By Conference of Non-Governmental Organisations
With the appropriate insight, the creation of green zones in Northern Nigeria and the development of ranches endowed with massive irrigation facilities would have been effectively realised years before now. We aver that the oil boom of the late seventies and early eighties justifies this assertion. Sadly, the focus of the ruling oligarchy and their comprador collaborators have been looting, corruption, profligacy which delivers huge destruction on the country’s economic and social development with institutional failure/collapse and holistic poverty of the citizenry as its optimum delivery. With the spurious wealth in the hands of the ruling class, there is an economically redundant minority with superfluous wealth who lack the mental endowment to emerge as a bourgeois expression. They are recycled in government to sustain their superfluity which comes from brutal accumulation and appropriation. Drawing from this dimension of our national experiences, the country has failed woefully in every aspect that makes for a stable state. While the capacity of the Nigerian Police force to maintain internal security has failed, more worrisome is the inability of the Nigerian army to contend with invading thugs and criminals. Due to the lack of the appropriate hardware, the Nigerian army are decimated by criminal gangs in all fronts. With the reports on the encounter of the Nigerian armed forces with bandits and Boko Haram, the army is obviously leprous and incapable of providing security for the country. Presently, It is clear to the international community that Nigeria deceives herself in its avowal of victory against the Islamic State. The present Nigerian youths who offered to serve in the defence of father land are being wasted and martyred in military encounters.
The President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, all Senators and Honourable members of the National Assembly: it has become fundamental to deliver sensitization to the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on the decaying state of social order and the exhaustion of the patience line of the citizenry of our country.
With increasing poverty and deprivation, the conditions of existence for the Nigerian people have been growing worse every second. As reaction to the failed hope about the delivery of government, the country has been inundated with contentions that undermine the sustenance of the Nigeria State.
It is common knowledge to all that the security infrastructure of our country has virtually broken down. The Nigeria Police, currently, displays apparent incapacity to guarantee the security of lives and properties. It is obvious personal risk to travel anywhere in Nigeria presently.
The weaknesses of the Nigerian police have emboldened criminals and thereby make robbery and kidnapping routine. It is amazing to realise that, in recent times, criminals move into communities, operate for eight hours and above, load people into vehicles and carry them away as kidnap victims without any response from the Nigerian security network.
In the same vein, criminals move into our schools, operate for over four hours and abduct our children who are eventually announced as kidnapped. This empirical truth reveals how absurd the Nigerian situation has become.
On Monday this week, May 24, 2021 precisely, residents of Gauraka community in Tafa Local Government Area of Niger State blocked the Abuja-Kaduna highway protesting the incessant cases of kidnapping experienced by the community.
This is just one of the numerous protests against insecurity by communities in Northern and Southern Nigeria. It need be said that the preponderance of these criminal indulgence and the apparent inability of the Nigerian police to enforce deterrence has engendered discontent, frustration and betrayal of hope.
In appreciating the devastating impact of criminality in Nigeria, we argue that core to the present insecurity crises in Nigeria is the appalling poverty level in the country. The current level of poverty in Nigeria does not arise from lack of resources but the mismanagement of the wealth and resources of the country by a corrupt, inept and profligate leadership since independence.
As a fallout of the high level of poverty, inter-ethnic hostility has been escalated by suspicion among our ethnic nationalities. Apparently, the explosive dimension of inter-ethnic hostilities derives from the parlous state of our national economy and the accompanying emotional displacement that it has exacerbated. The world index on poverty reveals the very high level of poverty presently being experienced by the Nigerian state.
The level of insecurity in Nigeria has dangerously impacted on the lives of Nigerians individually. It has regressed the GDP and GNP of our country. While Kidnapping has become a recurrent activity, armed robbery has grown in monumental dimensions.
Travelling by Nigerians have been seriously constrained by the fear of being robbed or kidnapped. In nearly every part of the country, it is becoming increasingly risky to go to the farms. Every aspect of economic life has been constrained by the restrictions delivered by insecurity.
Bad as the situation is nationally, the situation in the Northern part of the country delivers more ominous report. Many communities in Northern Nigerian have been sacked or displaced by the continuing assault of local criminal groups or international terrorist groups loyal to the Islamic state.
