A country fails when it is no longer able to protect its citizens from harm and secure their welfare, writes Ike Okonta
The occasion of the sixth anniversary of the Buhari Presidency last week should have been one marked by sober reflection, given the severity of the country’s current socioeconomic problems. Instead, Femi Adesina, the President’s special adviser on media affairs, took to newspaper pages preening and boasting that the Nigerian people never had it so good and that they would have cause to praise President Buhari in 2023 when his tenure comes to an end. It was a shocking performance, to say the least. One whose house is on fire should not take to the street dancing.
Incidentally, President Buhari’s sixth year in office coincided with a raging debate in American foreign policy magazines whether Nigeria is now a failed state.
I come down firmly on the side of those who insist that Nigeria is indeed a failed state. A country fails when it is no longer able to protect its citizens from harm and also secure their welfare. A country fails when instead of being a harbour where its citizens find succour and happiness, it turns out to be a cauldron that spews out fIre and anguish that consumes its citizens. A country fails when instead of reassuring its citizens that the future will be well and secure, it becomes a case of planning to flee the country to other climes where the government is toiling day and night to secure the future welfare of its citizens. Such a failed country is Nigeria under Buhari.
However, it must be pointed out that Nigeria did not begin to fail under President Buhari. Indeed, I make bold to argue that the seeds of failure were planted right from the outset; right from October 1, 1960 when the country gained independence. It is not often remembered that the young majors who toppled the Balewa government six short years after independence had a powerful case. If you listen to Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu’s coup broadcast speech on Radio Kaduna in the morning of 15 January 1966 it reads as if it was written only yesterday. Corruption among politicians and other government officials, indolence in high places, and lack of a sense of direction and patriotism are evils that began at independence, ripened in the heyday of the First Republic, and walk about today with four sturdy legs.
The angry young majors of January 1966 spoilt their case when, instead of arresting and detaining the erring senior politicians they murdered them in cold blood. Even worse, the pattern of killings was partisan, leaving the then Northern Region to bear the heavier burden. This provided Major Murtala Mohammed and Major Theophilus Danjuma the excuse to mount a counter-coup in July of the same year. It is important to note that the Mohammed coup was purely an exercise in revenge. It was not motivated by high ideals. It did not seek to address the ills which even then had reduced Nigeria to a laughing stock among nations. As far as Murtala Mohammed was concerned, “Igbos” murdered “Hausa” politicians and military officers and they must pay for this. Hence the massacre of easterners, civilians and soldiers alike, in the north in 1966. Hence Biafra. Hence the bloody civil war and from then to date a sorry succession of governments military and civilian alike that have not been able to address the country’s central social and economic problems.
I restate: Nigerian began failing long before Muhammadu Buhari entered the stage in May 2015. He, however, bears responsibility for making a bad case even worse. While Boko Haram emerged in 2009, Buhari has had six years to contain the Islamic insurgents. John Campbell, a former American ambassador to Nigeria and a writer has rightly pointed out that it is scandalous that a Nigerian Army of 300,000 men has been unable to defeat the estimated 5000 men that constitute Boko Haram. Campbell blamed corruption, incompetence and a general lack of commitment on the part of the Nigerian Army. It is also important to point out that although the Army has been deployed to most states of the Federation to stem insecurity, they have not been able to do so. This is a classic symptom of a failed state.
Another symptom of a failed state is the avalanche of banditry and kidnapping that have overwhelmed the Northwest and parts of Northcentral. It is bad enough that these bandits and kidnappers casually stroll into our schools and highways and abduct their victims and melt away into nearby bushes and forests. What is however shocking is that neither the Police nor the Army have intelligence-gathering infrastructure to track the bandits and their leaders and their modus operandi. As far as it goes, both security personnel and the Nigerian people are helpless and without a clue what to do to contain these men of the night.
The might of the Nigerian state is also being systematically blunted in the southeast. It was with interest that I watched the actions of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as it successfully hijacked the anniversary of the declaration of the State of Biafra in the southeastern states last week. IPOB ordered the Igbo and other easterners to stay at home on Monday, 31st May to mourn the estimated three million easterners who died during the war. Southeastern governors came out with the counter-order that IPOB should be ignored. Come the fateful day and southeasterners obeyed IPOB. Was it out of fear? Was it out of a genuine identification with the aims and objectives of the secessionist movement? What matters is that slowly and surely southeasterners are beginning to turn away from a Nigerian government which they feel is no longer able to protect them.
There is also the case of Sunday Adeyemo (alias Sunday Igboho) in southwestern Nigeria. This young man is making common cause with IPOB and has declared that the time has come for the Yoruba to secede from a Nigeria that has patently failed them. For the moment Adeyemo is a minority voice, but there is no doubt that as the socioeconomic indices in the wider Nigeria take a turn for the worse; as President Buhari proves again and again that his government is as incompetent as it is nepotistic, moderate Yoruba will begin to see reason with Sunday Adeyemo and rally behind the flag of a putative Oduduwa Republic.
Do all these dark and sobering facts mean that Nigeria will continue to dwell in the abyss of state failure? No. A lot depends on how Nigerians choose to vote in 2023 – whether they will vote in yet another Buhari look-alike who is unable to articulate and implement his own policies and programmes or strike out and choose a visionary statesman who will courageously slay the scourge of state failure.
Dr Okonta was until recently Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Politics, University of Oxford. He lives in Abuja.
Quote
Do all these dark and sobering facts mean that Nigeria will continue to dwell in the abyss of state failure? No. A lot depends on how Nigerians choose to vote in 2023 – whether they will vote in yet another Buhari look-alike who is unable to articulate and implement his own policies and programmes or strike out and choose a visionary statesman who will courageously slay the scourge of state failure.
