To Prof John A. Ayoade of the BOWEN University in Iwo, Osun State, political power can be reconfigured, though not without resistance, but it is not as easy to reconfigure the economy. The professor Emeritus, in this article, entitled: “The challenge of peace and security in times of economic recession: The Nigerian experience”, says Nigeria must adopt a mission to drive a renewed vision and elect visionary leaders to truly evolve as a nation.
Nigeria has been a political enigma from its colonial origin. It is not an organic whole and it has failed all efforts at integration, although the colonial founding fathers never intended it to be integrated. Unfortunately, their Nigerian successors invested more in the division for sectional political advantage. This was because shortly before political independence, politics as a process of allocation of powers and national resources has been appropriated as an allocation enterprise for sectional interests.
With time, the gap between national and sectional interests widened to a point that national interest tended towards zero. This was worsened by the fratricidal internecine conflicts between and among the various sections of the country. What was the hope of Africa at independence became the sick man of Africa which suffered a military coup within six years of independence and became a subject of international mediation, first at Aburi, Ghana and later, in Kampala, Uganda. The likes of such countries as Gabon and Ivory Coast were availed diplomatic opportunities to meddle in the domestic affairs of Nigeria. A country which had hitherto prided itself as an expert in brinkmanship was at the verge of ‘sinkmanship’. The hope to join the higher League of Nations at independence vanished. Succour came only after three years of civil war which was followed by a hurried post-conflict peace that did not address the causes of war.
The conflict which has been simmering since then only awaits a trigger that is not too remote in the Nigerian political firmament. The drums of conflict are beating louder, publicly daring the authorities of the Nigerian State. As if the issues will go away, the Federal Government is carefully avoiding addressing the issue directly.
The on-going political altercations arise from the fact that Nigeria has not evolved into a nation and neither has it attained a stage of integration that can drive development. As far back as 1947, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo said that Nigeria was a mere geographical expression. It was, in fact, a country of diverse nations.
Much later, he advised that the Nigerian Constitution should be constructed along the lines of the nationalities comprising Nigeria. Nigerians agreed with the country’s diversity. They however optimistically played it down by extolling the aspiration of unity in diversity when in reality it is a progressively diversifying diversity. As it turned out, the adversarial nature of the country continues to manifest in the continual incessant demand for the creation of new states from the old sates based on cultural differences and incompatibility. The language of demand on all occasions was so antagonistic that it is strange that resultant sates remain components of the same federation professing unity in diversity.
The country of three regions at independence now stands at thirty six states with a recommendation by the 2014 Constitutional Conference that it should be increased to 54 states. Nigeria therefore operates a curious political arrangement of unity by division or, more appropriately, division in unity. It will appear that secession itself is an extension of the demand for the creation of separate states. Secession is only a difference of scale and not type because both are rooted in incompatibility. The multiplication of states in a country with a fixed boundary is an indication of a fissiparous relationship which is the root of national poverty and recession.
By 2015, about two-thirds of the thirty six states could no longer meet the salary needs of the state civil service. The situation proved the point that most of the states were mere civil service states as petty traders and food sellers suffered shrinkage in their sales and income. The situation also proved the fragile nature of the economy because governments in Nigeria are the single largest employers of labour with a weak private sector. The prominent visibility of the public sector in employment is a result of the high profile and privileges of the colonial civil service. The post-independence successive governments in Nigeria did not help matters because they often vaunted the omnipotence of government without encouraging the diversification of skills, entrepreneurship, and public-private partnership. In the past, communities established secondary schools, constructed roads, and awarded local and overseas scholarships.
Of recent, the governments arrogantly asked communities to hands-off such developments. It suddenly became an offence for parents/teachers associations to be involved in the development of the schools.
The demand for the creation of states is both an indication of diversity as well as the conception of the state as a milk-cow. Most of the demands are based on the propensity to have a share of the ‘national cake’. The lexicon of the demand for new states shows very clearly the consumerist goals of the protagonists. Little or no attention is paid to social and economic viability of states but the income derivable form the federal purse.