With the continuing killings and kidnapping in the North East and North West, most of the communities have been deserted while the rest are largely restricted in economic and social activities due to fear of attacks. Thus, in all aspect of economic activities, Nigeria is in continuing regression. This includes education, industrial manufacture, trading, farming and technological development.
The question of herders-farmers conflict has left the middle-belt in a war situation also. We note that the conflict between herders and farmers which spans the middle-belt and other regions of Southern Nigeria is the aftermath of a mismanaged economic space by successive regimes of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Without a planned and structured approach to cattle rearing, the cattle and their herders trek long distance from Northern Nigeria to the South, striving to feed the stock. That the process has the consequence of destruction of farms by the cattle is self-evident. Essentially, various governments of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, since independence, lacked the intuitive capacity to capture this reality and, thereby, preempt the danger open grazing in itinerant dimension conveys.
Also, the lack of the mental will to study the environment and preempt its impact have made Nigeria victim of unexpected dessert incursion. This accounts for the perennial southern migration of herders and the tribal colouration of herders-farmers crises which is gradually assuming a war situation.
The lack of the political will to properly situate the crises by the government and find solution to it has dangerously altered the harmony among our communities over the years and enthroned hostile reactions between communities in the North and the South. The accompanying throw-ups pose immense danger to the continuing coexistence of Nigeria.
With the appropriate insight, the creation of green zones in Northern Nigeria and the development of ranches endowed with massive irrigation facilities would have been effectively realised years before now. We aver that the oil boom of the late seventies and early eighties justifies this assertion.
Sadly, the focus of the ruling oligarchy and their comprador collaborators have been looting, corruption, profligacy which delivers huge destruction on the country’s economic and social development with institutional failure/collapse and holistic poverty of the citizenry as its optimum delivery.
With the spurious wealth in the hands of the ruling class, there is an economically redundant minority with superfluous wealth who lack the mental endowment to emerge as a bourgeois expression. They are recycled in government to sustain their superfluity which comes from brutal accumulation and appropriation. Drawing from this dimension of our national experiences, the country has failed woefully in every aspect that makes for a stable state
While the capacity of the Nigerian Police force to maintain internal security has failed, more worrisome is the inability of the Nigerian army to contend with invading thugs and criminals. Due to the lack of the appropriate hardware, the Nigerian army are decimated by criminal gangs in all fronts.
With the reports on the encounter of the Nigerian armed forces with bandits and Boko Haram, the army is obviously leprous and incapable of providing security for the country.
Presently, It is clear to the international community that Nigeria deceives herself in its avowal of victory against the Islamic State. The present Nigerian youths who offered to serve in the defence of father land are being wasted and martyred in military encounters.
Essentially, the entire youth populations are made rudderless and unemployable due to the spiral impact of corruption on the funding of the educational system.
While the schools in Nigeria are obviously sub-standard in facilities, with a negative expression of what constitute success dominating our mental psyche, the students themselves have imbibed a negative philosophy which celebrates fraudulence in examinations.
To that effect, from the primary school to the university, a Nigerian child do not need to read to pass examinations. All he needs is to exploit the processes of cheating at examinations and earn distinction. This infraction has compromised the present and the future of our country and its various generations.
With an uncultured and intellectually bankrupt youth population and the inability of government to expand the industrial, technological and primary base of agricultural production, advance fee fraud, enrichment through ritualistic indulgence has become the indulgence of most of our youths.
This development undermines the future of our country and its hope of economic recovery. We aver that the primary integral for economic development is the human capital. Thus, when the human capital of a country is as de-developed as the Nigerian reality reflects, that country is obviously trading on inevitable destruction.
In our submission, we aver that the tirades of inter-ethnic disharmony, a weak military capacity and the collapse of the institutions for moral delivery in Nigeria, are predicates of an economy mismanaged by an inept and vision-less ruling elite.
We argue that this trend cannot continue and must stop now. We believe in the vast potentials with which Nigeria is endowed in human and natural resources. We cannot continue to be counted from behind with the resources in our hands. The blame game must stop and the focus of leadership in Nigeria must change.
We aver that harnessing the potentials of our country optimally, resolving the anathema of primitive accumulation that engenders alienation, reordering the political structure by which we engage, and optimising the funding of the educational sector as well as generating a deterrence approach to anti-corruption, the innards of a functionally active and efficient Nigerian State will be realised. It is within this construct that we situate the solution to our security challenge.
