It’s been a decade since the Boko Haram crisis started. What started as a seemingly minor scuffle between a religious group and the police has slowly devolved into chaos. After the then sect leader was killed in police custody the terrorist group was born. Ten years and tens of thousands of deaths later, the group and its factions continue to cause havoc in parts of the north east.
In response to the deteriorating situation back in 2014, the government’s response could be summarized as “working harder”. Indeed, the new APC regime did work harder, shrinking the territory controlled by the group and announcing the group as “technically defeated”.
The technically defeated and splintered group still however manages to ambush soldiers and strike at soft targets. Admittedly the Boko Haram crisis has morphed into a complicated mess with no easy and obvious way out. At the core, however, is the realization by many that the Nigerian state does not seem to have the capacity to enforce law and order across its entire domain and does not seem to have state legitimacy in many places. Apparently there are parts of the north east were ISWAP, a Boko Haram faction, collects taxes and enforces the law against things like multiple taxation, in ways that people in Nigeria controlled Nigeria could only dream of.
Once you see the north east crisis from this state capacity lens then a lot of the other security challenges start to sound familiar. Admittedly without the terrorism label. Take the new kidnapping epidemic for instance. It has become common knowledge that there are large swathes of land in the country where the Nigerian state essentially is neither present or lacks the capacity to enforce anything. So, non-state actors, in this instance kidnappers, have taken control of some of these spaces and extract their tolls from innocent Nigerians. The story is the same for bandits in the north west, oil bunkerers in the south-south, and the like.
The expansion into spaces uncontrolled by the Nigerian state is not limited to violent criminals though. In almost every sphere of economic life there are non-state actors who have set up shop and who extract tolls; emboldened by the effective absence of the Nigerian state. From the name-redacted transport people who extract tolls from farmers looking to get their produce to markets, to self-appointed landlords who extract tolls from builders, and the faceless associations who mandate everyone in a particular line of business to “register” or face the music. The non-state actors are everywhere.
So, what is the way forward? Obviously the Nigerian state working harder is good but is clearly insufficient. Official state resources are stretched to the limit with most governments barely collecting enough revenues to pay staff salaries not to mention expanding. The incentive to wrestle legitimacy, and subsequently revenue, from these non-state actors is mostly absent, and where present difficult. It is easy to understand how difficult it is to eradicate a terrorist group in the north-east, but does anyone really think it will be easier to wrestle legitimacy and revenue from a transport union that may actually be larger than some states in terms of revenue generated? Just as an example.
The path forward probably has to include a redesign of the architecture of the Nigerian state itself. A couple of years ago words like “restructuring” and phrases like “national conference” were thrown around but there appears to be little stomach for serious reform across the political spectrum. Are we destined to hit rock bottom before we begin to face the music?
As economists and policy analysts we tend to underplay the role of security, basic law and order, and state legitimacy in our policy discussions but they are the foundations upon which every economy is built. Regardless of what kind of monetary policy you implement, if there is no security and law and order, then the economy is going nowhere. Regardless of what kind of industrial policy you implement, if your manufacturers cannot move cargo from point A to point B without tolls being extracted by numerous non-state actors, and without being kidnapped, then the economy is going nowhere.
“A house must be built on solid foundations if it is to last. The same principle applies to man (and woman), otherwise he (or she) too will sink back into the soft ground and becomes swallowed up by the world of illusion.” On this tenth anniversary of the insurgency in the north-east, perhaps it is time to think about what changes can be made to the architecture of the Nigerian state. To say that nothing in the current structure can be improved is untrue. Everything can be improved.
Nonso Obikili
Dr. Nonso Obikili is chief economist at Business Day
