Nigerian Democracy: It Is Time To Forge The Patriotic Front

USSIJU MEDANER 

Apparently over the past years, the Nigerian nation’s challenges have been compounding, particularly the fundamental ones and it appears consistently and unmistakably that we have been unable to address and proffer working solutions to any of the critical national problems; the chief reason being that we have refused to look for optimal solutions bereft of personal, regional and at worst, political intonations. Rather than summing up our challenges and engaging unbiased resolutions to address them, considerations for our religious differences, our regional differences, our tribal jingoism, and political and personal interests are what we put at the forefront of deliberations and would always end up defeating all chances to solve our problems.

This is one of the very few reasons we have been unable to win the battle against the protracted insecurity in the country. Rather than agreeing at a point to condemn the acts, we would develop cold feet when our kinsmen, tribal men and religious affiliates are involved. While the Igbo people of the Southeast chose to literally stay strong, overtly or otherwise, behind the IPOB identity and cause, they grumble about the harm the group is inflicting on their people and region, yet, the prominently influential ones would never openly oppose the group. It is the same scenario up north when we had the opportunity to cut the Boko Haram insurgents in the bud in its earliest days, it was the same northern people that vehemently protected them. The argument, that they are our people, our sons and brothers, prevailed until the sect grew into the monster that is consuming us today. If we had handled the Boko Haram issue proactively and unitedly as a nation, we would have defeated it then, and most likely, we would also not have to be dealing with bandits now, which definitely, is an offshoot of the Boko Haram’s successes.

Another fundamental yet serious national challenge is the herders-farmers clashes over common resources which has been lingering on for far too long. We mulled the idea of creating cattle farms across the states of the federation, to become permanent and restricted facilities or homes for herders and their animals. What happened to the noble idea or consideration? We rejected it. Why? What are the reasons given and what alternatives do we offer? No acceptable alternative. We just want the cattle off the roads and farms. Why? No reason beyond that we want to protect our regions from “seemingly impossible” invasion by the herders. The so-called imaginary invader is a Muslim Fulani man, so we must oppose the non-existing Fulanisation and Islamisation of our regions and states. For this emotional, personal and group interests, we defeated the solution, and continue to suffer the consequences till now.
Now, rather than converging to address and forge a workable national solution to the nation’s insecurity challenges, we have ignored all feasible realities, and are busy presenting a way forward that will further damage Nigeria’s national security on many critical fronts. Who are the proponents and main advocates of state policing? Should considerations for regional identities cloud our sense of reasoning enough to blind us against seeing the massive consequences of allowing our states as currently constituted to control police within their jurisdictions? Do we pause to count the political abuses and collateral damages that would follow once the state governors are fully in charge of the police, the courts and the prison? I can only imagine and you may as well do the same.

We currently run a very fragile democracy; a system that has become synonymous with the show of force. We have repeatedly seen politicians using the power of the police to control the outcomes of elections. We have seen regular redeployment of state police chiefs to curb some governors’ undue advantage of influencing the Force to do the bidding of the party in power or to achieve other ends. We have chosen to ignore the mess that would be created at the state level once we mistakenly see this error through. Imagine the current Rivers state governor being fully in charge of the state police; we can imagine what would have become of the immediate former governor and the minister of FCT, Nyesom Wike and his support base in the state. We can imagine what a governor’s control over the police would mean to the Kano state governor right now. It definitely would mark the end of the opposition at the state level in the country. In fact, while not a single state would be innocent of gross abuse, North Korea would become much better than a good number of them.

If we are going to tell ourselves the truth, state police autonomy would be a monster that would consume all of us and destroy the little successes we have recorded democratically as a nation. The truth is that the governors would use the police force to intimidate others and an opposition party winning an election at the state level would become a near impossibility in our states. Winning statewide elections would become as easy for the state governors as winning local government elections. Total dominance and control over the entire electoral and security system; beginning from state electoral bodies, to the police, to the courts and prisons and then the incumbency control, would literally translate our elections to a mere selection exercise.

The disadvantages clearly outclass the advantages if there are any. The current problem of the Nigeria Police is not a decentralisation issue. We are looking at a combination of funding, technical capacity, politicisation and corruption. Creating state police cannot solve these issues; states with a history of incapacity to meet up with wage bills would be compounding the woes with not only the wage bill of the police but the entire budget provision for the force. And we all know what an underpaid police force would look like in Nigeria. We should think twice.

