Somebody, likely a cynic, said Nigeria is a failed state that is working. This, because the indices of a failed state are evident in Nigeria, though the political and economic structures have not quite collapsed.
America’s Council of Foreign Relations thinks that Nigeria has degenerated from a weak state to a failed state because of the inability of its government to curb large-scale violence and insurgency.
Things are so dire that the usually sanguine President of the Nigerian Senate, Ahmed Lawan, who never sees the most glaring faults of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), confessed that “The very essence of the existence of this country is under serious threat.”
The cynic reminds one of former military dictator Ibrahim Babangida, who couldn’t understand why Nigeria’s economy hadn’t collapsed under his regime that he knew was apparently out of its depth.
Mischievous people suggested that drug money helped, while yet others thought that the Diaspora remittances bouyed up the economy. Both schools of thought might not have been too far from the truth.
But those with a better understanding of economics insist that the upstream oil sector, which is disconnected from the domestic economy, yet provides about 90 per cent of foreign earnings and the bulk of government revenue, is responsible for the cash flow.
Babangida’s wonderment landed him on the cover of African Concord, whose editorial team, led by Bayo Onanuga, resigned en masse to establish The News magazine when Publisher MKO Abiola suggested they should apologise to the military dictator for doing their job.
A failed state, like Somalia, Libya (that seems to be recovering) or Rwanda of some years ago, is a political body that has disintegrated to the point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function.
The situation in such a state is like that of a country that is at war, or has been at war, with its accompanying shortages, if not scarcity, of food, and social services, in addition to constant exposure of human life and property to destruction.
There are large swatches of ungoverned spaces, like Sambisa Forest, now taken over in large part by insurgent Boko Haram, Birnin Gwari Forest, occupied by kidnappers and bandits, and other equally dreadful forests scattered throughout Nigeria.
The mayhem that followed the #EndSARS protests initially led by indignant Nigerian youths in October 2020 demonstrated the fragility of the state, and the truth in William Shakespeare’s quip that security gives way to conspiracy.
An American non-governmental organisation, Fund for Peace, established in 1957, enumerates the characteristics of a failed state: They are loss of territory; erosion of legitimate authority; inability to provide basic public services; and inability to interact with other sovereign states as a full member of the international community.
Though Nigeria has robust relationship with other sovereign nations, it has swatches of ungoverned space, insurgents and bandits that rule over some parts of its territory, and its governments are practically unable to provide basic amenities, like water, electricity, medicare, schools and security, for the people.
Though all Nigerian governments are always borrowing money, they are still broke and unviable. Beside Lagos State, almost no other state can finance its operations from its Internally Generated Revenue. Every month, the states go cap-in-hand to collect the dole from the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee.
The Nigerian Press Organisation, made up of Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria, Nigerian Guild of Editors, and Nigeria Union of Journalists, describes the sorry situation in the country in the following words:
“Nigeria has been embroiled lately in profound socio-economic, political and security challenges that threaten its very existence as reflected in ethnic divisions and separatist agitations in the country, with growing fears that an implosion is imminent. Today, criminality- kidnapping for ransom, banditry, arson, killings- defines the everyday reality for a good number of our citizens.”
Frequent nationwide insecurity, perpetrated by insurgents, separatists, bandits, kidnappers, assassins and ungovernable herdsmen suggest that the Nigerian state does not have a monopoly of physical force over the Nigerian territory anymore.
Political science theorists define a state as the supreme, final, absolute, coercive power within a political realm. In other words, it is the sovereignty of a nation entrusted to state actors who run the machinery of government.
The sharing of physical force between the Nigerian state and non-state actors is evident in the payment of ransoms to kidnappers by the government, that routinely denies, and loss of military hardware to insurgents.
Because these equivalents of territory-grabbing warlords are contesting the space with government, some state governors, like Samuel Ortom of Benue State; a traditional ruler in Taraba State; Nnamdi Kanu, leader of separatist Indigenous People of Biafra; and Sunday “Ighoho” Adeyemo, protagonist of Odùduwà Republic, did a number of things.
While some have called on their peoples to defend themselves against the invaders, others set up self-defence militia, like the Eastern Security Network, while yet others took the battle to the homes of those they identify as facilitators of the violent invaders and ran them out of town.
The position of these men is encouraged by the admonition by generally rambling Minister of Defence, General Bashir Magashi (retd.), who asked Nigerians to confront, man-to-man, anyone who invaded their space.
A former Chief of Army Staff and former Minister of Defence, Lieutenant-General Theophilous Yakubu Danjuma (retd.), also told Nigerians to defend themselves against the violent and unrepentant criminals.
It was probably an admission that the Federal Government could not live up to the provisions of Section 14 of the Nigerian Constitution that says security is the primary responsibility the government owes to Nigerians.
These days, justice, even security, is obtained on a cash-and-carry basis from the courts of law, the police, other security agencies and from kidnappers. And it doesn’t look as if there is going to be any respite for the average Nigerian very soon.
One is not too sure if the directive by President Buhari that anyone caught with an AK-47 rifle should be shot on sight qualifies to be an endorsement of self-defence. Things have got so bad that internal security, the traditional assignment of the police, has been farmed out, almost entirely to an equally overstretched military.
Perhaps, the worst thing working against the survival of the Nigerian state is that the citizens have a substantial deficit of trust against the clueless and insensitive state actors of today and of the past years.
Those who have had the privilege to rule Nigeria, display a lack of integrity and continuous breach of the social contract between them and Nigerians. The economy has taken a disastrous plunge because of the near absence of government.
And by stubbornly appointing members of an ethnic group into the top echelons of Nigeria’s security agencies, the latest through the possible easing out of many Major Generals in order to appoint their junior, Major General Farouk Yahaya, as Chief of Army Staff, Buhari is further compounding the issues of internal security.
Such insensitive actions further dampen the already low morale of the men under arms, and further compromise the capability of the state to secure and maintain the realm and the sovereignty of the beleaguered Nigerian nation.
To rework a phrase from Martins Oloja, Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian newspaper, the Commander-in-Chief should chiefly secure Nigeria’s floundering ship of state.
