Living In A Failed State

By Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN

Last week, the Senate asked the President to declare a state of
emergency on security in Nigeria. From one Senator to the other,
the men and women of the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly
were unanimous that something has to be done urgently, to stem the
slide into anarchy, unbridled violence and bloodshed across the
land. What is the security situation presently? We have a police
force lacking in legitimate leadership, the armed forces is so
politicized that the leadership is loyal only to the party in power
and a commander-in-chief that seems to have been totally
overwhelmed with the crisis. It is by now clear to all and sundry,
at least from the comments and contributions of lawmakers across
party lines, that Nigeria is approaching a failed state. This was
indeed the conclusion reached at a stakeholders’ summit held last
week, where Professor Pat Utomi and others x-rayed the dangerous
dimension that security has taken in Nigeria. The Sultan of Sokoto
said somewhere else that Boko Haram has now transformed into
bandits and kidnappers. It is the latest business in town.

Nigeria became a State formally in 1960, with sovereign powers
transferred from the British colonialists to the representatives of
the people. By law however, section 2 (1) of the 1999 Constitution
states that “Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign
state to be known by the name of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”,
and by section 2 (2) thereof, “Nigeria shall be a Federation
consisting of states and a Federal Capital Territory”. So, in the
real sense of the word, Nigeria is a sovereign state consisting of
federating units. Fair enough, the same Constitution that created
the Nigerian Federation also specified the kind of powers that it
should exercise and the functions it should perform, for its
citizens. In this regard, Chapter 2 of the self-same Constitution,
comes to bear. I will limit myself for this discourse however, to
section 14 of the Constitution.

Under and by virtue of section 14 (2) (a), “sovereignty belongs
to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this
Constitution, derives ALL its powers and authority” (emphasis
supplied). In very simple terms therefore, the sovereignty attached
to the entity known as the Federal Republic of Nigeria, resides in
the people of Nigeria. In essence, all our leaders hold power in
trust for the people of Nigeria and they cannot go on acting as if
it is the other way round. To break it down more, there is no
President who should claim to be in power, there is no Governor who
should assert any authority and there should be no legislative
house or even a court of law that should rule over and above the
people to lord their policies and decisions over them. Power
belongs to the people, pure and simple. The fact that the people of
Africa and especially Nigeria, have been living in the opposite of
civility and modernisation, whereby those elected into office by
the people turn around to arrogate power to themselves, cannot be
an excuse to obfuscate this simple truth. One cannot of course
claim not to be aware of the rare exception of the Nigerian
situation where power belongs to and resides in the leaders. It is
an anomaly.

Now to section 14 (2) (b) of the Constitution, wherein it is
stated expressly and without equivocation, that “the security and
welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”
A community interpretation of section 14 (2) (a) and (b)
respectively will show clearly that the Nigerian State was created
for the people of Nigeria, that the focus of the entity called
Nigeria is the people and that the target of power and existence of
that Federation, is the people. It is good therefore, to sound it
loud and clear, that the very existence of government, the totality
of the exercise of power, by all and sundry, is for the security
and welfare of the people and anything outside this, anything done
that cannot achieve this, means a failure of governance. Pure and
simple.

According to the learned authors of Merriam-Webster Dictionary,
SECURITY means: “(a) freedom from danger (safety); (b) freedom from
fear or anxiety; … something that secures, protection or measures
taken to guard against espionage or sabotage, crime, attack, or
escape.” The priority of security in governance is better
illustrated by section 4 of the Police Act, wherein it is stated
that the police shall be “… employed for the prevention and
detection of crime, the apprehension of offenders, the preservation
of law and order, the protection of life and property and the due
enforcement of all laws and regulations with which they are
directly charged, and shall perform such military duties within or
outside Nigeria as may be required of them by, or under the
authority of this or any other Act.” What stands out in this
section is the phrase “protection of lives and property”. Now, let
us match this with certain data recently released by the leadership
of the Nigeria Police Force.

At the quarterly Northern Traditional Rulers’ Council meeting
held in Kaduna as back as 2019, the former Inspector-General of
Police stated that in the first quarter of 2019 alone, 1,071
persons lost their lives in crime-related cases across the country.
He stated further that between January and April 2019 alone, 685
persons were kidnapped. Amnesty International has a higher figure
of deaths and casualties. In 2018, it was estimated that about 6,
562 persons died from crime-related cases whilst generally, an
estimate of about 13,000 persons are said to have died from the
insurgency going on in the land, whilst about 1.1m people have been
displaced thereby. Just in one year! The Global Terrorism Index
suggests that Nigeria recorded about 8,314 deaths from
crime-related cases in 2020. This is surely frightening, to the
extent that no one can claim to sleep with the two eyes closed, any
longer. It may well be that the government is taking all necessary
steps to contain the rising spate of insecurity across Nigeria, but
this remains to be seen by all and sundry, in terms of security and
safety, in the real sense of the word. The summary now would seem
to be that the government has not been able to rise up to the
challenges posed by insecurity.

