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Security: Bread Not Bullets Please! By Bishop Matthew Hassan KUKAH

December 30, 2011

The 2012 Budget will continue to stir controversy especially on some of the familiar contradictions budgets throw up every year. The questions surrounding the rituals will persist: For us the ignorant, most of the grammar is the sorcerer’s language but even then, we know there will still remain the chasm between the letter and the spirit. It is at best a hollow ritual that we all look forward to.

The 2012 Budget will continue to stir controversy especially on some of the familiar contradictions budgets throw up every year. The questions surrounding the rituals will persist: For us the ignorant, most of the grammar is the sorcerer’s language but even then, we know there will still remain the chasm between the letter and the spirit. It is at best a hollow ritual that we all look forward to.

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Again, we ask, will the distortions between capital and recurrent expenditure persist as symptom or will they become the malaise? Will we be able to lower recurrent in favour of capital expenditure for a polity whose sybaritic political elite continue to nurse delusions of self-importance and grandeur? What of the projected benchmarks regarding projected oil sales vis-à-vis the exchange rate mechanisms that are beyond our control? When will the budget be finally passed? What will the physical image of the budget look like after it has come out of the fattening room of the National Assembly? Even when it is finally passed, what percentage of it is ever going to be implemented? And, finally, how will it have impacted on the lives of ordinary citizens? These are larger issues and I am a complete illiterate in these matters. My concern over the budget is in the area of security and the implications of the presence of this new elephant in our sitting room.

Clearly, the government is walking into a trap that is gradually turning security into the next haven for slush and sleaze funds. Along with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC and its ancillary organisations, other bodies such as the Niger Delta Development Corporation, NDDC, the Ministry for the Niger Delta or the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, Security is now going to join these cash cows and drainages pipes of patronage as the next bus stop and cesspool of corruption. Rather than fighting corruption, we are likely to witness a rise in the army of the merchants of death. Clearly, tens of other Boko Harams are likely to emerge with more and more young men and women dropping out of tertiary institutions in pursuit of a greater life in the new and lucrative trade in the merchandise of violence such as armed robbery or vigilante groups. Already, the Honourable Minister for Education has announced that over 70% of our children are unable to pass their examinations and we know things will get progressively worse.
According to the new budget, the President proposes to spend a whopping N961 billion naira on Security alone. Persistent and pro longed looting of a treasury with an inexhaustible underbelly by a predatory elite with a gargantuan, immoral, inhuman and devilish appetite for theft has finally dulled the imagination of Nigerians to figures and their meanings. Public officers and civil servants, alone or in connivance, are stealing sums of money that are the equivalent of budgets of smaller states and countries outside Nigeria. Just a year or two ago, this figure was the budget of our entire nation. And now, it is merely a subhead. My concern in this piece is to argue that the President’s decision to allocate this stupendous sum of money to security will have a negative effect on security and is a misplacement of priorities and a misconception of what real security should be at present.

First, whatever way and manner these incredible sums of money will be expended, the truth is that we will never know and they will not necessarily make us secure. And this is the danger. Let us not deceive ourselves. Those in power are nursing the baby called security vote because it has become the favourite child and a Trojan horse through which all slush funds are being channeled. For the President to elevate this leviathan to a pole position by feeding it a chunk of the budget that surpasses that of 10 key Ministries is to say the least an oxymoron.

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The fight against corruption is still an understated pursuit because the fight pitches a David and a Goliath. In a situation where resources stolen by individuals are over ten times the size of the budgets of the anti corruption agencies, how can this asymmetrical war be fought and won? The frustrations of the anti corruption tsars are similar to those fighting other forms of organized crimes.

There is serious concern over the fact that the anti corruption fight is an asymmetrical fight largely because so far, convictions of the high profile cases has proved almost impossible. A seriously compromised judiciary seems to be in sync with a battery of high flying lawyers who, like synchronised swimmers are dancing the same music of frustration for the anti corruption agencies. The calls for special courts to try these cases has never really picked up steam, although if the stories of special courts and tribunals is anything to go by, the outcomes will not be different from what we have had with Armed Robbery, Drug, Election and other Tribunals where the same drama continues to play itself out.

Secondly, the veil of secrecy that is characteristic of security funds is a throwback of the military era where regime security, personalized in the dictator was considered a substitute for the security of the nation and the citizens. It has become a notorious bottomless pit which continues to swallow billions of dollars and it is the excuse for the gross inefficiency in the system. Over time, superintending this honey pot has become the province of the trusted few. The hemorrhage of funds has become more disheartening and embarrassing because while these stupendous sums are being committed to our security, we have become even far more insecure now than we ever were at any time in the history of our nation. The increasing belligerence of the enemies of society, the mass slaughter of human beings that occurs almost on a weekly basis has all collectively dulled our minds to thoughts about the sacredness of our human lives. A helpless state looks on while a traumatized citizenry remains in a state of collective stupor.

More painful than all this perhaps is the sense of numbness and frustration that arises from the fact that the same security agencies have become totally powerless or uninterested in dealing with these high flying criminals who are now above the law. Quite simply, since corruption has been officially written into the DNA of governance in Nigeria, this circle will remain unbroken. Thus, in the civil service, in the regime of contracts and other forms of patronage, we have come to expect corruption to drive the system. For example, by some egregious twist of fate, Nigerians going into public service are not expected to return to their old residential or professional addresses. If you lived in Shomolu,  Ilupeju or even Ikeja before your appointment to high office, you would be expected to migrate to the choice parts of Victoria Island, Ikoyi or Victoria Garden City after your tenure. If you came from any of the state capitals you should be expected to relocate to Asokoro after your tenure. Even after your term is over, you are expected to get a new address in Abuja and remain there hoping that something comes up again.

