The trumpeted calls to establish unorthodox security measures in Nigeria to contain the worsening security situation, implies that the current security challenges flow majorly from lapses in the enforcement of law and order in the country with the judiciary at the centre of it all.
The South-west regional governors acting purportedly in the best security interests of their people, set up a security outfit tagged “Amotekun”, launched with fanfare that may eventually be another drain pipe of public resources against infrastructural development.
From the look of things, most likely, other zones in the country may follow with the exception of the North that has already stated its stand through the Northern Governors Forum Chairman, Governor Simon Bako Lalong of Plateau State. But that does not mean, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association may not establish theirs to protect the interest of their members as they stated.
The vogue for regional security initiatives is purportedly to fill the gap in the enforcement of law and order, with the ultimate aim to guarantee lives and properties of citizens as the conventional security arrangement has woefully failed.
But, let’s look at Operation Rainbow in Plateau State, created by an alleged ethno-religious jingoist purportedly for a specific intention not farfetched from ethno-religious sentiment. It has today woefully failed in its statutory operation to secure and restore peace on the Plateau.
Beyond the drive for regional security initiatives, calls have gone out for government to remodel its security framework, though, according to the perspectives of its proponents, this would only consist in the shake-up of the top echelon of the country’s formal key security institutions.
In addition, loud calls have also gone out for community policing, a major vocabulary in the current ragging discourse on the country’s security challenges, but which, if soberly deconstructed, amount to very little in substance, because it is difficult to imagine what the over-hyped community police can do, that the current Nigeria Police is not doing in the targeted local domains.
However, the assumptions behind the vociferous calls for all manner of unorthodox security initiatives to fill the gaps in the purported failings in law and order enforcement is seriously deficient and even misleading to the understanding of the current existential security challenges in the country.
Firstly, a social order perverted by structural exclusion with an entrenched road block to social mobility is condemned to structural disorder in which law enforcement can be nothing but barely rudimentary.
The pool of untapped manpower ignored and left to boil over deepens the crisis of structural social exclusion with the consequence of a growing reserve of the discontents, standing perilously and tendentiously on the free-flowing slope to crime and other anti-social vices.
Actually, no army in the world or any other security organization, including a hundred regional security outfits can arrest the inexorable drift to the sliding slope to crimes, including insurgencies and banditry.
The truth is that assorted strata and formation of the Nigerian elite most vociferous in the current alarm of the national security quagmire are culpable in its making. With a huge sense of entitlement, they have taken out and still take out from the total social pool, disproportional share of the commonwealth with little consideration for any mechanism for replenishing and multiplying the stock, the only guarantee for an enduring social order.
The embarrassing state of the current security imbroglio in the country cannot be blamed alone on the failure of existing national security institutions to cope with the incremental breakdown in law and order and the uncanny impunity with which marauders and other anti-social elements breach security. The desperate calls and even rush to set up regional security outfits testify to the misguided national penchants to treat outcomes instead of fundamental causes.
And more importantly, it suits the culpable elite and their narrative that the spate of insecurity is only a failure of the country’s security institutions to muscularly enforce law and order.
Their notorious avarice and corruption that have dried up critical investments in strategic sectors that is germane to an inclusive social order is the fundamental cause in the upsurge in crime, banditry, kidnapping and insurgency is hardly a factor, they care to ruminate over.
Traditional rulers that accept public funds to such personal conveniences like guest houses outside their domains, chartered aircrafts for routine local runs, religious leaders that scoop huge revenues from innocent worshippers and other offerings and pour it into prestigious auditoriums, property speculations, luxurious private aircrafts and politicians that yank away unconscionable sums from the national pool to fund their next elections and other out of this world luxuries, along with bureaucratic parasites who lay siege at the public service arena to the nation’s dwindling resources are variously and collectively culpable to the current spate of insecurity.
