“It is with the help of the people of the city that intruders can overrun the city… The person who gave us this business is there among you. He is there with you. Wherever you go, he is watching you”
–One of the abductors of the Kagara schoolboys, in an audio recording, The PUNCH, Thursday, February 25, 2021.
In her well-regarded book entitled, ‘Barrel of a gun; power and coup d’état in Africa’, the late South African journalist, Ruth First, raised an interesting question concerning the fragility of the state in Africa. First asked why it was so easy, in those days of military rule, for a handful of soldiers to overthrow a constituted and sovereign state in the rampant coup d’états that became a political pandemic in Africa at the time. Of course, political science students and even teachers wrestled endlessly with that question. First’s poser has resurfaced in recent times in Nigeria, not through coup d’états which are no longer in vogue, but in the ease with which bandits, terrorists and kidnappers, more or less, bring the state apparatus to its knees with government officials frantically negotiating with ragtag detachment of bandits who apparently now hold it by the jugular. Read the conversation between a bandit and official negotiators, who, at the time this column is being finalised, still hold captive, the secondary school boys abducted from Kagara in Niger State recently and you will marvel at their arrogance and audacity. The last time that the bandits struck in Kankara, Katsina State, they chose the very occasion when the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), was visiting his home state, in a manner that suggested that there was a plot to demystify the security organisation and the retired general himself. To be sure, the opening quote sourced from the conversation made available to The PUNCH by Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, whose current role can be likened to that of a spiritual warlord, speaks to a part of the riddle broached at the beginning of this write-up.
The matter raised at the opening quote concerns the fractious nature and character of government in which factions, including deep throats, are working at cross purposes. Treachery and sabotage are some of the oldest playbooks in warfare, but the ability of governments to rise above or counteract them is also one of the marks of statesmanship and purposeful leadership. As appeared to have been the case in the Dapchi schoolgirls’ abduction of 2018, there were issues with internal disarray, resulting in intelligence supplied either not acted upon or flagrantly flouted. With so many theories flying around concerning the sources and possible motives for what has become a reign of terror, the opening quote points in the direction of a house divided against itself with abduction barons laughing broadly to their banks at the expense of a hapless citizenry. The direction given here buttresses the Yoruba proverb that if one does not die of sabotage at home, one is unlikely to die from external threats (Bi iku ile o ba pani, t’ode ko le pani). It is, perhaps, unclear and one can only speculate concerning who these profiteers on our collective misfortune could be, but there is little doubt that they are well-connected to the centres of power, and indeed, the power vacuum in governance may well be the consequence of a balance of terror created by feuding power centres in a jostle for resources and leeway around the seat of government.
The other matter that arises from the opening quote is the possibility insistently raised by this columnist that minimum or absentee governance is bound to lead to insurgent governance in which orphaned citizens consider it almost a moral duty to support opponents of the state, especially for a fee. When you look around the theatres of internal warfare, what you find is grave abandonment of the people in whose name, governance at the federal, state and local levels, is being carried out. You need no more proof of this than the desolate and dilapidated environment in which the latest abduction took place, namely, Government Science College, Kagara, Niger State, a school founded in 1969. As a recent Premium Times report informs, the governor of the state, Abubakar Bello, had paid a visit to the school during his first term in office and reportedly came to tears at the level of degradation that he witnessed. He then promised to renovate and upgrade the school. Subsequently, an evaluation team was sent to the school but nothing was heard of the evaluation or the promise of the governor to refurbish the desolate amenities in the school. So, what we have is what one report called learning with tears, in which students are crammed into insalubrious environments with defaced walls and rottening buildings, including boarding houses. It is a crying shame that schools in this parlous state not only exist, but form a high proportion of institutions in the public sector and speak to comprehensive negligence of the authorities who are supposed to be running them. Mark you, the indifferent state of the Kagara secondary school is a metaphor for minimum or absentee governance in which the people are left to their own devices, in between elections when the politicians come round to trade fresh promises for their votes.
We can easily connect this misfortune with the poser at the outset namely, why the state is so easily captured by ragtag groups and other militias which profit by defying it. The point is that such a state exhibiting minimum governance has lost the moral right to call for the fidelity and loyalty of a poorly governed citizenry whose only evidence that government exists is the serenade and parade of official vehicles and sirens when governors come visiting. This anomaly hints at issues of legitimacy and illegitimacy. Is a government legitimate simply because it is adept at winning elections or organising electoral charades which one scholar has described as voting without choosing? Too many of our concepts have been borrowed in the context of what political science professor, Sam Oyovbaire, once called the ‘tyranny of received paradigms’. It is time to begin to unpack and rethink these concepts in light of the lived and observed experiences of the people, especially given our situation of democracies without the people.
The political elite have shied away from serious thinking and fundamental initiatives that can help to re-legitimise and re-compact a state that has turned its back on the social contract. It is content with holding elections which increasingly are devoid of governance content and to exchange meaningful governance for the symbols and halos of power. Already, we are besieged by the noises of politicians who are eager to take over from the current regime come the next election. We have heard pretty little, however, either from this regime or its would-be successors about how to reinvigorate a broken and failing state, shore up decaying institutions, broaden a one-legged economy, fix an educational sector in picturesque disarray, redeem infrastructure and breathe life, once again, into a democracy lacking in democratic ethos. The repetitive flogging of Nigeria by bandits should nudge us to commence a conversation along these lines.
END
Be the first to comment