As the abduction of citizens on major highways continueds in the country, a foremost security expert, Dr. Ody Okereke Ajike, has called on communities along the highways to establish vigilance groups and collaborate with the police to protect the areas.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, the legal luminary condemned the US for raising a false security alarm in Nigeria.
The US and some other Western countries recently alerted the nation to an impending attack in Abuja by terrorists, leading to the evacuation of some of their citizens. What is your view on this?
I am first an enemy of insecurity or conflicts in whatever form or shape. However, it is true that Nigeria has been in a state of pervasive intra-national insecurity. This is across all geopolitical zones in Nigeria. However, the recent security alert by the United States, their allies and clients exposes the extreme irrationality and tremours of US Foreign Policy. It further exposes their incredible arrogance and deliberate policy of domination in militarism, socio-political and economic affairs across all the regions of the world. The US made the optics look very terrible to create maximum fear and anxiety for the citizens and denizens within Abuja and beyond. The published security alert ignored the interaction dynamics existing between the US and Nigeria, and one wonders what they sought to achieve acting without courtesy and breaching official lines of inter-country communication. This model of US behaviour was what former US President Kennedy called, ‘the monolithic and ruthless conspiracy bent on world domination’. The US has the culture of manufacturing real or imagined fear just to break their own record of deceit and achieve their ends by foisting firmly whatever impressions they intend. I believe this was meant to just furnish fear and falsehood to manipulate the public and create domestic outrage. Peeping into the historical premises of US covert actions, they can only achieve certain foreign policy objectives if the general population is frightened by enemies against whom we must rise to defend ourselves. I am not concerned about the contributory roles of other western countries as regards the security alert. They all belong to the same group called the Five Eyes, sharing Intelligence and cooperating at very high levels to ensure US/Western global dominance. They want to set the terms before any other actor emerges to show the capability of US/Western custodianship over affairs in all strategic regions of the world. To achieve this, they create apocalyptic scenarios with real or imagined enemies.
More so, in the 21st Century, intelligence is no more about secrets but it is about information. The US never disclosed their sources of the intelligence to Nigerian authorities, but relied on very loose language and maximised rhetoric at great costs to themselves and more to us as a people. Things like these are not acceptable in modern societies anymore.
The federal government dismissed the alert. But many Nigerians felt the government was insensitive, what is your position on this?
The president, the Inspector General of Police, National Security Adviser and other top government officials have dispelled this security alert by the US and their Western client regimes. We must accept that there is no national security system or national intelligence complex that is omniscient. The same day the US published the security alert on Abuja, the US government failed to inform their own public in Saint Louis, Missouri, about a security gap which resulted in a school shooting that killed some innocent children. So where is their omniscience? The US has not contained domestic violent extremism driven by ideological grievances, neither have they resolved all their internal contradictions. The issue of the expectations of Nigerians about government is clear. Nigerians are aware that government has been very reactive on issues of terrorism, criminal insurgence, banditry and other forms of insecurity. There is growing disenchantment by the people towards government responses to these challenges, because there is a mismatch between citizens’ priorities and government priorities, especially on issues of protection, leadership and socioeconomic benefits. This can only be addressed by reframing our national security priorities to make it more people centric, proactive and aligning security with development.
Why is it that citizens hardly take home whatever assurance the Nigerian government gives them in a situation like this and even on other issues?
As I said earlier, there is a mismatch between expectations of the citizens and government responses. Citizens’ demands are increasing while supply by the government in meeting these demands is shrinking. There is a growing decline in public sympathy, social and public trusts. There is a weak social economy, and this has led to growing anger, resentment and contempt for the elite and public institutions in Nigeria. The political elites have not been able to address the primary issues confronting us as a people since independence. We do not have socioeconomic integrity and social solidarity and these are fault lines which the enemy can manipulate. Unity is not yet a national ideology that impacts on the lives of citizens. Government has also contributed to the insecurity experienced in many geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The under-development of the Niger Delta and North East are cases in point. The perceived political and socio-economic marginalisation of the South East is also a case in point. There are in fact many factors that contribute to this attitude of citizens towards the government, including an absence of an ethical infrastructure for good governance in Nigeria. Finally, citizens just want to know what the government is doing in their name and to also have information about the enemy which is a vital contribution towards rolling back the enemy. Government and the state security forces also feel that the citizens do not appreciate all they are doing in their name in terms of protection services.
Was the ISWAP attack on military barracks in Niger, a neighbouring state to Abuja on Sunday, not a confirmation of the US warning?