Occasionally, one hears such pious phrases and clichés like bringing government close to the people; equity; ethnic geo-political balance and federal presence among others which sidestep economic realities. All such demands are based on ethnic or geographic competition for siphoning federal resources. The end result is the mushrooming of unviable mini-states that serve only the needs of the political elite of such states. It is no surprise, then, that Nigeria has one of the highest per capita costs of governance with very high overhead cost, high recurrent cost and little capital cost. There is therefore relatively little national infrastructural investment resulting in mere subsistence governments.
The different constitutional efforts for political integration have not yielded positive results because the benefactors devised the measures. These measures include the zoning of political offices, federal character, rotational presidency and other equalisation measures. Let us look at the zoning of political offices first. Zoning is neither a constitutional, nor statutory requirement. It was a device introduced by the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the Second Republic. It is therefore more of a conventional advisory to political parties. It could enhance electoral appeal of a political party in contrast to another party that does not adopt the zoning formula. Being voluntary and advisory, the implementation has been haphazard. The lack of clarity of its implementation was one of the political shibboleths of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s bid for a second presidential term.
First, there was the definitional problem of a second term. Second, there was the problem of observance of an agreement duly entered into. Finally, there was the problem of which was the legitimate zone to present the presidential candidate. Apart from the particular problem arising from the Jonathan presidency, zoning is also not necessarily clear-cut in a multi-party situation since each political party could decide its order of zoning.
Thus in 2015, the All Progressives Congress (APC) selected Mohammadu Buhari from the Northwest while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) selected Dr. Jonathan from the Southsouth. Each party’s zoning arrangement may therefore contradict, which means, in effect, that zoning may be mutually neutralised by the parties.
The much celebrated constitutional federal character requirement for appointments was meant to serve as mortar for the various nationalities. The constitutional clause was to the effect all executive bodies should mirror the diversity of the country by ensuring that appointments are made from all geographical parts of the country. The executive bodies must be representatively reflective of the plural nature of the country, such that no part of the country dominates the government while other parts are excluded or under-represented. At the drafting stages, this was conceived as the non-exclusion principle. The aim is to create a sense of belonging and a sense of collective ownership through participation.
The clause therefore became an employment bill for the political class and a rationale for bloated executives. Nigeria therefore has a very high ratio of executive to the population that gulps funds for development. It has therefore contributed to national poverty and recession.
Apart from that, it has not worked as the expected political adhesive or coagulant of diverse nationalities. It would have been strange if social homogenisation resulted from such ethnic polarisation. In fact, it could not have served that purpose because the ethnic groups or the geopolitical groups which are proxies of the ethnic groups form the basis of allocation. The application of federal character, therefore, inadvertently prioritises ethnicity and consequently, a source of acrimonious disagreement among the nationalities who complain about the computation and weighting of the federal character requirement.
A major consequential source of complaint is that quantity is not synonymous with quality, such that arithmetical equality does not translate to qualitative equality. Neither is federal character interpreted to cover less divisive factors of diversity like ideology and stages of development of the various parts of the country.
The trend of the discussion so far, is that the root of poverty and recession lies in the structure and administration of the Nigerian state. There is an incongruity between the design of the country and the post-independence vision and mission of the country. Such a mismatch is clearly demonstrated in the relationship between the purpose of federalism and the practice of federalism in Nigeria. The practice of federalism in Nigeria is bedeviled by the boss syndrome which results in the hierarchical ordering of the governments of the federation rather than the co-equality of governmental jurisdictions.
This is complicated by the misperception of the role of government as the dispenser of personal, ethnic and sectional advantages. The system operated as if private sector productivity was either optional or unnecessary. And worse still, the political elite divided the country into political fiefs called states to multiply salary pay-points and inadvertently reduce the capacity of the resultant states to drive development. Nigerian governments became veritable harbingers of poverty by multiplying salary pay-points. Extractive political institutions as we have depicted above, tend to produce extractive or rentier economic systems. Even if there is growth under extractive institutions, they cannot endure because growth requires innovation which ipso facto, results in creative destruction that will destabilise established power relations. The established elite will therefore resist innovation. Extractive regimes also tend to make instability inevitable because they generate fierce competition, forcing the extractive elite to defend its unmerited privileged position. The contingent outcome of instability is decline of productivity which tends to end up in poverty.
