Justice and security in partnership: Dialogue between the Bar and Law enforcement (1)

Introduction

The inaugural installment of this intervention was necessarily introductory- focusing on the background and over-view of the subject. It touched on areas where the NBA has intervened and interfaced with other justice stakeholders like the Police, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission; the National Human Rights Commission, etc.  This week, we shall address the challenge and scope of insecurity in Nigeria, focusing on political insecurity, economic insecurity and physical insecurity. After which we shall discuss the constitutional framework for the rights to life in Nigeria. enjoy.

THE CHALLENGE AND SCOPE OF INSECURITY IN NIGERIA

Having established the conceptual framework, the next task is to contextualize it within the Nigerian reality. Insecurity in Nigeria is multi-dimensional, taking forms such as political, health, economic/financial, food, educational, and social insecurity. Insecurity is simply the absence of security. However for our purposes, it is the political, physical and economic aspects of insecurity that will be the facts of this paper.

The key questions are: To what extent do these ills plague us? Are they existential? Have they always been part of our history, or have they worsened over time? The best way to examine this is to break it into its component parts, beginning with political insecurity.

POLITICAL INSECURITY

Control of political power, especially at the centre, has always been fiercely contested in Nigeria, often resulting in violence and loss of life. Campaign rhetoric ahead of the 2025 general elections suggests a risk of history repeating itself, possibly in a worse form.

Political violence, starting with inflammatory speech, can quickly escalate to physical violence. This danger is compounded by ongoing insurgency from Boko Haram (now ISWAP), secessionist agitation by IPOB, politically-motivated shootings, and kidnapping for ransom. While kidnappings often have economic motives, they also feed political instability.

ECONOMIC INSECURITY

Nigeria’s worsening poverty has earned it the label of the “poverty capital of the world.” This fuels political insecurity as unemployed youths are recruited by politicians for violent purposes. Economic hardship also drives vote-buying, where voters sell their ballots for minimal sums, leading to flawed electoral outcomes. This cycle is entrenched and unlikely to be broken before the 2027 elections.

PHYSICAL INSECURITY

Pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft linked to economic insecurity have reached alarming levels, with allegations of involvement by security agencies. The loss in revenue forced the government to contract former militant leader Government Ekpemupolo (“Tompolo”) to help curb the menace.

Non-State Actors control territories in parts of the North-West, North-East, and North-Central, collecting taxes, issuing passes, planting flags and acting as parallel sovereign authorities. These areas are effectively beyond the reach of the Nigerian State.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR RIGHT TO LIFE IN NIGERIA

A Constitution is not merely a collection of legal clauses. It is a nation’s vow, its solemn oath to the governed. It is the architecture of civil order, the map by which a society charts the moral boundaries of power. But when the Constitution becomes an artifact of aspiration rather than a living force of justice, it ceases to protect; it begins to mock. That is the Nigerian tragedy. For here is a nation that proclaims rights with poetic fervour, but practises repression with clinical precision.

Let us begin with the most sacred right of all the right to life, enshrined in section 33(1) of the 1999 Constitution. It declares without ambiguity that “every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life.” This has been given judicial imprimatur and affirmed by Nigerian court, in several cases viz: Esabunor v Faweya, Ndubuisi v State, Azuogu v State. But what weight does this right carry in a country where a man may be shot by a bandit while returning from market; a child and mother killed in their home through a herder invasion; a villager executed by terrorists; no one is arrested; no one is prosecuted; no justice is served? The Constitution grants the right, yes, but the State withholds the protection. What use is a right to life in a terrain of death?

Each corpse buried without justice is a clause of the Constitution burned in effigy.

And consider Section 34(1) a guarantee that “every individual is entitled to respect for the dignity of his person.” It forbids torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. Yet across Nigeria’s vast terrain, dignity has become a vanishing dream. Men are paraded naked in front of cameras by vigilante groups; women stripped and whipped for so-called ‘moral offences’ by religious fanatics, citizens forced to pay ransoms for abducted relatives, while the State looks on, passive and paralysed. Where is dignity when a woman has to sell her body to feed her children? Where is dignity when a man works six days a week and cannot afford bread?

The betrayal deepens when we examine section 14(2)(b), which declares- no, insists, that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” This is not a metaphor. It is the constitutional essence of statehood. A government that fails to secure and provide for its people ceases, by legal definition, to be legitimate. Yet, in Nigeria today, security is a luxury. In Zamfara, Niger, Katsina, Plateau State and even more recently, Edo, entire communities live in fear and under the reign of warlords, bandits and terrorist groups. In the South-East, armed separatist groups extort, maim, kill and burn. In the South-South, pirates rule the creeks. And all the while, Abuja issues banal statements, not solutions.

Even the criminal justice system, meant to operationalise the Constitution, has virtually collapsed into spectacle. The police extort with impunity. The courts delay justice until justice becomes irrelevant. Prisons overflow with awaiting trial inmates while politicians accused of looting billions of our common patrimony stroll freely through airport lounges, attending graduation events where they are conferred with purchased honorary doctorate degrees. A man who steals bread is lynched. A senator who steals a nation is given a chieftaincy title. Is this the rule of law, or the rule of rot?

Let us not forget Chapter II of the Constitution, the so-called Directive Principles of State Policy. These are the clauses that outline a vision for a just and egalitarian society free education, affordable healthcare, equal opportunity, protection of the vulnerable, decent wages, access to housing, food security, and the equitable distribution of national wealth. But here lies the deception: these provisions are rendered non-justiciable under Section 6(6)(c). In plain terms, they are promises the people cannot enforce. The Constitution dreams on their behalf, but denies them the legal means to wake that dream into action.

When a State says to its citizens, “we guarantee you food, education, and health,” and then adds a footnote saying, “but you may not ask us for it,” what emerges is not democracy it is deception. And deception is the mother of despair. Despair, when left to fester, breeds defiance. And defiance, when met without justice, becomes insurrection. That is the cycle Nigeria is now trapped in a spiral of constitutional promises turned into societal wounds.

The Constitution becomes a parody in the mouths of politicians who have never read it and judges who are too timid to enforce it.

AND THIS

For the powerful, it is a shield; for the poor, a sword turned inward. The elite recite its sections during legal battles over electoral fraud. But where are these recitations when 652 children die of hunger in Katsina? Where are the legal arguments when a woman in Makurdi loses all her children to a communal massacre? When the man in Sokoto can no longer afford petrol, food, or peace of mind, what legal relief can he seek?

It is also worth noting the performative constitutionalism that plagues Nigeria’s legislative process. Lawmakers gather to amend the Constitution every four years like surgeons with blunt scalpels. They debate the minutiae of electoral timelines, federal character quotas, and party primaries. But no one rises to demand justiciability for Chapter II. No one proposes constitutional protections for internally displaced persons. No one fights to enshrine the right to a living wage. They adjust the frame while the house is on fire.

In the final analysis, a Constitution that cannot be felt in the body of the poor, in the belly of the child, in the safety of the mother, and in the labour of the working man, is a document not of power but of pretense. A parchment without protection. A creed without consequence.

Yet, it is not too late. What is written may still be made flesh. But first, we must acknowledge the gap. We must look the failure in the face and name it for what it is: a breach of trust, a betrayal of covenant, a blood-soaked irony. For the Constitution, like the prophets of old, still cries out: “Will you honour me with your lips and deny me with your deeds?” The answer, for now is a crass denial of deeds. (To be continued).

Thoughts for the week

“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honour, duty, mercy, hope”. –Winston Churchill