Now to welfare, since the two main points of governance are
security and welfare. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines WELFARE as
“the state of doing well, especially in respect to good fortune,
happiness, well-being, or prosperity.”Are we doing well as a
people, presently? Are we enjoying some form of good fortune
economically? Is the well-being of the people of this nation
improving in any form at all? Are we happy, with the state of
things in Nigeria? Is there prosperity in the land? Are we safe as
a people? Can we travel safely on our roads presently? Without any
doubt whatsoever, suicide cases have increased, the economic power
of the people has dwindled considerably and virtually everyone now
depends on handouts from the government, as private businesses are
all struggling to survive, in the absence of basic infrastructure,
especially power supply. I have no doubt in my mind that the true
testimony across the land is that the majority of the people are
suffering indeed. I see it in the text messages that I receive
every now and then, for financial assistance, I read it in the news
daily, of how many states in the Federation are owing their
workers’ salaries, for several months and how the ordinary people
are just living from hand to mouth, barely eking out a living, just
surviving and tagging along.

The present circumstance of Nigeria is that many people have
become beggars of some sort. Even as businessmen and women,
professionals and even as manufacturers, the bulk of the little
profit margin is spent on infrastructure, whereby you are forced to
generate your own electricity, provide your own water, build your
own road, employ your own security, train your children in private
schools or send them abroad, if they must excel, provide yourself
health care if you must live, and may be buy your own car, if you
must move around. It is that bad, that the government seemed to
have shifted all its responsibilities to the citizens. And how
exactly is anyone expected to survive in such hostile environment,
where you spend most of your valuable time in traffic, you get home
to sleep in intense heat and darkness and then you eventually
manage to make it to the office the following day, only to be
confronted with power outage, all day long, draining all human
capacity, productivity and usefulness. Can we then say that we have
a nation or that any form of governance is in place?

From all the above frightening scenarios, how do you describe
the entity created as Nigeria, if it is agreed that the two
critical responsibilities of government are the security and
welfare of the people? This piece became necessary as it would seem
that those in authority do not well appreciate the enormity of the
situation that we presently face in Nigeria or that state
propaganda has so prospered and become the art of governance, that
some of them are totally ensconced from the reality of present day
Nigeria. Whereas I know that some well-meaning persons exist in
authority presently, I verily believe that the time has now come,
for some frank introspection that will translate into some genuine
appreciation, of the debilitating welfare and security conditions
of our people, if we are to say that there is governance at all. In
the absence of that, the reasonable conclusion is that we are
gradually moving to a failed state, as echoed by many statesmen
lately, who, very unfortunately, are themselves part and parcel of
the failure of the state. The main person we look up to for answers
is the President, who must rise up and walk the talk.

By Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN

Last week, the Senate asked the President to declare a state of
emergency on security in Nigeria. From one Senator to the other,
the men and women of the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly
were unanimous that something has to be done urgently, to stem the
slide into anarchy, unbridled violence and bloodshed across the
land. What is the security situation presently? We have a police
force lacking in legitimate leadership, the armed forces is so
politicized that the leadership is loyal only to the party in power
and a commander-in-chief that seems to have been totally
overwhelmed with the crisis. It is by now clear to all and sundry,
at least from the comments and contributions of lawmakers across
party lines, that Nigeria is approaching a failed state. This was
indeed the conclusion reached at a stakeholders’ summit held last
week, where Professor Pat Utomi and others x-rayed the dangerous
dimension that security has taken in Nigeria. The Sultan of Sokoto
said somewhere else that Boko Haram has now transformed into
bandits and kidnappers. It is the latest business in town.

Nigeria became a State formally in 1960, with sovereign powers
transferred from the British colonialists to the representatives of
the people. By law however, section 2 (1) of the 1999 Constitution
states that “Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign
state to be known by the name of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”,
and by section 2 (2) thereof, “Nigeria shall be a Federation
consisting of states and a Federal Capital Territory”. So, in the
real sense of the word, Nigeria is a sovereign state consisting of
federating units. Fair enough, the same Constitution that created
the Nigerian Federation also specified the kind of powers that it
should exercise and the functions it should perform, for its
citizens. In this regard, Chapter 2 of the self-same Constitution,
comes to bear. I will limit myself for this discourse however, to
section 14 of the Constitution.

Under and by virtue of section 14 (2) (a), “sovereignty belongs
to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this
Constitution, derives ALL its powers and authority” (emphasis
supplied). In very simple terms therefore, the sovereignty attached
to the entity known as the Federal Republic of Nigeria, resides in
the people of Nigeria. In essence, all our leaders hold power in
trust for the people of Nigeria and they cannot go on acting as if
it is the other way round. To break it down more, there is no
President who should claim to be in power, there is no Governor who
should assert any authority and there should be no legislative
house or even a court of law that should rule over and above the
people to lord their policies and decisions over them. Power
belongs to the people, pure and simple. The fact that the people of
Africa and especially Nigeria, have been living in the opposite of
civility and modernisation, whereby those elected into office by
the people turn around to arrogate power to themselves, cannot be
an excuse to obfuscate this simple truth. One cannot of course
claim not to be aware of the rare exception of the Nigerian
situation where power belongs to and resides in the leaders. It is
an anomaly.