The unconscionable consumables procured with public funds for personal convenience deprive vital investments in critical sectors that would generate employment and create a value chain that can considerably reduce the number of our youthful population, most vulnerable to crime and other anti-social vices.
Additionally, the new national craze of wedding, naming and birthday parties to hold in Dubai, London and other choice cities should interest the tax authorities, where at least 15% of the total spending on such parties should be plunged into the social insurance pool to fund investments in employment-generating schemes.
Muscularly enforcing law and order to reduce the spate of the current insecurity is admirable but is certainly not enough. The various levels of government, especially the state and local governments must take measures like establishing equipped Skills Acquisition Centres, Entrepreneurial Training Centres, Farm Settlements, Small Scale Industrial Processing Plants to engage the burgeoning pool of idle manpower that naturally mutate and drift to crimes and other anti-social vices, without constructive engagement to positive endeavors.
Leaders should stop mocking the people with foreign investment drives, political appointments and bogus claims of constituency projects that exist only on papers and the imagination of those authors of the deceit. They should instead, be innovative, patriotic and utilize the few resources acquired legally or illegally at their disposal to create investment opportunities. For instance, any sincere and determined governor in states with moribund state-owned industries and factories laying waste for resuscitation has no business with any foreign tour for imaginary investment drives that are mere jamborees that gulf scarce public resources.
Huge financial outlay that would be channeled to regional security like Amotekun can usefully be deployed to critical investment in skills acquisition and establishing secondary industrial processing plants, which would in turn create value chains that can transform potential criminals to prospective entrepreneurs.
National security cannot only consist merely in the enforcement of law and order, but also in the conscious and deliberate cultivation of an inclusive socio-economic order, where equal opportunities and elaborately offered to all citizens to usefully engage their individual talents and abilities. In fact, law and order is more efficiently enforced where majority of citizens are freely privy to a social consensus and voluntarily networked to its defense, unlike the tall order in law enforcement, where unwilling majority is being bullied and dragged to acquiesce to a social contraption.
Also, past calls to sack the hierarchy of the security institutions, especially the police and the military will bring little or no value to the security situation. While there may be other serious reasons to sack security chiefs and the national security adviser, the assumptions that their sack would be magic wand that will improve security situation is only a conjecture.
The resurgence of the insurgency in the north-east and kidnapping for ransom in north west and parts of the north central calls for a new strategy of a political solution, which may consist in a sincere and committed approach to terrorism , since defeating the vandals, has become a hopeless illusion. The sheer spectacle of sharing a negotiating table with murderous insurgents, who have no clearly defined cause, might be harrowing but the illusion of seeking to defeat them is even more harrowing as they sow death and destruction in their deadly encounters.
For our country to emerge from its various security challenges a new social charter has to be forged and is far more fundamental than the mere political accommodation that politicians seek through their ceaseless call for restructuring and national conference. A social charter is a revolutionary social reconstruction that can be affected by a strong and responsible state or the outcome of a social havoc that would be wreaked from below by legions of the discontented.
As it is now, former American president John F. Kennedy refrain that “if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich”, is down on us and the implication of social justice and its imperative in the current travail of national insecurity is beyond the call for re-jigging of the “security architecture,” an overused and probably the most abused vocabulary in Nigeria’s public discourse today.
What we need is sincerity of purpose in the fight against the challenges. We should explore other strategies to safe coast!
Lest I forget, Wase federal constituency in Plateau State seems to be a bed of roses for bandits of recent. They have systematically and steadily infiltrated into the area with little resistance from the locals who are impoverished and belong to the class of the most wretched on planet earth.
The local government council is said to be up and doing to flush out the beasts from the locality but does the council have the capacity and wherewithal to confront such sophisticated and well-armed criminals that have defied similar solutions in other climes without federal government support?
Wase federal constituency is on its knees pleading with the authorities concerned for an immediate solution of rescue before the area turns to another enclave of the marauding beasts despite the commendable and appreciable efforts of the local government council. I Come in Peace!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues
