National insecurity

By Gabriel  Amalu

The captains of Nigeria need radical changes in their strategy to save the nation from the maelstrom that is threatening her survival as a body corporate. For it appears that finally, the decades of prodigality has berthed a combination of insufferable disasters which are about to put an end to the miserable life of the prodigal Nigerian state. So, those who are in charge must wake-up to the reality that unlike the prodigal son in the Bible who had a hard working father and brother to fall back on after his wasteful years, Nigeria has no fall back strategy.

If Nigeria fails, it will thunder miserably into pieces on the ground. While the nation is waging an unending internecine war in the northeast, a new insurgency is brewing in the southeast, even as trained armed herdsmen appear determined to bring the north-central and the entire southern Nigeria to a miserable end. In the northwest, thousands of unemployable youths have taken up arms to engage in the employment of kidnapping for ransom.

As if the cocktail of security disasters afflicting every part of the country is not enough challenge, Nigeria is financially broke at a time stagflation and food insecurity has entwined to make the lives of the citizens worse than that of the prodigal son. For a nation already having the dishonour of being the poverty capital of the world, a worsening economic crisis combined with overwhelming armed non-state actors on the prowl, is a highway to Somalian experience.

To make a very bad situation miserable, the political disposition of the president has left even the traditional supporters of the corporate Nigeria, with no option than to champion the disintegration of the already fractured Nigerian state. In the past, the southeast or majority of the old eastern Nigeria, used to be the suspect for separatist movement, while the rest of the country bind to enforce the go on with one Nigeria.

Now the southwest appears to have given up on the possibility that the prodigal son will return to his senses and come home for rehabilitation. Of course, the change of course was not made with clear eyes, but rather in the blur of the red-eye from plummeting by the trained armed wing of the herdsmen who have made life short and brutish for every part of the country.

It is in the face of the maelstrom that economic meltdown is now squarely starring down the country; and is Nigeria about to commit suicide? Watching the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, sweating profusely as he confirmed that Nigeria is in a worse economic situation than it was in 2015 and 2016, one can imagine the panic that has gripped the majority of citizens that are living in abject poverty, unlike the privileged, yet sweating CBN governor.

The adult members of the Nigerian state who have cornered the breast of the mother hen, for their exclusive feeding, even when the younger siblings are desperately hungry, may soon wake-up to the obituary of the mother-hen. When the president engaged in the exceptionalism of his tribe as those who must hold all the top echelons of the Nigerian state, Nigerians were told to forgive him, as he needed to work with those he can trust.

Some of his ardent supporters even touted the disingenuous argument that the president was appointing the most competent persons, and Nigerians should not worry about where they come from, as long as the persons are competently discharging their responsibilities. Any mention that the 1999 constitution (as amended) clearly enjoins “That the composition of the government of the federation or any part of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria, and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty…” was viewed with disdain.

Now to the chagrin of even the most ardent promoters of the constitutional aberration of exclusivity and exceptionalism that is in practice, both the privileged and the under-privileged are now at the mercy of draconian forces far beyond the competences of those entrusted with power and authority. Unless there is a radical change of tactics by those who have the constitutional authority to change the cause of events, Nigeria may suddenly disintegrate and Nigerians would enter into the kind of misery the world may have not seen, even during the world wars.

The reaction of the governors of the southeast to the maelstrom is to reluctantly create a regional security outfit known as Ebubeagu. How far that creature can go to confront the amorphous security challenges facing the region is in the womb of time. Of course, this column has never believed that an agglomeration of poorly trained, and poorly equipped men legally prohibited from carrying arms, is the solution to the enormous security lapses facing the nation.

This writer considers it strange that in the face of the security crisis, the federal and state governments have not considered it expedient to quickly amend section 214 of the 1999 constitution, which provides that there shall be a single police force in Nigeria. Even to the dumbest fellow, it is obvious that our dear nation needs a new security strategy. And the challenge facing the governors of the southeast is compounded by the activities of the proscribed IPOB, and their so called Eastern Nigeria Security.

It is also strange that instead of confronting the constitutionally entrenched economic imbalance created by the lopsided exclusive legislative list, some governors have taken the line of least resistance by proposing to sack their workers and unlawfully tinker with the national minimum wage. On its part, the federal government with its over-bloated powers which it has been poorly exercising, has forced the entire country into a slow march to economic strangulation. For instance, the inefficiency of the federal government has made something as basic as regular electricity supply, a luxury item across the country.

To show how debilitating a bad constitutional arrangement can make a country behave like a prodigal son; under the guise of constitutional authority, the federal government is building a railway to a neighbouring country, when more than half of the country is denied that important means of transportation.  Again, with states and regions denied serious economic activities by suffocating constitutional restrictions, many of the governors are rendered redundant, in the face of challenges.

For this column, the solution to the despondency of this era, lies in constitutional amendments to gift states enough economic opportunities and lawful authority to provide police security for her citizens. To keep living the oil cause is a sure death sentence for our dear country.