Neither has Nigeria attained the level of clear functional statehood. The fragility of the Nigerian state as depicted above has made scholars at different times to describe it as a soft state or a failed state by others. The state is a complex entity and there is hardly an agreement on its purpose and scope.
For the purpose of analysis, the state can be seen roughly as a dichotomy with internal and external aspects. Its internal aspect is represented by the government while the external aspect is the country. The government is the highest ruling authority and executive agent of the country. Being the highest authority, it possesses internal sovereignty and the extent quality of its rule of the domestic society is a function of its legitimacy which determines the nature of state-society relations or the relations between the decision-maker and the decision-taker.
Jean Bodin, espousing the juridical view of the state, identified the chief mark of state sovereignty as the power to give law to all citizens, generally and singly. Thus, the state is vested with the power to create, interpret and enforce the law. In addition to the power to legislate for all, it also has the sole power of coercion or the monopoly of legitimate force such that in the view of John Austin, the state is the superior commanding the inferior. The control of force is a consequential power to strengthen legislative power. All, except the agents of the state are disarmed, private armies are prohibited and the power of constraint is domiciled in the state alone. The monopoly of force has however not prevented dissidence in Nigeria because domestic weakness arising from unresolved national question and political power configuration is exploited different elements in the country. The state monopoly of force is challenged at different times and places.
For more than two decades, the Niger Delta militants have challenged the authority of the Nigerian state and have succeeded squeezing some concessions for laying down their arms. But, this has been temporary as the success has become an incentive for more armed challenge. Similarly, from about 2009, a group known as the Boko Haram employed Islam as an instrument to challenge the authority of the Nigerian state in the Northeast zone. At some point, they controlled about 14 local government areas and hoisted their flag with intent to create an Islamic State. It was a challenge of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Nigeria. The power of the state to guarantee peace and security to the citizens is also regularly threatened by gangs that infested Nigeria with kidnapping for ransom.
It started in the Niger Delta as a strategy of the militants to press their case. Oil workers were abducted and killed when ransom was not paid. Now kidnapping has become a national menace with kidnappers demanding huge ransom in foreign currency and even establishing detention camps within the city. With these threats, the Nigerian state appears to be losing claim to its raison d’etat which is the guarantee of the lives of citizens and property. The loss of empirical statehood explains the scanty inflow of foreign direct investment (fdi) and consequential heightening of poverty.
It is not only the juridical function of the state that has been challenged. Equally so, is the physical property of the state which is the fact that the state is an area with a government, population and a means of keeping order. The citizens are part of that physical state because they live within the geographical boundary. Membership of the physical state is normally compulsory for all that live within that geographical boundary. Obedience to the laws is mandatory, disobedience is punishable, and secession attempt is treasonable.
Of recent, even the physical extent of the Nigerian state is not sacrosanct. There are open and audible announcements of intention to secede from the Nigerian state in the finalistic language of no return. The Federal Government is handicapped in confronting the open breach by the reality of the extra- constitutional configuration of the country rather than by dereliction.
Nigeria therefore exhibits all the signs of a sub-optimal state driven by extra-constitutional considerations and consequently unable to perform the minimal constitutional duties of statehood. It continues to muddle along because of a demonstrated unwillingness to deal with the fundamentals of building a state from the congeries of nationalities at war with themselves.
The complex dilemma of Nigerian state is that the architecture of political power is not coterminous with the architecture of the economy. The troubling paradox is that the area that is perceived to be less economically endowed exercises political control over the economy because there is unequal distribution of power and unequal distribution of resources.
Unfortunately, while political power can be reconfigured, although not without resistance, it is not as easy to reconfigure the economy. Although political power is required to reconfigure political power, power is hardly ever conceded or freely transferred particularly in a conflict-ridden polity where power confers immeasurable advantage. Power, by its nature, never lacks patronage because it is highly sought after, even more so in a deeply-segmented society.
