding is no longer possible or credible. Please note that tragedy such as the kidnap of one’s relation or friend is overwhelmingly personal rather than governmental. Given that political marketing is increasingly sophisticated, it is possible for government’s spokespersons to convey the appearance of normalcy even when all hell breaks loose.
So, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, can afford to tell us that kidnapping and banditry are state rather than federal offences. But those whose children are forced to vegetate in the kidnappers’ den or who survive the murderous escapades of bandits will have a different perspective. A logical follow-up to Mohammed’s statement would be to ask whether the states under the current security architecture possess the wherewithal to combat rising cases of kidnapping and banditry. Were there to have been a state police that is well-funded, the distinction between federal and state offences will not be merely academic. But alas! Years of dithering and dilly-dallying have continued to postpone the policy.
Only on Wednesday, the threat of a possible attack by Boko Haram on the National Assembly, hitherto unimaginable, took on a new dimension as some National Assembly members received notice from the dreaded terrorist organisation of such an attack. As The PUNCH (Thursday, May 6, 2021) narrated it, quoting a National Assembly member, “I am already moving out of here. I will only be around when there is a major reason to do so. Nowhere is safe in the country anymore”. If, as was noted earlier in this write-up, tragedy is personal, then, no one in the country today can or should rely on vague assurances that all is well. For, obviously, too many places that were believed to be secure have been violated by attacks of the insurgents or kidnappers. For example, knowing that I shuttle often between Ibadan and Ijebu Ode, several relations and friends have sent me urgent messages warning of the danger and folly of taking that road in view of the activities of killer-gangs.
Undoubtedly, if anyone gets into a mishap, it might then be too late to regret taking official assurances seriously, especially in a situation where state governors with the paraphernalia of security have escaped assassination by the whiskers. However, this is the situation in which Nigeria finds itself today with no one seemingly able to provide solutions beyond tepid proclamations that all will be well. In search of answers to burning questions, many have zeroed in on what has been called a leadership crisis and how we got to this slippery crossroads, a replica of the famed forest of ghosts in Yoruba mythic literature. For instance, a few days back, a strange posting appeared on the platform of the Nigerian Political Science Association (South West) referring to a statement made by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), published in The Nation Newspaper of June 2, 2013, calling on the former President Goodluck Jonathan administration to stop the killing of and clamp down on members of the Boko Haram. Entitled, ‘Buhari faults clampdown on Boko Haram members’, the report reads in part “he (Buhari) accused the government of killing and destroying their (Boko Haram) houses while the Niger Delta militants are given special treatment”.
It is possible that Buhari has denied making such a statement or indicating that he was misquoted. If this is indeed the case, then his publicists have a job to do to correct the impression that Buhari, only a few years ago spoke in defence of the sect. Be that as it may, one of the pertinent inferences is that civil society is rummaging anxiously, combing every nook and cranny to see why Nigeria has landed itself in the current terrible mess. Whatever answers are offered, there must be a fresh zeroing in on our political leadership in order to understand the depth of the current crisis given especially the often stated axiom that Boko Haram has to do with ideology and religious belief, and that some officials are sympathetic to their cause, however that cause is defined. Any fruitful inquiry will include the search for an explanation of the gap between official rhetoric and laidback action pinpointing why it has taken this long to bring down the insurgency in the North-East, banditry and kidnappings in nearly every part of the country. There is, for example, the theory that those who benefit from the surge in military spending and the associated feature of slush pay and overnight contracting will find every reason to prolong the war in order to reap maximum profit.
Clearly, the phenomenon of splendidly rich Generals feasting on enhanced defence spending did not end with the Jonathan administration; it has continued to flower under the current regime, especially when viewed in the context of the recent disclosure by the Minister for Finance, Zainab Ahmed, on the floor of the Senate that the defence budget has been given high priority in the release of funds. In this regard, persistent attention has been focused on the use of obsolete equipment by our soldiers in contrast to Boko Haram and the bandits which brandish superior firepower. Indeed, one of our senators said recently, “I can be quoted, I have toured the military formations and I have yet to see a brand new AK47”. Allegations of sabotage apart, has anyone bothered to find out the drivers of the unrelenting underequipping of our security institutions in the face of mortal threats?
Leadership centred on getting results will not stop merely at budgetary allocations; it will monitor continuously to see whether the allocations are being gainfully and prudently utilised. The lack of monitoring capacity sometimes bordering on amnesia has constituted a huge drawback to the organisational culture of our institutions. Was it not a week or so ago that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission published the astonishing discovery that several projects in the budgetary allocations of the last few years were duplicated? How about the recent disclosure that the military budgetary spending had not been audited in the last decade? There are also the futile efforts of the Auditor-General of the Federation to get our public institutions to answer queries raised by his department.
Finally, a new leadership culture must of necessity leverage the power and pedigree of our civil society to renew a state in search of a compass, redirection and fulfilment of the social contract.
