Our nation harbours many oddities, and strangely so. In return, we get odd outcomes. I don’t mean this in any amusing sense of it. At this time when there’s a need to be concerned about reversing many of our unenviable indices, the latest battle some lawmakers choose to wage against the Presidency is over a bill to establish what is called Peace Corps.
Lately, part of the news item regarding this oddity reads: “President Muhammadu Buhari has rejected the proposed Peace Corps of Nigeria Establishment Bill.” I ask myself, which proposal and which establishment? Is this bill for the establishment of the same Peace Corps that has long been in operation, its staff fully kitted, and among whom there’re raging internal jealousy and wrangling that I’m aware of? Is the bill for the same Peace Corps whose leader is parading himself as one without Mr President having appointed him? Meanwhile, he’s already talking on TV about preparing and sending his organisation’s annual budget to the National Assembly. Is the bill for the establishment of the Peace Corps that I’m aware has one big office near Gwarimpa Abuja, and months ago I saw open another exotic office opposite Jabi Lake, Abuja, with fanfare, loud music and booze? Is that the Peace Corps which a bill now proposes its establishment? That’s oddity number one.
This same Peace Corps being “proposed”, where does it get the funds it has used to put up tangible and intangible structures that are equal to what the National Security and Civil Defence Corps currently has? Its headquarters opposite the Jabi Lake (sealed up by the police) is worth not less than N10m a year in rent. Where did the Peace Corps get the funds to engage in massive lobbying that has made it the darling of some lawmakers? I hear strange stories about the fabulous wealth and privately-owned landed properties of some “officials” involved in this effort to “establish” the Peace Corps. I suppose how such grand wealth gets into the hands of those who own it should be the focus of anti-graft agencies. But it isn’t happening. That’s oddity number two.
It’s clear that some have bamboozled decision makers in Abuja over the establishment of the Peace Corps such that lawmakers now speak about devolution of powers with one side of the mouth while with the other they support the establishment of outfits such as the Peace Corps that take us in the direction of a unitary system. Obviously, not many in political offices are clear with regard to what they should and shouldn’t support in the interest of this nation, devoting energy instead to other primordial sentiments which have informed this thing about establishing the Peace Corps. That’s oddity number three.
There’s also the police force which seems to have gone to sleep in the face of onslaught by organisations such as the Peace Corps to further push it into irrelevance. Police functions are being parcelled out piecemeal but the police hierarchy watches. When was it that the E-branch was part of the police? It was severed and made the Nigerian Security Organisation which had become the Department of State Services, popularly called SSS. E-branch once gathered intelligence for the police. The SSS did the same; it used to pass information to the police, but now the situation is such that information sharing has become a challenge as inter-agency rivalry intensifies. The Peace Corps will compound police woes as funds it should have to operate better will go to a rival outfit.
The police also lost its Fraud Unit to rival outfits. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices and related offences Commission have replaced the Fraud Unit. There’s also the National Security and Civil Defence Corps as well as the Federal Road Safety Corps, doing what the police should do. (Note also that these outfits centralise functions that should be devolved to component units in a federal arrangement.) Even what the police have left on their desks to do, they don’t do. The other day, the police said only 20 per cent of their officers are engaged in core police duties. The rest 80 per cent watches over the same politicians who now engage the Presidency in a battle for the establishment of the Peace Corps. When the Peace Corps is established, its staff will equally end up watching over more politicians.
Moreover, the Peace Corps in Nigeria will have functions that don’t reflect those of the same entity in the US from where the name is copied. In the US where the Peace Corps originated in 1961, members were volunteers, they worked abroad for a period of two years. Volunteers work with governments, schools, non-profit organisations, non-government organisations, and entrepreneurs in education, business, information technology, agriculture, and the environment. To the US Government, the Peace Corps volunteers work to promote world peace in interested countries and under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries in meeting their needs for trained manpower. Here in Nigeria, just as the police are doing, the Peace Corps shall soon start to collect allocation to cover salaries and other expenses from the Federal Government, while its leaders would begin to pay courtesy calls on state governors, delicately threatening increase in criminal activities in any state which governor failed to release more funds to the Corps. These federal security outfits take pride that they belong to the Federal Government, but they love even more the idea of taxing state governments, proceeds which no one accounts for. It’s good business.
When the Presidency rejected the proposed bill to establish the Peace Corps, the news was that the President thought there was paucity of funds, and that it would amount to duplication of the duties of existing security agencies. Lawmakers who threaten to override the President’s veto don’t appear to have given thought to that though; many still have the wrong impression that the nation has limitless funds, the same mentality that has informed the setting up of more federal agencies and commissions in the face of non-payment of salaries and allowances of workers across the nation.
There’s also this thing about setting up a security outfit for a specific purpose, only for the purpose to be forgotten in the end. The reasons proffered for the setting up of the NSCDC are now being marshalled for the Peace Corps. But we know the NSCDC has since been dragged into the same hole which ensures that only 20 per cent of the police force are involved in active police duties. We know the reasons for this. I was near the premises of a Federal Government institution in one of the states the other day. I heard two senior police officers joking, one telling the other that if he needed real money he would seek transfer to watch over one of the more affluent privately-owned entities in the country. I suppose such would inevitably be the joke among members of staff of the Peace Corps, the original purpose for setting it up thus defeated.
I’ve heard the argument from the National Assembly that employment would be provided for Nigerians through the Peace Corps. The kind of employment that places more salary earners on the neck of the Federal Government which struggles to meet the financial needs of its MDAs as things stand now? I thought the thinking now should be how to deliver Abuja from its burden by expending resources on policy measures that could open up the private sector and get much more of our youths employed. How come piling up more burdens for the Federal Government is the battle lawmakers think is worth fighting at this time? Are lawmakers, a majority of whom belong to the ruling party, on the same page with the President? Is their battle to pile more financial obligations on the President’s shoulders the position of their party too? Oddities. We know something isn’t what it ought to be in all of this.
In view of what has been stated, the question becomes imperative: Is the creation of other security outfits outside the police the solution to our security and unemployment challenges? Those who promote the establishment of the Peace Corps know the answer. But we know that other ulterior motives won’t let them take the appropriate decisions.
END
Be the first to comment