The resultant negative effect of the high pitched competition in such societies is poor and/or sub-optimal decision-making. Parties negotiate all issues and since every sectional actor wants the maximum benefit, facilities are sometimes splintered below the level of functional efficiency or located most inappropriately while crucial decisions fail the rationality test. Even the punishment of crime is seen through ethnic and regional lenses. The Nigerian governance system is a conducive environment for breeding poverty and violence. Poverty derives, in part, from maladministration just as violence could be a product of bad administration and perceived inequity
Nigeria is a paradox. It is the seventh most populous country in the world and the sixth largest producer of petroleum in the world. One is tempted to say that it has no reason to be poor. However, the lack of good governance, general insecurity, and stupendous accountability challenges pushed her into the league of the poor. One hundred and twelve million Nigerians making 67.1 per cent of the population lived below poverty line by 2016. Poverty has maintained a steady increase with 54.7 per cent in 2004; 60.9 per cent in 2010; 60 per cent in 2015 and a whopping 72 per cent in August 2016. Nigeria is not just one of the poorest countries; it is also one of the most unevenly developed countries of the world. The poverty prevalence in the country ranges from 46.9 per cent in the Southwest to 74.3 per cent in the Northwest and Northeast. Another source puts the national average at 46 per cent while the prevalence of the six geo-political zones is as hereunder: Southwest (19.3 per cent); Southsouth (25.2 per cent); Southeast (27.36 per cent); Northcentral (45.7 per cent); Northeast (76.8 per cent) and Northwest (80.9 per cent).
The average for the South comes to 23.95 per cent while the average for the North is 67.8 per cent which is nearly triple the average for the South. The sharp contrast between North and South is one of the causes of political instability in Nigeria. Even when the North has been broken into nineteen states and the South into seventeen states, the threat of the North remains. Nigerians continue to complain and fear Northern political clout, Northern numerical superiority and Northern political advantage. Whenever Northern prowess is contrasted with Southern human and material resource advantage, southerners feel that they derive less than their contributions to the Nigerian state. That feeling of deprivation is a source of socio-political tension in the country. Be that as it may, there is evidence of affluent poverty throughout the country. Most houses on the major streets of Nigeria are defaced with shops for retail pure water. Able-bodied college graduates sell telephone recharge cards and commercial motorcycles called ‘okada’ or ‘Going’ have replaced taxis and buses on our streets. Nigerians now take jolly rides on ‘okada’ making telephone calls and sending text messages as the go. I believe that some can now even take a nap as the ride.
Both structural political and economic imbalance threaten the peace of the country. It is equally important to factor into this discussion that political conduct shapes and is shaped by political context. It is more interesting to go behind the formal structures into the actual processes of politics.
Karl Marx appears to have correctly stated that men make history although not in circumstances of their own choosing. He therefore identifies mutuality between structure and agent. Every action is therefore a product of the mix of structural and agential factors. We have taken some space to explain the structural factor which is the setting in which social, political and economic events occur and are meaningful. It is necessary to look at political conduct defined as the actor’s conscious effort to realise his goal. In commenting on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), Transparency International (TI) confirmed that the lower – ranked countries are ‘plagued by untrustworthy and badly functioning public institutions like police and judiciary’. This is a conflation of structure and agent. Oftentimes neither structure nor agency alone can explain a phenomenon. For example, the rate of unemployment in Nigeria rose from 10.4 per cent in 2015 to 14.2 per cent (11.549 million people) in 2016 but it is not every unemployed person that engaged in crime just as some employed people also engaged in crime. This means that crime can be explained from both structural and agential perspectives. It must be emphasised, though, that work is the best route out of poverty and according to Guy Ryder, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Director-General, ‘access to decent work opportunities for all … is the most effective way to increase participation, lift people out of poverty, reduce inequality and drive economic growth’.
Nigeria ranked very low on Good Governance, Global Peace and Corruption. The World Bank identified six key indices of good governance as follows:
- Voice and accountability
- Political stability and lack of violence
- Government effectiveness
- Regulatory quality
- Rule of law
- Control of corruption.
