Despite the promise of renewed hope by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, the signs on the ground do not suggest any hope being renewed or restored and every day the nation’s existential challenges are steadily rising. Not even Tinubu’s New Year message is reassuring enough. Many critics did not see anything to cheer about Tinubu’s New Year message. Some people dismissed it as empty rhetoric full of promises and less of concrete actions and timelines to really fulfill these seeming campaign mode promises.
They would like the President to realize that the 2023 campaigns are over. Having been declared the winner of the badly managed presidential poll and being inaugurated in office since May 29 last year, he should stop addressing Nigerians as if he is still campaigning. They also want him to know that it is time for governance, they mean good governance and fulfilling his lofty campaign promises, which are legion. They opine that Tinubu’s New Year message failed to mention issues of national importance like the Christmas Eve massacre in some parts of Plateau State, in which over 200 Nigerians were slaughtered by gunmen, hundreds of others severely wounded and properties destroyed.
The silence on this monumental national tragedy cannot be explained. That was a great omission in such a New Year presidential address, the first since his assumption of office. His media handlers did not do a good job for such grave omissions. We shall return to Tinubu’s New Year message and other related issues later in the article. No doubt, the intractable insecurity in the country remains the most daunting challenge of this administration.
His predecessor met the challenge but could not squarely address it because of his nepotism, mismanagement of our diversity and the ruination of the national economy. Buhari’s eight-year reign was an unmitigated disaster in all ramifications despite his aides selective and jaundiced narrative. During the 2023 election campaigns, it was not so clear how any of the presidential hopefuls would resolve the nation’s rising insecurity. They were so short and unclear about how they would tackle the monster.
Now that Tinubu is on the saddle, he has not manifested any action or capacity that shows that he is on top of the situation beyond the official mourning and lamentations of government officials when such calamities occur. There was insecurity before Tinubu and even before Buhari. The nation’s intractable insecurity can be said to have started in 2009 with the emergence of Boko Haram insurgency in Borno State, the North-Eest region. Since then, government after government has failed to frontally confront the devil.
Although insecurity is seemingly a global problem on account of so many socio-economic factors, that of Nigeria has lingered for so long in spite of the fact that some experts have proffered solutions on how best to resolve our national problems, including insecurity. We have held so many national conferences on the way forward for this country created by British colonial leaders as part of the scramble for Africa enterprise. I believe that our political leaders, including the President, know about our national problems as well as the solutions proffered by prominent Nigerians and how to solve them.
However, they appear to lack the political and economic will to confront the devil. The nation’s problems cannot be solved by wishful thinking and uttering impotent words when occasion demands or by resorting to rhetoric. The occasional lamentations and mourning of the dead, whom the state has failed to protect, cannot solve any of our existential challenges, including insecurity. No matter how many point-agenda the administration wants to implement in four years period, it will be better if the government prioritized security. Since the Christmas Eve massacre in Plateau State, some other people have been killed in Plateau State and other parts of the country and the security agencies do not appear to have all the answers.
Like in Plateau, the killers of these innocent Nigerians always escape justice. No arrest and no prosecution of the culprits. For years, Plateau State has been a killing field over land, ethnic, religious and other matters. Yet the authorities have manifestly failed to protect these Nigerians, who are murdered daily for no just reasons. Benue State has also suffered similar fate like its twin sister state, Plateau. All the six geo-political zones in the country have their fair share of insecurity, but it is more in the North-East, North-Central and the North-West.
It is then followed by the South-East, the South-South and the South-West. The South-West zone is relatively more secure than the other five geo-political zones. Perhaps, good governance, urbanization, education and economic development can explain why the South-West is the most peaceful zone in the country. The other geo-political zones can learn some lessons from the South-West zone.
As advised by prominent Nigerians, Tinubu must rejig the nation’s security architecture to make it more effective in confronting the enemy and sudden attacks by bandits, terrorists and other criminals. The security agencies need new recruits, training and deployment of relevant technology in fighting insecurity. Fighting 21st insecurity with Dane guns and antiquated equipment cannot work. The army and the police need sophisticated equipment to match the fire power of the bandits and terrorists. They need enough numerical strength to cover the nation’s vast land and defeat the terrorists.
With increased numerical strength, the security agencies will be able to occupy many of the ungoverned spaces where terrorists and other non-state actors have reportedly assumed sovereignty. We have tried kinetic and non-kinetic measures in confronting the insurgents, bandits, terrorists and other enemies of the government, yet the monster has not been defeated. Forget about the claim by past administration that insurgency has been ‘technically’ defeated. Nigerians are aware that nothing like that ever happened.
Perhaps a change of strategy will do the magic. I don’t know what President Tinubu is thinking about the call to restructure Nigeria and the security architecture, he should not run away from them. The same way he removed fuel subsidy can be used to confront other issues like restructuring and reviewing of our security architecture at this point in time. There is even no time to waste. Nigeria as presently constituted is sick and cannot work. The present security architecture is over-centralized and cannot work.
The poor governance culture at the federal, state and local governments is also fueling insecurity. So many Nigerians are alienated from governance and politics. Millions of Nigerians are jobless and can be easily recruited by terror groups. In Nigeria, government is highly personalized to the detriment of the masses. The President is very powerful, the governors are emperors and local government chairmen, where they exist, are also powerful. In all of this, governance suffers, fueling all kinds of agitations and insecurity.
Policing in Nigeria is not working and is not likely to work if it is not localized. About 400,000 police force cannot protect over 200 million Nigerians. An ill-equipped and poorly motivated police force cannot guarantee the safety of over 200 million Nigerians. A corrupt police force cannot effectively fight crimes and cannot effectively enforce law and order in the society. A corrupt political class cannot guarantee good governance. This is the major problem of our democracy. Without good governance, democracy is dead.
Other monsters the Tinubu administration will confront include corruption and poverty. Corruption is endemic in government and all aspects of our national life. The fight against corruption, official corruption, must be rejuvenated and must not be politicized. Government should tackle corruption in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) which have recorded monumental corruption in recent times. The N37bn fraud allegation in Humanitarian Ministry is a case in point. The corruption allegation against the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, is another one. There may be others yet uncovered. Past administrations were feeble in the war against corruption.
We need a change of the narrative on how we fight against official graft. Arising from the ugly effects of fuel subsidy removal and unification of the exchange rate, Tinubu must prioritize the welfare of Nigerians and shore up the value of the naira. Nigerians should have no pact with hunger and poverty in a regime that wants to renew the hope of the people in governance. Why is the naira so scarce that many Nigerians cannot withdraw their monies from the banks? There are many problems confronting the Tinubu administration, but he should prioritize and tackle those he can beginning with insecurity, economy, hunger, poverty, unemployment and others.