If there is an axiom that should galvanize Nigerians to see the future clearly and demand more from those who govern, it is that ungoverned spaces become ungovernable places. The absence of governance in Nigeria manifests as deep mistrust, anarchy, insurgency and a pervasive breakdown of law and order in areas the size of small countries. Nigeria’s viability is in question as the quality of governance across all levels and arms of government continues to slide.
Due to neglect, Sambisa Forest went from being a game reserve to a hideout for criminals and, eventually, the base of a terrorist insurgency. Across the rural northwest, the presence of vast unpoliced forests is one of the main factors exacerbating the problem of armed banditry. In the Niger Delta and across the southern coastline, long-neglected creeks and waterways have become dens of militant gangs and pirates. In Maiduguri, the same neighbourhoods that spawned the ultraviolent terror cult, Maitatsine, in the early 1980s, also nurtured Boko Haram, and across the country kidnapping is a lucrative business enabled by a weak police force and even weaker citizen identification system. Whether the focus is on suburban slums, rural forests or coastal inlets, the common denominator is governmental abandonment and the lack of development.
Nigeria’s governance deficit has been obscured by the militarization of justice and security – a paradigm that disproportionately favours the armed forces as the sole response to all threats to public order as well as a bias towards regime security rather than human security. The fetishization of militarism has also made it almost impossible to relate security threats to often-understated issues such as access to opportunity, equity and justice, quality of life, education, jobs and healthcare. A broader, richer discourse on security would link climate change, ecological degradation, the destruction of rural agrarian economies, rural-urban migration and youth unemployment to rural and urban violence. It would aim security sector reform at reorienting enforcement institutions towards public safety rather than regime security. Modern counterinsurgency doctrine recognizes the need to address the non-military factors that drive conflict which calls for governance, not guns.
Two main factors account for our governance deficit. First, the current political structure provides no real incentive for political actors to deliver governance. The distribution of oil revenues in the form of federal subventions to states has created an ethos of exploitation that means politicians are more interested in patronage than in delivering social services.
Consequently, the troubles that preoccupy politicians are largely conflicts over fairness in allocating patronage, not efficiency in the distribution of social services. To compound matters, under existing arrangements, state governors have emasculated local government authorities using them as satellites rather than creating local socioeconomic growth hubs. This erosion of third-tier governance means there is no delivery mechanism for public goods at the grassroots.
Secondly, the hijack of local governance means there is democracy deficit at the municipal level. Elections, when state governors permit them to hold, are hopelessly rigged and produce outcomes that lack legitimacy.
This intensifies an already widespread loss of faith in formal political institutions and political actors. Correspondingly, non-state actors are filling the governance void. In some areas, Boko Haram dispenses justice, provides security, access to market and collects taxes. Rural communities which constitute 52 percent of Nigeria are ill-served by security assets with many communities having no police presence. This deficiency enables the bandits terrorizing Zamfara and other parts of the rural northwest. In the face of mounting insecurity, many communities have taken to self-help, establishing vigilante groups that in the future will challenge state authority. Logically, as insecurity increases and communities fill the absence of governance with ethnic militias, there is a rise in medium-intensity ethnic conflicts, stretching Nigeria’s threadbare unity and further eroding confidence in the Nigerian state. The dearth of local governance also means the absence of mediating forces to prevent and contain conflict.
The thorniest challenges Nigeria faces today are rooted in governance and politics and the sustainable solutions lie in the same place. If governance will not improve, we must become adept at identifying the ungoverned spaces that will soon become ungovernable because the insecurity that seems isolated to a few distant places will converge until all are engulfed. The ungovernable spaces are derelict rural areas or densely-populated ghettoes with a disproportionately high population of unschooled, unskilled and unemployed males aged between 16 and 35, with little or no social services and low or no police presence. The governors spend more time in Abuja than in their states and population growth and income inequality balloon unchecked in the midst of rising poverty. There are many such places in Nigeria and federal interventions by might, guns or funds will never be sufficient to undo the damage of negligent or absent governments.
The investments in the processes required to yield sustained governance that localizes the delivery of essential services and development to the grassroots must start immediately regardless of the results of the 2019 elections. Nigeria needs a slew of electoral, constitutional and security sector reforms designed to curb unresponsive government and balance the power between the state and the citizens. However, this will not happen until Nigeria’s governance deficit and the crisis of governability become core issues in social and political discourse and a major, implacable demand of the majority of Nigerians. The economy, insecurity, and corruption: it is all about governance.