Good governance is simply the legitimate socio-political citizen expectation from the state and which the state has responsibility to deliver. The Ibrahim Index of African Governance in 2016 ranked Nigeria in the 33rd position among 45 countries in 2016 putting Nigeria in the last thirteen African countries. On Global Peace Index, Nigeria ranked 151 out of 163 countries in 2014; 151 in 2015; 149 in 2016; and 149 in 2017. Nigeria’s best performance was in 2016 and 2017 with a placement in the last fifteen (15) countries. It is axiomatic that a population with adequate basic needs is most unlikely to resort to violence to solve problems. We may therefore say that, to some extent, that violence is a possible sign that basic needs are not met. Nigeria has about 3.3 million internally displaced persons which is Africa’s largest ranking behind Syria and Columbia on a global scale. Nigeria’s performance on Corruption was equally poor. In fact President Muhammadu Buhari was blunt when he said that ‘Corruption will kill Nigeria unless Nigeria kills corruption’. Corruption has grown to mega heights and Nigeria is better identified by corruption than by her national flag. Even as early as the 1980’s Alhaji Shehu Shagari saw the need for suggesting an ethical revolution to combat corruption. Unfortunately, the desire was not backed by political will.
I want at this stage to argue that our conception of violence is too narrow. We often see violence only as actions that draw blood, destroy life and limb. There are however actions that sap more blood over time from a larger population.
I include corruption, poverty, and bad governance among such slow, soft and sure incapacitation agents. We have said a few things about soft or silent violence. We may now turn to hard violence which within a short time snuffs out lives, displace populations and disrupt economic activities. Nigeria has had quite a number of such violence in recent history. They include: the Maitatsine; the Niger Delta militants attack; the Boko Haram insurgency; kidnapping and the recent Nnamdi Kanu’s demand for Biafra. All of these are insurrections that take advantage of the domestic weakness of the state. The state has a compulsory hold on citizens and when that hold loosens by acts of commission or omission, citizens who have reasons, genuine or otherwise, resort to self-help.
It is the natural opportunistic moment. Thucydides said in his book entitled: The Peloponnesian War “Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of nature they rule wherever they can”. The Niger Delta crisis is a product of illogical neglect resulting in on-going illogicality of demands. Curiously the ancient Nigerian Mineral Act allocates the ownership of all minerals on land and below to the government. The law is an example of the greed of the modern state. The law would perhaps have been better to also include all moving creatures on land including the people. The law almost equated the State with God as defined in Psalm 24.1 which states ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein’. Three things are wrong with this massive appropriation. First, the nationalists opposed it when the British passed the ‘obnoxious’ law in 1944 but they did not abrogate it after independence. Second, it failed the test of history because in the First Republic, the derivation formula gave 50 per cent of the proceeds of minerals to the land/state of origin. The explanation for the present 13 per cent wobbles against precedence. Third, any law that does not have a human face does not belong in the human race. Derivation is not a pocket money concession from a higher authority to a lesser authority. It is a right to restore the mining areas to a tenantable position, as it were. Finally, the law violates the ‘golden rule’ of treating others as one would like to be treated. At the Afe Babalola Committee of the National Political Reform Conference in 2005, the question was asked whether the North would have accepted 13 per cent derivation if oil were discovered in Kaduna rather than the Delta. Significant members of the Committee quibbled rather than answering the question directly. The above queries easily turn the law into an instrument of expropriation.
The reaction of the Niger Delta militants from Isaac Boro to date threatened the survival of the Nigerian State. The reality of modern statehood is that bad laws must still be obeyed until those laws are changed. Violation of a bad law is an offence just as the violation of a good law. There are however two avenues to changing a bad law. It is either changed via persuasion and due process or by violent means outside the realm of law. Whenever the second option is adopted, the law will take its toll because it is a challenge to the sovereignty of the state.