What we need to secure the country is not state policing but a national resolve by Nigerians to work together to secure the country; a political will to apportion national resources against insecurity without personal, regional or selfish agendas.

We have seen examples of nations where state policing has been practised and the fact that it hasn’t presented in any of those places what we are projecting to do in Nigeria. In America, for instance, despite the existence of state police, the records of crimes, street shootings, extra-judicial killings and name it, are only on the rise. In India, we see clearly the state police becoming an instrument of oppression of the minority groups by the majority.

We have seen nations like the UAE and others that are amalgamations of historically evolved units, but which adopted a federal policing mechanism and to a large extent, have reduced crimes and criminalities in their domains.

So, we will end up building a state police that, going by our well-known antecedents, would be populated by a section of a state governor or in most states, the majority group in the state. Eventually, we will be seeing the same marginalisation that ceaselessly laments about at the national level playing out across the states, perhaps in its worst form.

What the federal government has failed to achieve, is it the states that would achieve it? We may however end up having, perhaps, six states or thereabout, with a functional police force, while all the others will create a mess for the entire nation. Nigeria is not ripe for state policing. We should end the agitation now in the interest of all.

Another striking issue we are attempting to address from the front of our magnified differences is the issue of regional administration. It does appear that we have taken the struggles for sectional identities to a new level. Over the years, the cries for perceived marginalisation, even when in reality, there are none, have been a major issue with our polity. As much as we keep shrugging it off, it continues to dictate our actions and inactions once we get to the centre, and a direct consequence is a one-sided call for regional administration of the country. While the proponents claim the current system was forcefully imposed on us by a military administration, they also cleverly ignore the basic reason given by the assemblers of the Constitution.

It was then canvassed that the need for a national outlook would be a better approach to foster the much-needed unity of the country, and guarantee more than any other, the one united Nigeria. Today, we find it nearly impossible to organise the country to a united front, all thanks to the differences we already created along regional, tribal and religious identities, yet, while we are trying to mend the bridges, suddenly, they want us to go our separate ways again. We are at a point when we should be exerting our strength and resources to preach unity and togetherness, but here we are strategising to collapse all the gains of unity we have won as a nation.

The agitators are claiming that a regional government system would reduce the cost of governance. How? Would the same jackals stealing the country dry and collecting the souls of the nation as salaries return to their regions and gracefully legislate a reduced remuneration for political office holders? I doubt it. So why are we deceiving ourselves?

Mr. President must be careful and wary of the people urging him to adopt these unpopular actions. It appears they are cleverly orchestrating a demarketing of the president ahead of 2027. These are people who contributed nothing to his election and seemingly are planning to contest or support some other candidates in 2027. Agitating for a regional government would definitely create a strong rift between the north and the south and eventually, become the focus of the campaign for the 2027 elections.

The electorate is watching and rating us. We went around the corners of the country, sold our manifesto to them, and the adoption of a regional administration system during the 2023 campaign was not part of what we promised and which made Nigerians vote for us. We must stick more to the Renewed Hope Agenda; that is the covenant we made with the Nigerian electorate.

We came from a regional government and we all remember what it did to us and how it ended. With the division and open disdain for ourselves across the various regions, and the culminating killings of leaders of the northern region; are we attempting to reopen the wounds that are struggling to heal. Are we trying to remind the people of the system that oversaw the killings of their leaders?

This is a monster capable of swallowing us all if we do not end it now. We would build a destructive system that would further polarise the country and we will oversee them with the same element, leaders that have been bastardising Nigeria, and rendering it incapable of real, tangible development. Would they suddenly become saints? Or would they continue their businesses as usual.

I passionately love this country. I supported and contributed to the growth of APC as party; I can humbly say that no one can successfully prove to be more Nigerian than I am, and neither can anyone prove to be more APC or pro-Tinubu than I am. I have consistently, in the open and in private, defended and projected APC and the Tinubu government. I have written over 600 articles mostly published on pages of dailies defending and projecting this government. In monetary terms, someone jokingly told me that would have been some free billions of naira contributed to PR of the party, yet, we have done them without beckoning for rewards. But as a concern party man, we cannot allow outsiders to come in and destroy everything we have laboured for. I call on Mr. President to be careful and watchful, hence, he may be successfully lured away from the vision and the goals we stand for as a party and jeopardise our outing in 2027.

We cannot afford to toss this advice to the dogs. All true lovers of this country must arise now, setting our differences aside, and take the side of Nigeria, its unity and reality.

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!