A failed state hatches violence. It breeds warlords and warmongers. It tolerates jingoes and empowers them. It looses its authority to command a monopoly of violence. Its laws and statutes are objects of scorn and derision. To this end, warlords and bandits are availed the rich humus to germinate and assume control of pockets of as much territory and armed jurisdiction as they can grab. In this scenario, Individuals lose their sense of security as fear of violent death lurks in every corner and fissure of life. These were individuals who under the theoretic terms of the social contract subleased their rights and powers so that the state can accumulate and exercise a monopoly of violence for the social good.
Nigeria may be on the road to becoming a failed State. The signs and portents are everywhere. Every factor worthy of consideration in Nigeria seems to be a part of a huge conspiracy to get the country to crash land, and break up. The leadership is a corrugated theatre of indentured roguery; the populace; a timid mass of impoverished humanity. Infrastructural decay is tradition here, while interminable crises have assumed the way of life. In Nigeria, the Hobbessian fear of violent death accompanies Nigerians throughout their short life spans. The life spans of Nigerians have been reduced terribly southwards that investing in an uncertain future is predicated on the roulette wheel of chance. And this ensures that “there is no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short (Cf. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan)
When on the 25th of May, 2005, the United States National Intelligence Council, released its long-term outlook and assessment of Nigeria, which projected a catastrophic scenario that Nigeria risks collapse in 15 years, Olusegun Obasanjo; Nigeria’s erstwhile president dismissed the report as emanating from detractors, and “prophets of doom”.
Obasanjo was not doing something out of character. He was being religiously faithful to that ostrich culture of dismissive denial, which has forever been the hallmark of Nigerian leadership. This culture of dismissal has so much permeated Nigerian leadership corridors, as to sire a thoroughbred race and bureaucracy of professional sycophants, whose bounden duty is to shoot every patriotic criticism of government’s incompetence out of the sky. It seemed that when the president reacts himself to the issues, he does that with the same modicum of arrogance and incivility, which emboldens the audacious impunity of assistants, Fani-Kayode, Remi Oyo, or his minister of information Frank Nweke, jr. These were notorious for their unrefined propensity to react to issues, and dismiss them with a plethora of insults, and garrulous irrationality, which resides in the darkest grottos of motor-park thuggery. Abubakar Umar, Chinua Achebe, and the European Union 2003 Nigerian election observer mission have all faced the speaking ends of presidential-approved verbal thuggery. They created a cottage industry out of whitewashing government’s buffoonery.
This dismissive culture of denial is an attempt to wish away the facts, or manufacture illusions to soothe their incompetence with the balms of ease. But facts are stubborn. And like corks, would never drown; always popping up at unguarded moments with tons of embarrassment in its wake. The World Bank followed up and pursued the same issue from its own peculiar standpoint. The 2005 World Bank Assessment lists Nigeria among the fragile states that risk collapse (IEG, 2006).
These states known in World Bank parlance as Low-income countries under stress (LICUS) are laden with multiplicity of chronic problems, which pose some of the toughest development challenges. These countries according to the World Bank’s assessment are characterized by the same dysfunctional constants. They are embroiled in extended internal conflict; struggling through tenuous post-conflict transitions, faced with weak security situation, fractured societal relations, corruption, breakdown in the rule of law, and lack of mechanisms for generating legitimate power and authority.
On the 23rd of December 2006 a car-bomb exploded in the Nigerian Southern city of Port Harcourt, which incidentally is the Oil capital of Nigeria tearing down parts of the fencing of the government House, which is the administrative hub of the state. The Associated Press report claimed that MEND-The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed responsibility for the bombing. This importation of Taliban tactics into the Niger Delta agitation by MEND marks a new twist in Nigeria’s chequered voyage enroute renaissance or implosion. This is testament to a nation embroiled in extended internal conflict.
Nigeria has never ceased to struggle through tenuous post-conflict transitions. The military years which reached its unholy apogee in Sanni Abacha bastardized almost all the structures and apparatus of state, conscripting them into the service of tyranny. Then, came the coup from heaven, which saw Abacha expiring atop imported prostitutes; followed by a hurriedly-convoked transition to a rule by a political class peopled by inglorious collaborators with the military occupation of Nigerian politics.