Maitasine and Boko Haram are different in cause, course, modus operandi and ideology. While the militants operated on principally on grounds of rights, justice and equity, Matasine and Boko Haram advanced a sectarian position. They argued for a supposedly purer Islam. It was clear in the case of Boko Haram that the goal was territorial and religion was a camouflage for territorial ambition. This was a clever choice because religion is one of the most difficult institutions to confront. Religions are meant to be divine orders beyond disputation. To dispute it is to incur divine wrath which must be avoided by all believers. Religion is therefore, the most effective agent of socio-political mobilisation. Apart from the appeal to spirituality, Boko Haram was not successful at propaganda. It argued that western education was a sin without proposing a viable alternative. Its tactics and strategy also contains elements of weakness. It bombed churches and mosques thus violating Islamic laws that make non-combatants immune from attack and protect Muslims from attacks by fellow Muslims. It employed a scatter strategy of attack in Abuja, Kano, Bauchi and Potiskum among other areas. Although it struck terror in the public, it did not advance its goal in terms of consolidation. The kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls was a strategic blunder that earned Boko Haram negative international attention. As long as the girls were held captive, Boko Haram remained in the international media. Boko Haram strategy was very destabilising resulting in mass movement and contributing to large camps of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Its activities lasted that long because of the lack of cooperation of the host communities partly because of the fear of reprisals and partly for political reasons. By December 2016, Boko Haram was declared officially degraded. This is not to say that it is gone for good. By the nature of insurgencies which have no central command, every fighter tends to become a General still fighting on. Insurgencies last long. Chinese communists fought for 28 years, Vietnamese communists for 30 years and Sandinistas for 18 years. So, it is not yet Uhuru from Boko Haram.
Another source of insecurity in the Nigerian state is the terrorism of kidnappers. It started as a tactic of the Niger Delta militants to fund arms purchase, force the oil companies out and earn money to run the organisation. They kidnapped expatriates and got the employers to pay ransom for their release. It eventually escalated and gangs developed in other parts of the country, including faraway Northern Nigeria. It soon became the most lucrative business that was not quoted on the stock market. The telephone became the most effective facilitator of kidnapping with a war against the middle and upper classes. The qualification for kidnapping is the ability to pay huge ransom. Information is required for a successful operation and the recent communication explosion has aided the nefarious act. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and email among other means have become sources of required information and those who are unwary expose themselves.
The last and perhaps the most difficult of these threats confronting Nigeria is the recent Nnamdi Kanu phenomenon. Kanu established the Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) to demand for the sovereign state of Biafra. He was incarcerated for that demand and he is currently on bail. He has been playing host to youths who want the actualisation of Biafra. The older and more experienced Igbo are treading softly. The experience of the civil war cannot easily go away. The Yoruba often warn in like circumstances that those who witness Sango (god of thunder) disappear underground will not insult Oba Koso. Any Igbo born after 1970 can only learn about the civil war from moonlight stories told after a good meal of pounded yam. That is different from direct experience. It is only when myths are tested against reality that they are validated. Just recently, Kanu instructed the people of Anambra to shun the November 18, 2017 governorship election as a sign that the Igbo have nothing to do with Nigeria any more. The National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Grand Alliance which is the ruling party in the state, Mr. Ifeatu Obiokoye, wrote that the call was ’irresponsible, and devoid of intellectual focus’. He went further that Kanu had no authority to speak for the Igbo of the Southeast. Obiokoye emphasized that the Biafra concept was a metaphor for the demand for equity and fair play in the Nigerian state and not a separate movement. He continued: “We are concerned about the continued existence of Nigeria under the present structural arrangement.” He finally advised Kanu to drop the ‘Emperor’ perception of himself. Biafra is not new to Nigerian political narrative. Secession had always been used as a bargaining tool in Nigerian politics. It was Ojukwu’s blunder to go beyond threat that led to the civil war.
Nigeria has a quantum of security challenges. The Federal Government has to be strategic in handling those challenges. Some require constitutional adjustments, others require mere legislation, while yet others require negotiation. In adopting any of these measures, political actors must place country above self and clan and place tomorrow above today and yesterday. Nigeria must adopt a mission to drive a renewed vision and elect visionary leaders.