Now to section 14 (2) (b) of the Constitution, wherein it is
stated expressly and without equivocation, that “the security and
welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”
A community interpretation of section 14 (2) (a) and (b)
respectively will show clearly that the Nigerian State was created
for the people of Nigeria, that the focus of the entity called
Nigeria is the people and that the target of power and existence of
that Federation, is the people. It is good therefore, to sound it
loud and clear, that the very existence of government, the totality
of the exercise of power, by all and sundry, is for the security
and welfare of the people and anything outside this, anything done
that cannot achieve this, means a failure of governance. Pure and
simple.

According to the learned authors of Merriam-Webster Dictionary,
SECURITY means: “(a) freedom from danger (safety); (b) freedom from
fear or anxiety; … something that secures, protection or measures
taken to guard against espionage or sabotage, crime, attack, or
escape.” The priority of security in governance is better
illustrated by section 4 of the Police Act, wherein it is stated
that the police shall be “… employed for the prevention and
detection of crime, the apprehension of offenders, the preservation
of law and order, the protection of life and property and the due
enforcement of all laws and regulations with which they are
directly charged, and shall perform such military duties within or
outside Nigeria as may be required of them by, or under the
authority of this or any other Act.” What stands out in this
section is the phrase “protection of lives and property”. Now, let
us match this with certain data recently released by the leadership
of the Nigeria Police Force.

At the quarterly Northern Traditional Rulers’ Council meeting
held in Kaduna as back as 2019, the former Inspector-General of
Police stated that in the first quarter of 2019 alone, 1,071
persons lost their lives in crime-related cases across the country.
He stated further that between January and April 2019 alone, 685
persons were kidnapped. Amnesty International has a higher figure
of deaths and casualties. In 2018, it was estimated that about 6,
562 persons died from crime-related cases whilst generally, an
estimate of about 13,000 persons are said to have died from the
insurgency going on in the land, whilst about 1.1m people have been
displaced thereby. Just in one year! The Global Terrorism Index
suggests that Nigeria recorded about 8,314 deaths from
crime-related cases in 2020. This is surely frightening, to the
extent that no one can claim to sleep with the two eyes closed, any
longer. It may well be that the government is taking all necessary
steps to contain the rising spate of insecurity across Nigeria, but
this remains to be seen by all and sundry, in terms of security and
safety, in the real sense of the word. The summary now would seem
to be that the government has not been able to rise up to the
challenges posed by insecurity.

Now to welfare, since the two main points of governance are
security and welfare. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines WELFARE as
“the state of doing well, especially in respect to good fortune,
happiness, well-being, or prosperity.”Are we doing well as a
people, presently? Are we enjoying some form of good fortune
economically? Is the well-being of the people of this nation
improving in any form at all? Are we happy, with the state of
things in Nigeria? Is there prosperity in the land? Are we safe as
a people? Can we travel safely on our roads presently? Without any
doubt whatsoever, suicide cases have increased, the economic power
of the people has dwindled considerably and virtually everyone now
depends on handouts from the government, as private businesses are
all struggling to survive, in the absence of basic infrastructure,
especially power supply. I have no doubt in my mind that the true
testimony across the land is that the majority of the people are
suffering indeed. I see it in the text messages that I receive
every now and then, for financial assistance, I read it in the news
daily, of how many states in the Federation are owing their
workers’ salaries, for several months and how the ordinary people
are just living from hand to mouth, barely eking out a living, just
surviving and tagging along.

The present circumstance of Nigeria is that many people have
become beggars of some sort. Even as businessmen and women,
professionals and even as manufacturers, the bulk of the little
profit margin is spent on infrastructure, whereby you are forced to
generate your own electricity, provide your own water, build your
own road, employ your own security, train your children in private
schools or send them abroad, if they must excel, provide yourself
health care if you must live, and may be buy your own car, if you
must move around. It is that bad, that the government seemed to
have shifted all its responsibilities to the citizens. And how
exactly is anyone expected to survive in such hostile environment,
where you spend most of your valuable time in traffic, you get home
to sleep in intense heat and darkness and then you eventually
manage to make it to the office the following day, only to be
confronted with power outage, all day long, draining all human
capacity, productivity and usefulness. Can we then say that we have
a nation or that any form of governance is in place?

From all the above frightening scenarios, how do you describe
the entity created as Nigeria, if it is agreed that the two
critical responsibilities of government are the security and
welfare of the people? This piece became necessary as it would seem
that those in authority do not well appreciate the enormity of the
situation that we presently face in Nigeria or that state
propaganda has so prospered and become the art of governance, that
some of them are totally ensconced from the reality of present day
Nigeria. Whereas I know that some well-meaning persons exist in
authority presently, I verily believe that the time has now come,
for some frank introspection that will translate into some genuine
appreciation, of the debilitating welfare and security conditions
of our people, if we are to say that there is governance at all. In
the absence of that, the reasonable conclusion is that we are
gradually moving to a failed state, as echoed by many statesmen
lately, who, very unfortunately, are themselves part and parcel of
the failure of the state. The main person we look up to for answers
is the President, who must rise up and walk the talk.