NIGERIA AND THE RISING SECURITY THREATS

In recent times, Nigeria has witnessed an unprecedented rise in insecurity. This is not unconnected with the activities of the Islamist sect the book haram that has practically declared war on the Nigerian state. The contention by members of this sect is that they are seeking to repay the injustice meted out on their members by government. That underscores why they have been attacking police stations and other security outfits as a means of registering their grievance with government. The pertinent question however is, if the said sect has an axe to grind with government, what has innocent Nigerians got to do with it? A check on the number of casualties in these attacks reveals that majority of the victims are innocent Nigerians who know little or nothing about the sect’s grouse with government.

A cursory check on history will reveal that the sect started its attack in the heydays of 2009. Then, their major targets were security outfits. The thengovernment of Late Umaru Yar’Adua ordered a complete extermination of members of the sect, a move that has landed us in the current situation we now find ourselves. One must state quite frankly that, such move by government was rather ill conceived. A better and lasting means of quelling the uprising ought to have been adopted. This is because such delicate issues are of a delicate nature; they therefore must be handled with care. Otherwise it will degenerate to a level where government will find tasking to handle. Just like what we are currently facing

That act by government saw the sect regrouping and they have been unleashing terror on the Nigerian people since 2010. One mind troubling fact is that in 2009, members of the sect used guns in carrying out their attacks. However, after regrouping, they graduated from using guns to more sophisticated weapons like bombs. Thus, fuelling the suspicion that the group is being sponsored by certain individuals whowant todisintegrate the country. The armory and arsenal at the disposal of members of this group are so sophisticated that they can match, if not overwhelm the Nigerian security agencies. The question however is who supplies them with these weapons and where are the weapons imported from? Or are they smuggled into the country?  These questions makes one aligns himself with the president, when he said rather dejectedly, that members of the sect are present in all spheres of government.If members of the sect have infiltrated government like he said, what is he doing to checkmate it? Is he also overwhelmed like we all are?

The spokesman of the group recently said they are been sponsored by certain if not all governors in the North. These governors dole millions of naira monthly to the sect, in order to keep them off their state. If this is true,then it amounts to a betrayal by the political class in this country. These politicians come out to pacify the populace once a blast occurs, and go back to dine with the perpetrators of the acts. One admit that these politicians have become experts in the act of condolences messages, that they need not think of what to say when such events occur. This shameful conduct of our leader’s shows that they are not to be trusted and it confirms the great statement of Dr. Samuel Smiles, to wit:“theconduct of the contemporary politicians is on the path of corruption and disorder. The opinions which they give in their reception rooms, varies from those they give in public speeches. For instance, these politicians praise the people for their patriotic feelings and then turn around and laugh at the same in their private meetings”. This act of hypocrisy by these so called leaders makes them enemies of the people. A great scholar opined: “enemies have the characteristics of being both covert and overt enemies; for animosity has just one color. I wish that friends were like enemies as far as pretence is concerned. Undoubtedly friends that are hypocrites are worse than the common hypocrite.” Nigerians must therefore be wary of those we call ‘leaders’.

For members of the Boko Haram sect, this is a question for you. What exactly do you want? What aim or objective do you seek to foist on Nigeria and Nigerians?  Come out like civilized men do and discuss what you want. Resulting to wanton killings and flagrant disregard for human life is cowardice. Are the victims of your onslaught directly responsible for your predicaments? What has the killing of innocent people including children got to do with religion that you are always want on associating your acts with? There is no religion that preaches violence. Besides, religion is an accidental occurrence necessitated by birth. So do not hide under the cover of religion to unleash havoc on innocent Nigerians struggling to eke a living.

Government also cannot abdicate its responsibility to adequately protect and safe guard the lives of the people. This security situation transcends beyond the book haram saga. I am of the view that some unscrupulous people are taking advantage of the porous nature of our security system andare unleashing terror on the people. The security situation has gotten to a point where one cannot trust his next door neighbor. Government is bound to protect and guaranty the safety on Nigerians at all times and she must be alive to this responsibility. Where government fails to discharge this responsibility, then the people may result to self-help. And this will be calamitous to the country.

I will conclude this piece with a statement by Dr. Samuel Smiles with regards to duties: “Duties are man’s debt. He who intends to upkeep himself from discreditable and immoral values in the eyes of others must pay off his debt. Yet, such actions can only be performed by continuous and serious struggle. Undertaking one’s duties is the principal matter which occupies man from the first day he enters this world until the day on which he departs it. Consequently, the more power and capabilities one possesses, the more he is required to perform his duties; for man is like a clerk whose duty is to serve children of kind. This duty is based on the love of justice, and is not only an ideological obligation but also a basic necessity of man’s life. Yet, both traits manifest their effects in words and actions.” God bless Nigeria.