I do not always have a buy-in to US prophecy, because I am always curious to determine or understand their motive. I know the US has the capability to do even more than what they say or bring to play whatever they intend. However, there have been a series of US miscalculations since 1960, when they began to showcase their exceptionalism, militarism and opportunism, so this will not be a cardinal issue for me. There have also been several attempts by terrorists at Nigerian military formations and other blue zone strategic facilities in Nigeria in the past.
for jetting out of the country for medical vacation when the country is tense. What’s your view on this?
The president is equipped to know more than anyone on issues of security and defence of Nigeria, as the commander-in-chief. His medical vacation abroad must have been planned before this US abuse of discretion. We need to have him alive and healthy to administer the ship of state. However, it smacks of insensitivity when viewed from plain sight.
Many allege that the high level of insecurity has to do with 2023 and expected power shift to the south. Do you share that sentiment?
No single factor on its own can lead to conflict onset in any political system. Issues of horizontal and vertical inequality, poverty, hunger, deprivation and unemployment are structural and socioeconomic. These issues must conjecturally participate before they can lead to conflict. However, we live in a fearful society, and that alone is a huge challenge as we approach the 2023 elections. The government has sufficient powers to address this serious challenge.
What should be the campaign issues among the parties and their candidates?
We are at the lowest points in our national political, social and economic developments. Our political elites have not been able to achieve a prosperous Nigeria for the benefit of the people. One wonders what their reason for not achieving structural stability and securing economic development for over 60 years of our national life. Government has pacified people with hardship, destroyed our social economy, political credibility and made us a highly indebted country. Many Nigerians have fallen below the breadline and many are also voting with their feet to foreign countries to seek the Golden Fleece. Any presidential candidate must tell Nigerians what he can do to lift a critical mass of men and women from poverty to the middle class. First, Nigeria should transit from party-based politics to candidate based politics. Nigerians should abandon the ancient cleavages of religion and ethnicity to vote for the right man who will transform our country to a prosperous one; a country where ideas, technology, social justice and industrialisation shall rule. We need to understand that ethnicity and religion are not the primary threats beholding Nigeria. Our primary threats are a weak economy, under-development, poor technology penetration and a weak industrial base. Campaigns should focus on these critical issues.
What structural reforms are you expecting from the next president of Nigeria in 2023?
Structural reforms in Nigeria are obstructed by political elites without a consideration of the usefulness of such reforms to our institutions, because the strategic culture of governance and government institutions abhor reforms. The first reform should be integrating security and economic development to achieve secure economic development. Security and economic development should be dimensioned from a twin coin perspective to achieve what I called structural stability and secure economic development. It is necessary to also note that there is a growing dimension of threats impacting citizens and communities in Nigeria, and these threats are purely structural through political, social, economic, health, personal and cultural significant channels. This demands the reformation of existing governance structures or creation of new structural frameworks to prevent, mitigate, protect and insulate the citizens and communities and reduce their vulnerabilities. Therefore, the incoming government should focus on holistic reforms of our governance and institutional structures to protect citizens from these hostile threats to their wellbeing. One of the short term strategic initiatives is a structural reform to reduce risk exposure to investments that would expand labour intensive industries and encourage businesses with large coat tails or employment enrolment. Encourage businesses that will deploy appropriate technology to enable human collaboration for increased productivity. A reform of our rural development strategy through diversification of rural job markets to check urban migration. Reform of our educational system for a credible talent pool is a necessity. Also, improvements in women empowerment through creation of facilities and infrastructure that will uplift women like access to health services and increased opportunities for women. Finally, we need economic independence to deepen our economic structures and avoid foreign institutions with uncultured neo-liberal policies that weaken state control over our resources.
There have been renewed abductions on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and the Enugu-Port Harcourt, as well as Enugu- Nsukka road. What should be done about this?
The security complexion of these areas varies from one another and the opportunity cost for crime is very low in Nigeria due to unemployment, poverty and hunger. Basically, I talked about a critical implementable rural development policy and also diversification of rural job markets. If these reforms are made, it will reduce the prevalent incidences of predatory kidnapping. If these youths are meaningfully engaged, the opportunity cost of crime will be high and discourage the youth from crime appeal. Crime of this nature in Nigeria is purely structural and requires concrete attention paid to its structural origins. We need to address the structural causes and manifestations of these incipient incidents. For the short term, there is the failure of law enforcement by the police and a total failure of the criminal justice system. The police should step up law enforcement in these areas and communities which are now badlands. The complexity of these incidents makes the outcome very debilitating. Communities should establish vigilante services to collaborate with the police to enforce law and order along our public highways.