Nigeria is a country adrift: from the Boko Haram armed insurgency still raging in the Northeast; insecurity and wanton killings in the Northwest and Northcentral regions; pogroms in Southern Kaduna; organised gangs/cults, kidnappings and armed robberies in southern Nigeria; repression of minority groups and police killings and brutality.
Worse, the state has been helpless in responding to these challenges. The army, over the last months, has been sustaining huge casualties in the fight against Boko Haram, security agencies have been almost helpless in stopping the killings in the Northwest or even watch unconcerned as roving Fulani herdsmen or bandits kill, rape and destroy people, farmlands and properties in the Northcentral and Southern Kaduna. In like manner, the police has had little success against the organised gangs, cults, and kidnappers terrorising the south. Rather, they join in the bazaar, killing and brutalising innocent citizens in search of lucre. As usual, almost nobody gets prosecuted or punished for the killings or crimes even among the security agencies.
The natural result is the total loss of trust and confidence in governments and institutions to protect the people or help them get justice. This has compounded the problem with Nigerians now resorting to self-help to protect themselves leading to the proliferation of “self-protecting armed militias and cases of ‘jungle justice”.
If you add the problems of desertification, climate change, exploding population and grinding poverty, and a shrinking economy to the mix, you get the picture of a failing or failed state.
Yet, last week, during the Sallah celebrations, the president, Muhammadu Buhari, bold-facedly told Nigerians they know he has done his best in tackling insecurity in the country. Talking to the Press shortly after performing the Eid prayers with his family and aides at the forecourt of the State House, Abuja last week Friday, Buhari was quoted as saying:
“I want Nigerians to be very conscious of their country and what we inherited when we came in 2015 was Boko Haram – North East and the militants, the South-south. Nigerians know that we have done our best.”
Although he would admit that the security forces need to do more in Northwest and Northcentral, he was satisfied with his administration’s handling of the insecurity in the Northeast and Southsouth and is giving himself a pass mark, even if his best is clearly not good enough or even good at all and the country is gradually sinking into total anarchy.
Buhari’s refusal to even acknowledge the mess the country is in even in the face of mounting pressure from the National Assembly to rejig the security apparatuses and strategy is not surprising. As I have argued here on several occasions, although Nigeria claims to subscribe to the Western model of liberal democracy with checks and balances on the powers of the president, in reality, we have created a powerful and dictatorial presidency that, if the occupant so chooses, can govern with little or no checks on his powers and can sidestep all other institutions of restraints put on his way. This has been compounded by a citizenry that sees its leaders as masters and is unable or even unwilling to hold their leaders to account.
Ibrahim Magu’s name was twice submitted for confirmation to the Senate for the position of Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). His nomination was rejected on both occasions on the strength of a damning security report from the Department of State Security (DSS). Despite that, Magu still served a total of five years as Acting Chairman of the EFCC and the Senate could do or say nothing to the president.
Also, last year, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, invited the Service Chiefs to brief the House on the spate of insecurity in the country. The Service Chiefs ignored him and refused to appear before the house. The only response a thoroughly embarrassed Speaker could give to that affront on constitutional authority was that he was going to report them to the president. Of course, nothing came out of that report nor has he summoned the courage to invite them to the House again.
The Senate, on more than two occasions, has also made passionate representations to the president to sack the service chiefs over the floundering war with the Boko Haram insurgency. The President has flatly refused and has continued to retain the services of the failed service chiefs, who have exceeded their statutory years of service leading to low morale, grumblings and dissatisfactions in the armed forces.
The service chiefs continue to hold forth while their juniors are being retired. But how does Buhari care? Despite their gross failure, the service chiefs have made history as the longest serving service chiefs in the history of the country and continue to preside over the decimation and humiliation of the Nigerian military in the war against the rag tag Boko Haram insurgents. Of course, there are many voices now even within Mr Buhari’s governing All Progressives Congress (APC) saying the war on Boko Haram is a cash cow and the service chiefs are not going to allow it to end.
So bad has the situation gotten that last month the Senate passed a motion calling on the service chiefs to resign following the incessant killings of soldiers fighting insurgency and banditry in the Northeast and Northwest of the country. In an overwhelming vote of no confidence, the Senate asked the service chiefs to step aside so that President Buhari can appoint new ones with fresh ideas. It also mandated its joint committees on Defence, Army, Air Force, Police and Interior to receive briefings from the new service chiefs and the minister of interior.
Of course, the service chiefs ignored the Senate and Buhari curtly reminded them that the prerogative of appointing and sacking security chiefs remains his and he won’t abdicate it to the National Assembly. Case closed!
Nigeria as presently constituted is a politician’s haven. Although it has nice constitutional designs sharing powers among arms and orders of government and setting up a so-called system of checks and balances, in reality, there are little or no checks on the powers of the chief executive. At state levels, the governors even operate like emperors, diverting or outrighly stealing a huge chunk of the state’s revenue without question and ordering the arrest, torture or even killing of anyone that dares to question them.
The state Houses of Assembly and judiciary are mostly subordinated to the wishes of the governor. State Houses of Assembly in particular, only act as rubber stamps to the governor and are always filled with the governor’s loyalists. The people are treated with little or no regard. What is worse, the last hurdle of accountability at the polls is easily sidestepped by massive rigging and manipulation of elections.