Shall we go on like this? Will Nigeria survive all this? Shall we survive as a community or shall we continue to fragment? How long will it take before we all drown into this ocean of filth and rut? Will Nigeria find its moral voice? What is the future of our democracy? Will Nigerians become despondent, fatalistic and simply resign themselves to their fate? What options do we have to energise the system and restore our people’s confidence in themselves and their beloved country? How long shall we remain insecure, suspicious and frightened of one another? How long shall we remain hungry, sick, without shelter, with hope slipping by? I want to seek answers to these issues by making five key points.

First, there is need for the political class to return to the fine principles that have made democracy an attractive system of government through the centuries. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Roseau, Hobbes all laid the foundations for the development of what is today, modern Democracy. Central to their various theses were the key issues of human freedom (Liberty), pursuit of the good life and justice. It is clear that our political jobbers have really no higher moral conception of politics other than a means of access and outright theft and banditry.

Essentially, relationship between government and people was supposed to be based on what has come to be known as the social contract. By this contract, we citizens accept to subordinate our will to the state; we allow it the monopoly of the instruments of coercion and violence for the attainment of the common good.  In return, citizens are saved from the excesses and brutality of the powerful among them, a situation which Hobbes called the state of nature where life was nasty, brutish and short for the average citizen. Clearly, with the endless carnage, our lives have become not only short but equally nasty and brutish.

How has the Nigerian politician fared in this regard? The answer is simple; even the political class will confess as they say in Basketball that, they ain’t even close! The ruinous history of our nation and the scattered debris of broken dreams are there for all of us to see. Sadder still is the fact that we are not even seriously and clearly attempting to lay a solid foundation based on discipline, sacrifice and hard work. Rather, the goal of the Nigerian politician is to continue to feast on the carcass of a sick and severely weakened state.

Two, with stealing of state resources taking up all our energy, it is little wonder that today, the state has become terminally ill. What we are witnessing now, the atrophy, failure, and incapacity of the component units of state to perform their duties is the greatest evidence of this tragedy. The Bureaucracy, the central hub that should oil the engine of state, the Judiciary which should adjudicate among the component units, the Police which should serve as the referee in the game of life by citizens, all these institutions have been weakened by corruption. The state itself, being the domain of massive corruption has become unable to flex its muscle as the beneficiaries of its corruption have recycled themselves into power. The result is that with this the state as a central organizing principle missing in the lives of citizens, little wonder that Tribe, Club, Church/Mosque or Association have become the guarantor and purveyors of security. Now, rather than offering their experiences for the common good, some of the best brains in the military and bureaucracy of yesterday have now gone home to serve their communities as Chiefs.  Today, almost every group from retirees, Military officers, Permanent Secretaries, Directors are now forming welfare associations. These splinter groups show clearly that the centre is not holding and not trusted. The paltry state of these retirees is the evidence that those in service need to sustain their appetite for theft.

Three, we must try to square the circles of contradictions that have become part of our society. First, how could we have organized a relatively peaceful election only to turn around to reap a massive harvest of violence from which the state has not recovered? How could we be one of the most hungry nations in the world and still remain one of the happiest? Or, how could we be the most visibly prayerful nation (consider the hundreds of billions of dollars and naira that are spent on Pilgrimages and Chaplaincies across the country) and still rank one of the most corruption-ridden nations in the world?

Four, have we really come to terms with the consequences of insecurity? Are we now running the risk of security becoming a booming trade from which the oligarchs are now feasting? Since the ugly events of April and the October bombings, our situation has gotten progressively worse by the day. There is evidence that we may be treating a disease that has not been properly diagnosed.

In her book, No Higher Honour, Professor Condoleezza Rice has explained clearly how scholarship and science helped the United States to frame the issues of security after the September 11 attacks. For example, she argued, after the attacks, even when George Bush made up his mind to take on the terrorists, they had to debate the best methodologies to adopt. Should they declare a war against Al Qaeda or against some of its affiliates and those who threaten the United States and the rest of the world? This thinking produced the concept of the war on terror as opposed to the war on Al Qaeda. Compare this with the way that Nigeria has taken up the so-called war against Boko Haram. We have made no attempt to connect it with other forms of revolts, treated it as a Muslim or Northern thing without clearly showing its connection with social conditions on the ground. For example, should we not be asking how Boko haram which started out as an internal struggle for the purification of Islam within a specific location and against an identified and specified subject has mutated into the greatest threat against the foundation of the Nigerian state? Sadly, politics has depleted so many of the best brains and men and women with experience and the nation is paying the price.
 
Finally, I am convinced that there is a correlation between the social conditions, knowledge of the political health of our country accounts for where we now find ourselves. The OECD has just released a report titled, Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising. In thinking out policy options against the backdrop of the current crises around Europe, the report states that: Inequality of opportunity will inevitably impact economic performance as a whole, even if the relationship is not straightforward. Inequality also raises political challenges because it breeds social resentment and generates political instability. It can also fuel populist, protectionist, and anti-globalisation sentiments.

The President should have learnt that it was not guns that brought relative peace to the Niger Delta and created the conditions for his Presidency. The late President Yar’adua adopted the principles of humility, metaphorically laid down his arms and then reached out to the militants. As the saying goes, a giant does not lose his gianthood by shaking a dwarf. If the President does not talk to Nigerians, I fear that a trillion naira will not bring about peace in our country. More bread, a full stomach not bullets, is the ultimate guarantee for peace.

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