HEAR PROFESSOR CLAUDE AKE ON THE NEED FOR A SOVEREIGN NATIONAL CONFERENCE(SNC)

"If we have been concerned with irrelevant and second order problems in ways that are not productive, what are the salient problems and how might we address them? One has already been discussed, namely the nature of the politics we practice. I want to add two more. The first is the reality of multinationality which continues to threaten us. We have preached at ethnonationalism, blamed it for everything, legislated against it, and attempted to deny it political expression. But even as we do so, it grows stronger and more domineering. At this point, it has markedly reduced the prospect of collective identity and democratic stability.

Perhaps the first thing to understand in dealing with this problem is that even though it is prone to abuse, ethnonationalism expresses fundamental needs. History, especially the colonial experience, has saddled us with the problem of crystallizing a sense of who we are and where we belong socially because we have been under unrelenting pressure from the hegemonic homogenization of westernization. Ethnonationalism gives us some chance to affirm our humanity and to claim a social space and a cultural milieu where we can feel at home. If the tenacity with which some of us cling to certain traditional cultural symbols and a fabricated past seems surprising, one must consider the implications of lacking a sense of self and of being lost in a cultural wilderness.

Nigeria will need to pay more attention to these developments. I can think of no better way to begin than rethinking ethnicity and nationalism which we would rather judge than understand. The usual easy judgment is an unaffordable luxury at a time when long-established states are decomposing under pressure from ethnic and nationalist assertiveness and when the international community is shrugging off their demise. The implications of this for Nigeria where several hundred ethnic and national groups are crammed chaotically and oppressively into one unitary state is easy enough to imagine.

In these circumstances, it is entirely desirable that we begin to devise political arrangements which express the reality of Nigeria as a federation of ethnicities and nationalities. This is extremely urgent. The vast majority of ethnic and national groups in this country are feeling increasingly that far from being a fair deal, their incorporation into Nigeria is grossly oppressive and getting more so.
These are structural problems. They are associated with certain attitudinal problems which have to be addressed simultaneously. To mention just a few by way of illustration: First, we are too different. All too often we show no sign of understanding that we are, each and everyone of us, relevant and important to the fate of our country. Instead of drawing on our own resources, we are forever looking up to someone else, forever searching for good leaders to see us through. Even among the more influential and the most thoughtful people in this country, the belief that the problem with Nigeria is leadership is very strong. Leadership is hardly the problem. We ought to curb our constant yearning for good leaders and be grateful that we have had so few of them. What we need is not leaders to follow but that everyone become a leader. Our bane is our resignation to being eternally passive objects of our people's will, begging on our knees for our rights and entitlements, and construing politics as the search for a redeemer. As long as we remain like that, we can never attain democracy of any depth and we can never be free from tyranny.

Second, we need a serious and practical commitment to sharing the burdens and the rewards of citizenship with equity. We think we are getting justice only when we are in a position to dominate and oppress others. Once in that position, we hardly ever muster the discipline and the objectivity to allow that others have rights. Those who complain vociferously that they are oppressed by the regional distribution of power have no qualms about being oppressive in states that they control; those who complain about being oppressed in their state, dish out oppression in generous doses in local government areas which they control. And so on.

In the present conjuncture, how might we effectively initiate the collective effort for clearing these points of departure? I believe that a national conference is a good place to begin. It is a particularly effective way of mobilizing practically everyone into the vortex of politics and initiating the idea of everyone as leader which we propose here. More importantly, a national conference will break up the rigidities of the existing power structure and institutions, bringing more social forces into relevance, broadening the base of the national debate. It will free people to think more imaginatively. More than any other political arrangement for transformation other than revolution, the national conference is likely to open all issues and rearrange everything as necessary.

But let there be no illusions about this. National conferences are events of exceptional complexity which could degenerate into confusion or worse. They are most appropriate in situations where the government has lost control and the people are in revolt, conditions that do not currently exist in Nigeria. Going by the present state of our politics, there is just a chance that a national conference could deteriorate into a bitter contestation of parochial concerns with the result that instead of understanding our differences in order to manage them better, we may absolutize them to our grief.
In the end, the question of a national conference in Nigeria comes down to a choice between fear and hope. Fear that the conference could be the midwife of disintegration; hope that it will deepen democracy and evolve the basic consensus on fundamentals which will finally make Nigeria a going concern. A difficult choice perhaps, I believe that we should come down on the side of hope. All the more so because there is no country in Africa where the national conference has not advanced political renewal and democratization and because there is really no alternative in our present circumstances.

