ADHOC NATIONS, SECURITY AND LEADERSHIP BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE
When Alhaji Lateef Jakande became governor of Lagos State in 1979, he was shocked at what he found and the challenges that the new leaders will grapple with. He found to his major dismay, that regardless of the pretentious and frenetic activities of the so-called military government of Nigeria, it can be authoritatively said that the government of Nigeria stopped in 1966.
Alhaji Jakande observed that everything the various military governors and military heads of state were doing was purely created for a particular purpose.
Nigeria has no system and process of governance that is transferable. Everything the military did in Nigeria was purely adhoc. Nigeria has no system of governance and continuity that is adhered to and followed by elected officials who make government policy.
There was no method and there was no formula and there were no processes. The soldiers just beat their way through the Nigerian forest and they call it governance.
If anyone should point this out at that time, the person is considered unpatriotic and an enemy of the state. So those who knew started leaving and the civil service became corrupt, directionless and hollow. Anything the soldiers did in Nigeria was through bravado and intimidation. They chose people and made them millionaires and billionaires. The rise to power and privilege did not depend on knowledge and contribution to progress.
Being a tailor or house girl to an army officer vaults you to a position of eminence and policy maker. As more of these emergency army ordained billionaires arrived, they brought their friends and relatives to enjoy the same privileges and Nigeria suffered.
Solution to problems no longer requires deep thinking and expert consultation. Solutions to national problems become simplistic. If there is crime, arrest the criminal and execute him and that will lower crime. If the big man is having issues with his neighbors, give him to the police to beat the guy up and guard him for twenty four hours and three hundred and sixty five days a year. If there is more crime, erect check points on every road. More crimes, more check points. What about sanitation? Go out and clean your streets yourself. The citizens are prisoners of the soldiers of fortune who have no interest or knowledge of governance and their main purpose is to save Nigeria from Nigerians so they can continue to plunder it with their loved ones.
At the height of the plunder, security of the nation becomes the protection of those who are plundering and destroying the nation. They are given bodyguards and more weapons and checkpoints and they tell us the security budget is increased and there is an increase in emoluments and titles of the entourage because we have an increased and improved security. They don’t ask about us because they are protecting the nation from us.
To the Nigerian leaders, security has always been about them, not us. The military protected themselves without their subordinates shooting them. Security against coup plotters is very strong. That is why not many coups were succeeding and drunken soldiers who could not find their way from the officers’ mess had more security than Nigerians because no coup against them succeeded.
So these folks wobbled the government and handed it over to their colleagues who were carrying their bags for them. Some of them even came back to continue the damage where they stopped.
This is the culture of the Nigerian leadership. What the so-called democratically elected people are doing is no different from the abuse the military subjected Nigerians to for more than fifty years. All the civilian leaders have their personal police and army providing security for them like their colleagues in the army used to have. The checkpoints are still there and people are still being slaughtered the way they used to. The only difference now is that instead of blaming the saboteurs, they will blame the rising crime and insecurity of their political opponents. They will agree to increase the number of checkpoints and appropriate more police for themselves.
My question is what is the correlation of security and check points? There is no study in Nigeria that shows any relationship between low crime rate and check points. Empirical observations may show that the more check points there are, the more crime in that area.
Is the police part of the criminals? The only method of security the quasi-military leaders know in Nigeria is kinetic.
Don’t be fooled by the Calvary of army, soldiers, Air Force, navy and agberos that parade those places. You could lose your life or property in those places without anyone coming to your aid.
I had a firsthand experience with lack of security at the Murtala Muhammad Airport in Lagos. All over the place are military personnel. That is not security. That only scares Nigerians who are not used to guns. The so-called security at the Murtala Muhammad Airport and other airports in Nigeria are nothing but intimidation force against the Nigerian citizens. Those soldiers have nothing to do with security. I can bet you that none of the things being done by these folks is prescribed by any law.
Everything is adhoc like the soldiers. These people only see security as the exchange of gunfire and the death of the culprit. This lacuna is very dangerous to society.
You can see in the Boko Haram fights, the leaders tell us a lot about body counts but there is no actual progress being reported. Visibility is not security. It is intimidation. You cannot intimidate someone who is capable and willing to cause harm.
A nation that cannot protect the lives and properties of its citizens cannot ascribe to anything else in our civilized world. Security is a very broad subject. Those who are elected to think are just like the mumu soldiers they replaced.
With the epidemic of insecurity and another nation threatening to invade us, I am aghast that our elected leaders have not seen it fit to address the Nation about the challenges we are facing and what the various governments are doing to improve the security situations in the different regions.
They are treating us the way the military did. Their police still beat us like the soldiers did.
One of the greatest contributors to insecurity is the lack of prosecution and punishment of criminals. It is easier to be a SAN than to prosecute someone who stole public money in Nigeria.
They don’t care about us. They care about their hold on power. They, like the military, want us to be afraid. At times like these, the citizens need to hear from their leaders about their proposed solutions.
Why is it that our leaders’ are silent as our nation faces one of its worst security disasters? We have come to see that most of these elected people have no capacity beyond being local champions. None of the Senators or House of Rep members could even pick up a phone and talk to their colleagues in the United States. None of them could jump on the plane and come to the US to conduct a press conference with his colleagues and clarify the issues that are being muddled up by Donald Trump and the Biafran Separatist, and use the occasion to impress on the congress and American people the geopolitical implication of the reckless disregard for Nigeria, the largest home for all Africans around the world.
Nigerians now know that leadership is beyond the politics of area boys. The worst thing that can happen to any nation is to be run by the military. No one should forget that the Nigerian military destroyed the civilian and intellectual heritage of Nigeria.
They triggered a civil war, and made mediocrity our way of life. What would Obasanjo have done if he had a third term? Would there have been an improvement? Buhari wasted eight ears. What was he actually fighting when he was campaigning to be president?
We cannot tell who is a good leader anymore because we are an adhoc nation. Leadership here does not require thinking. The army brought us here. We should never tolerate the overthrow of our civilian governance in this country. The military midwives are at it again. Instead of carrying out an offensive public relations campaign, these adhoc leaders are hoping and praying that Donald Trump will forget.
In America, people work like hell for prayers to be answered. Our leaders are not even preparing the citizens for any eventuality. This is the way an adhoc nation behaves.
Jakande lamented. Before he could dry his tears and roll his sleeves to work, the soldiers told us it was their turn again. The adhoc people came and took their government back. The world has moved on and we are back in the 50s. We need a task force. We are really back. I just saw a vehicle driving on the left side of the road.
DR AUSTIN ORETTE WRITES FROM HOUSTON, TEXAS