At the head of this hurried transition emerged Obasanjo; a man who went to jail under the military, and who rose pledging to spare no sacred cows in his fight against corruption in the new dispensation. Eight years after that declaration, more sacred cows were cloned under his administration than any other in Nigeria history, in spite of what his paid cheerleaders would have us believe. He was chosen by the military establishment, because he was construed as an effective Man-Friday to cover the rot they engendered. Obasanjo succeeded in single-handedly re-introducing civil-tyranny into Nigeria. He bestrode Nigeria as a village thug, in an Orwellian revolution gone awry. He busied himself harassing anyone who believes in the rule of law, as against the rule of Kabiyesi. Audu Ogbe bears in his disgrace, a testament to Obasanjo’s crude ways. Atiku Abubakar equally got his share of Obasanjo’s crudeness for daring to nurse an ambition unapproved by Baba himself. This uncouth midget thug essayed to destroy all that was left of accountability in governance, decency in comportment and vision in authority. He sold Nigeria to his isolated pocket of false friends, who are members of this syndicated gangsterism holding Nigeria to a ransom since independence. Almost all our public utilities were auctioned off in obedience to his greed. He bestrode the NNPC like a drunken sailor, rendering no account to anyone on how the revenues accruing the country were expended. After investing trillions of naira in our power sector, which he took up as his highest priority, the power sector is no longer epileptic but in coma. He invested over 300 billion naira to make Nigerian roads look more like the out-backs of hell and primeval desolation in concert with Tony, “Mr. Fix it” Anenih.
Obasanjo’s misadventures followed the script of all political misadventures in Nigerian history. Nigerians will continue for ages to come to offer propitiations to equity in retirement of these misadventures. Obasanjo’s greatest achievement was in cloning and imposing an illegitimate government on the Nigerian tribune of power. After an eight year tenure marked by executive delinquency, policy confusion, selective fight against corruption, and presidential vindictiveness, he further castrated the Nigerian electorate by imposing on them candidates they neither wanted, chose, nor asked for. He used Mr. Maurice Iwuh for this heist.
Today, Nigeria still summarizes insecurity of lives and property in spite of the sepulchral whitewashing of the Heart of Africa project, and the sterile millions wasted thereto. Armed robbers, both official, government-approved ones, like the Nigerian Police, and the freelancers have ensured that the Nigerian public space remains an arena of insecurity. This is a country where life is cheaper than the price of peanuts. This is where arms and ammunition are in the hands of petty crooks and psychologically unbalanced policemen and soldiers. The Nigerian state has since lost the monopoly of violence. Armed bandits are now ruling the waves and determining who has the right to life or death. Our fundamental freedoms are now casinos where crooked politicians, bandits and the privileged debauchery play for high stakes.
Instances of this drastic denigration of human life in Nigeria abound. Thisday’s journalist, Godwin Agbroko was shot dead in cold blood on his way home. No suspect is fingered and arrested. Believe me, none will ever be. How could the Nigerian police solve the murder of a common journalist, when it could not solve the mystery that was the murder of the former attorney general of the Federation; Mr. Bola Ige? The erstwhile Nigerian Inspector General of Police, Mr. Sunday Ehindero was quoted as closing the case on the murder of Bola Ige, whom they could not solve. This is an admission of incompetence from the authorities statutorily empowered to protect our lives and property in Nigeria. What better way could one have in passing a vote of no-confidence on his abilities. Ayodeji Daramola was murdered in Ekiti State. The Nigerian Police Force is yet to fish out the killers. Funso Willams was murdered in Lagos state. The police are yet to rise up to the challenge. Instead, hundreds of innocent Nigerians are still being killed and tortured yearly by the Nigerian police in a very degrading and shameful manner that has attracted the highest international condemnation. (HRW, 2007) Till now, no one has been convicted in the killing of 6 young Igbo traders at Apo village in Abuja in June 2005.
Are we still talking security?
A glance through any Nigerian news daily will apprise you of what security means here. In fact, Nigeria defies every rational computation. When beggars die in Shakespeare, there are no comets seen, but the stars themselves, blaze forth the death of princes. That is only in Shakespeare. In Nigeria, whether princes or beggars, life is so cheap that anyone who cares to do you harm would really do you in, and get away scot-free.
Today, thugs rule the Nigerian political theatre. Armed secret cultists butcher every opposition into submission, turning our universities, which are supposed to be the ivory towers of learning into abattoirs for human slaughter. Brown envelop syndrome has been deployed in emasculating the Nigeria Press; the supposed Fourth Estate of the Realm, into lending itself as cheerleaders of privileged rascality and political roguery. The Police force has since abandoned the pretence of being custodians of law and order; they are now a full-blown corrupt vestige of the ruling party in power. The Nigeria social space offers no protection to anyone, both celebrities and paupers. To this end, celebrities pay for police protection as they would private militias to protect their asses. The poor are abandoned to the mercies and good pleasures of the marauders.
