•Crisis of Nigeria’s grotesque federalism
ABDUL’AZIZ Abubakar Yari, Zamfara State governor, just made a sensational announcement: he was resigning as his state’s chief security officer (CSO) but not necessarily stepping down as governor.
As many things Nigerian, when sobriety ought to rule the roost, jocularity took over. Not a few snidely queried: if he indeed quits as Zamfara CSO, would he also surrender the Zamfara security vote?
Yet, if there was any case that called for sober introspection on Nigeria’s grave crisis of federalism, this was one.
Alhaji Yari is Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), a position he earned by virtue of belonging to the federal ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). His state is predominantly Muslim, so criminality could not be politicised, on the fake altar of Christian-Muslim mutual antipathy.
In terms of power conspiracy theories, he is no South-South or Middle Belt minority that a “Fulani” sitting president could be accused of victimising, for his faith, for his ethnic group or for his partisan stance. Unlike the situation in much of the North, Zamfara is not home to ferocious farmers-herders tussle, where the so-called “Fulani herdsmen” are accused of mass slaughter.
Yet, his state, Zamfara, is home to perhaps the most hideous and nerve-wracking criminality after Boko Haram — mass killings from cattle rustling. After umpteenth interventions, even from the federal authorities, with even the military being pressed into service, and to no much gain, the governor, in frustration, declared he was giving up as CSO!
In his sensational announcement, he regretted his inability to protect his people as CSO, hence he was stepping down.
But what should a CSO do? Harness the security infrastructure and personnel of the state to protect the people, for whose needs the state exists. That should be simple on paper, since the security agents are well trained professionals who know what to do. But in Nigeria’s skewed federalism, it is as complex as they come.
For starters, the police, foremost civil security agency, is bossed by the president. Not even the state police commissioner is bossed by the state governor. Though the present structure is a reaction to gross abuses of regional authorities in the First Republic, the practice is another centralist extreme that leaves governors, security-wise, as no more than paper tigers. No wonder: Nigeria boasts of “states” that nevertheless technically lack the security muscle to back up that claim.
Cattle rustling, the rural equivalent of urban armed robbery, is laying Zamfara bare. There ought to be some centrist security arrangement — not as state-forged as the old regions thoroughly abused but certainly not as extremely central-driven as the present case — such that such security concerns could be curtailed at the grassroots.
It won’t be a bad idea, for instance, if Zamfara boasts some Livestock Rangers Corps that could effectively protect herders and their cattle, in the remotest parts of that state. With such security hubs ringed around critical economic assets, in the far-flung grassroots, gunmen’s invasion, to cattle-rustle, would begin to fade.
Ultimately, however, the Nigerian federation would have to be restructured. With such re-federalisation, effective local security chores should be ceded to states (or whatever the federating units end up being called), while the Federal Government concentrates on the bigger picture.