To that effect, we have undertaken this trek to advise government by to Do the right thing in terms of ensuring governance delivery, refrain from intimidating the people and shutting down the court of free speech and protest, and enthrone security for the Nigerian state and its people.
We state unequivocally that those who make peaceful protest impossible make violent protest inevitable. As Nigerians, we are sensitive to the overheating of the polity and the history of Chechnya and Liberia. We are guided by the experiences of the people of Sierra Leone, Syria, Libya among others.
We see Nigeria in a drift towards times no less hostile and destructive. It is consequent for us as a people to draw the attention of government to our feelings, our fears and the possibilities conveyed in our expectations.
We note that irrespective of the intervening programmes of this government focused at the economic recovery of the country, we aver that the realities of our environment reports continuing economic depression, regression of moral and spiritual values, weakening institutions and appalling spate of underdevelopment.
The social impact of this overwhelming collapse is the breakdown of the command structure of governance, weakening of public institutions, and the manifestation of various hostile reactions that are identified as bandits, herdsmen, Boko Haram and Islamic State.
Drawing from the faith we have on the endowment of our country we have come here to insist on good governance that will take Nigeria out of the dungeon of inevitable destruction to the path of sure and certain development. We urge as stated below:
1. We argue that the present state of insecurity is no longer acceptable to the Nigerian people. We cannot continue with the pains and agonies of having our children kidnapped in school and killed in very painful and traumatic manners.
2. Knowing that our leaders send their own children abroad to avoid same experiences impact more psychological pains on the mental psyche of our people. We demand that every public office holder must be banned from sending his/her children to school abroad.
3 While we acknowledge the military laws on mutiny and the enthronement of discipline that it conveys, we argue that the report of our military personnel on poor military infrastructure must be taken seriously, investigated and addressed.
4. We call for the creation of green zones in Northern Nigeria and the establishment of ranches in that region to forestall the consequences of unregulated ranching system called open grazing.
5. We argue that a ban on open grazing must be followed up with providing ranching opportunities for the herdsmen. This is critical to sustaining the Nigerian agricultural production chain.
6. We demand a political system implicitly endowed to deliver good governance.
7. We call for the reduction in the size of government as well as fundamentally address the salary scale of political office holders at all tiers of government in Nigeria. The salary of Political office holders must draw from the Civil Service Salary Scale.
8. We call for a proactive anti-corruption policy that delivers deterrence,
9 We call for the retraining of the Nigerian Police as well as the Armed Forces.
10 We call for the provision of security in all schools in Nigeria in a dimension that assures Nigerians of the safety of their children while at school.
11. We call for the provision of the appropriate machinery that deliver security both internally and externally. This include providing the necessary facilities for aerial surveillance and the requisite military hardware for combat situations.
12. We call for the legalisation of community police placed under the control and command of the community with appropriate financial provision from the Federal Government for the maintenance of personnel in training, remunerations and equipment.
13. We call for a fundamental deterrence policy on examination malpractices.
14. We call for a review of the minimum wage as a critical basis for an effective anti-corruption policy framework
15. We call for a review of the judicial system to deliver very speedy capacity in addressing cases in every aspect of judicial necessity
16. We call for improved public delivery in the provision of qualitative basic social services in education, health and housing, as user-cost-free public services.
17. We demand the upgrading of our medical facilities at all levels to check capital flight arising from treatments abroad.
18. We demand a reduction in the size of the National Assembly and insist on the remuneration of members based on sitting allowances only.
19 We call for the review of all state infrastructures that have been sold, particularly in the power sector. We demand that these infrastructures should be placed in the hands of the workers of these institutions.
We have come here to speak to the conscience of the leadership of our country and trust that these points we have listed here will not be taken for granted. We have not come here to make a speech. We have come here to urge the leadership of this country to save the country and save itself from the essential dynamics of history that delivers judgement in a dimension that even the leadership cannot escape from.
God bless Nigeria.
SIGNED:
Conference of Non-Governmental Organisations of Nigeria
Moses Oisakede Leadership Foundation
Alliance on Surviving COVID 19 and Beyond (ASCAB)
Marxist Socialist Alternative
Protest to Power
Women’s Voice and Action League
Praxis Centre
Democratic Socialist Movement
Environmental Sustainability Initiative
Social Rights and Leadership Forum
Workers Welfare Initiative
Reformers’ Academy
Committee for the Defence of Human Rights