To conclude, for the political question in general, the rot is deeper and more pervasive than it appears and much of what is on offer in the way of remedy does not even begin to address it. It may well be that we will soon have a civilian government.

Even so, as we have seen, the real problems will remain unsolved, a veritable time-bomb. We may be lucky and struggle to safety before it blows. Then again, we may not. It could blow tomorrow. Worse yet, it may be a very slow fuse ticking for ever, while we waste away waiting to begin, dying by installment, and forgotten by time and progress."

This was delivered by Late Professor Claude Ake on the 16 December, 1992 at the Inaugural Dialogue of the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation in Lagos

FUEL SUBSIDY: A GIFT REJECTED BY NIGERIANS

On the first of 1^st January 2012, while a lot of people were basking in the euphoria of witnessing a new year, the President through the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), gave Nigerians a new year’s gift, one that Nigerians will not want to forget in a hurry. A gift intended to plunge Nigerians into unquantifiable hardship. The gift was of course the removal of fuel subsidy.  Nigerians however did not want this gift. This they manifested by their stiff opposition and thus thronged out in large numbers, occupying cities in different parts of the country. Nigerians said a capital no, to these anti people policy of government

I must state quite frankly that, after the declaration of a state of emergency in certain parts of the country, I knew government was up to something. But I just didn’t know what they were up to.  Isn't it a common knowledge that   government has been relatively unpopular in recent times, among the people of Nigeria, due to the security challenges threatening the unity of this country? The idea therefore, was to declare a state of emergency in perceived trouble spots to appease the people and then hit them with your surprise package.  Unfortunately for the government however, Nigerians were least impressed by that move. This was expressed in massive turnout we had during the protests.

The action of government confirms one point, that interest of the people do not matter and is not considered when taking decisions of great national importance. This accounts for why government announced the removal of fuel subsidy despite wise counsel from eminent Nigerians that the planned removal should be shelved. I have not ceased wondering why government shunned dialogue with labour and other interest groups before announcing the removal. Why did government not implement some of the policies to cushion the effect of the removal before announcing it? Was government daring the people or did it intend to play a fast one on the people? These are some of the questions government must answer. Government’s argument in support of the removal of fuel subsidy is that subsidy has risen to a level that government cannot continue to pay for it. Is it not an open secret that corruption accounts for this meteoric rise? Why didn’t government checkmate the corruption that has eaten deep into the petroleum sector before removing the so called subsidy? Instead it chose to transfer the burden to Nigerians, seeking to make them pay for government’s ineptitude in fighting corruption? The same corruption accounts for why we are importing refined petroleum products after over fifty years of the discovery of oil.

The President made a feeble attempt to douse mounting tension by announcing a 25% cut in the salary of members of the executive branch of government.  Someone should please tell Mr. President that Nigerians will not buy that because 25% cut in salaries will not affect these people in anyway, because they still enjoy fat allowances.  Besides, the President Does not have the power to do so constitutionally it is only the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Commission that can do so. So it is clearly an attempt to hoodwink the people. This is therefore a call on the people be on their guard in order not to be swayed by this rhetoric.

During the protests, we lost a lot of comrades to trigger happy police officers, who derive pleasure in snuffing out life out of armless people in a bid to show superiority I believe. Let me state emphatically here that these comrades will not die in vain. President Jonathan must be made to account for these deaths. The police officers were apparently acting as agents of the President. He should therefore face prosecution for crimes against humanity. Such prosecution will serve as a deterrent to other leaders  don’t send men with live ammunition to maim and kill armless protesters exercising their constitutional rights. One must commend Nigerians for their forthrightness and the orderly manner they conduct themselves during the protest. The same was expected of government and the police, but we all know what we got.

While negotiations were deadlocked, government unilaterally announced a new price of N97. This was apparently done to pitch labour against the people. One must confess that they succeeded to an extent because the strike was later suspended by labour. How can you commit a wrong in order to correct a previous wrong? The manner, in which he announced the removal of fuel subsidy, is the same manner he adopted in announcing the new price. Things are done like that in a democracy. Or is our democracy different from the one practiced around the world?

We are however resolute and undaunted in our opposition to the new price announced by government. I call on Nigerians and fellow patriots to go back to the streets until government reverts back to N65, until government means what it says and says what it means. The inglorious days when Nigerians allow themselves to be fooled by government are over. Where is government getting the money to subsidize the current price of N97? Will the economy of the country not collapse again if subsidy is not removed? God bless Nigeria.

                                                                                                                                Frank O. ijege

                                                                                                                                frankijege@yahoo.com