Do we have fractured social relations in Nigeria? Well, a visit to any Nigerian chatrooms, or internet discussion group would surprise you. The amount of mutual hatred oozing out of those rooms is so toxic that it could corrode hell. Other factors listed by the World Bank and the espionage prophets of Arlington are abundant in Nigeria. That would take a full dissertation to explain. The present grundnorm supporting our present legal system for instance remain an unfunny joke. It was invented by a military ogre who wants to eternally latch onto power in Nigeria. Chapter 2 of the 1999 constitution for instance is a phoney creation. It is just there for cosmetic effect. We either borrowed that from India or whichever country that was ready to lie to its people for fun. For example: rights like free education for all Nigerians was deemed non-justiciable, whereas Nigeria has enough resources to educate all her citizens. These provisions offer the leadership an escape route to embezzle funds mapped out for sectors like education without anybody asking questions. If the leadership knows that a child in Kaura Namoda who is not in school will take the government to task over this, and the child in Ijebu ode as well as kids all over Nigeria; then the leadership will not easily allow the embezzlement of funds for the educational sector because it knows that questions will be asked and the misappropriation will be immediately apparent. And that may signal the failure of the government; and serious civil outcry and possible civil disobedience may follow. This will be a way for the people to act as checks on their government. If a citizen knows that he stands a chance of winning a case if he institutes a case against the government, its agents or privies, then the government will be more responsible, than reckless.
This is important in the light of the fact that the Nigerian government has lost the moral authority to be the custodian of the peoples’ welfare. The citizens through a series of government’s gangsterist behaviour were invited as witnesses, as the structures of state was degraded, bastardized, and co-opted into the service of unholy political ends, to attain impious goals of avaricious import. They have jointly and severally watched as their posterity was shot off the sky by the avarice, squandermania and outright thievery of the ruling class. They have been impoverished beyond all measures, in all dimensions that the society reeks with the malodorous odours of corrupt opulence existing side by side with inexplicable penury.
Nigerian elites, like their tribe in every clime are fragmented by their haggling over avaricious pies. They busy themselves scrambling for crumbs that fall off the tables of power. They suffer from a mental leprosy that inures them from realizing their slavish attachment to insignificance. They spend their lives fighting for crumbs leaving the state to be hijacked by scoundrels. As tyranny usurps power, the future of the state desiccates into visionless amblings without purpose. They cause petty empires to be constructed within the state, and ruled by various barons and dons, while the nation becomes a bankrupt and corrupt fiefdom. From a corrupt fiefdom, the nation matriculates into a no-man’s land where anarchy reigns.
Poverty then invades the land!!!!
Nigeria’s is the reign of systematic anarchy; systematic in the Machiavellian fashion. This kind of anarchy is an artificial creation, fashioned to keep the populace busy, while the ruling thieves loot and pillage the nation. Obasanjo versus Atiku verbal war for instance, was an engineered disagreement over the loot, which is a feature of classical brigandage. Executive anarchy at the highest levels mirrors, inspires, and drives street-level thuggery and violates the fundamental freedoms of ordinary Nigerians.
This is what obtains in all states on the way to implosion. The general populace in such states are victims of pervasive apathy, which cripples organized resistance to oppression. Thus they become inadvertent collaborators to their predicament. They are disenfranchised and co-opted unto their disservice either by their ignorance or collective apathy. And the dictatorship holding their destiny to a ransom revels in sustaining this apathy and ignorance, which renders collective resistance to tyranny an impossibility.
Over and above that, these people oppressed by governmental irresponsibility then conjugate themselves into catering for their individual selves and welfare. Some arm themselves for their details. Others arm themselves to defend their conveniences. And since everybody elects to be his own defender, the power to inflict violence becomes democratized; within everyone’s reach. And a modern state of nature; a social jungle is called into being. That is the case of Nigeria today.
A perfect example of this could be seen in Nigerians of the Oil Rivers extraction organizing and arming themselves with the aim of assuming control over their resources, which has brought them nothing but a cocktail of historical disadvantages. They have seen their lands pillaged. Their ecology is collapsing on them. Their flora and fauna can no longer sustain reasonable life; all because their land must keep up giving up its oil to fund the extravagant indiscretions of the Nigerian power elite, and their foreign collaborators. Adaka Boro’s misadventures were a dress rehearsal for what Mujahdi Dokubo is trying out today. His tactics may be controversial but the cause he fights is just. Another example of the violence in the Nigerian society could be gleamed in the activities of armed robbers across Nigerian cities. This is a sad catalogue of pain and despair. It remains a placard attesting to the breakdown of the Nigerian society.
Any attempt at reconstructing Nigeria must go back to the basis. Nigerians must decide whether they want to federate into a union or go their separate ways. The nationalities should not stay together because it serves American or British interests and need for oil. They should stay together because we want to be together and because there exists a basis for that. This basis must be one that serves them, not their friends or anybody else. This agreement will map out the matrices of common interest. It will create the people’s constitution which will be the sacred document bearing the letters and spirit of this agreement. When this continues to be postponed, then the country keeps on speeding up its failure and disintegration.
Failed states in the most proximate potency are pretentious arrangements. Even at the twilight of their inglorious notoriety, some of them pretend to be democracies, simply because democracy is popular. But a review of the promises of democracy reveals whether their pretences are justifiable or not.
The promises of democracy will be the basis of our next reflection. The dialogue is open.
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