Tuesday, 7th December, 2021.
BY: CHIEF MIKE OZEKHOME, SAN, OFR, FCIArb, LL.M, Ph. D, LL.D
INTRODUCTION
GOOD GOVERNANCE: A PANACEA FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Good governance is the major driving force towards peace, security and sustainable development in Nigeria, as in any other country of the world. However, Good Governance has been a problem to Nigeria state. After several series of military interventions and her return to a stable democracy in 1999, there has been absence of elements of good governance in government which manifested into menace of ethnic crisis, unemployment, religious crisis, clamor for resource control and even contributed to corruption as a result of lack of accountability, transparency, equitability, inclusiveness and, adherence to rule of law. This article examines the extent to which lack of good governance hinders peace, security, and sustainable development in Nigeria, and also try to offer some recommendations through its major findings.
INSECURITY: BOKO HARAM AS A METAPHOR
Insecurity means a state of uncertainty or anxiety, or lack of confidence in oneself or environment. Despite the Nigerian government’s repeated claims of military victory against Boko Haram, violence persists in the country’s northeast. Abductions, ambushes, and deadly suicide bombings continued in the first half of 2018. Although military operations have degraded Boko Haram’s capacity to hold territory, Nigerian security forces are failing to protect the region’s vast rural areas from militant attacks. In the areas surrounding Lake Chad, the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA)—which split from Boko Haram in 2016—seems to have gained a stronger foothold. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are still displaced and living in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and neighboring host communities, unable to access their land or return to their villages.
Boko Haram’s resilience highlights the limits of a purely military solution to the conflict. In the near term, neither a complete military defeat nor a political settlement is likely. Although the Nigerian government has announced that it has been in talks with Boko Haram about a possible ceasefire, the scope and nature of these negotiations are unclear. In the absence of a political deal, a key priority is to incentivize more Boko Haram fighters to defect—and to successfully rehabilitate those who are captured or manage to leave the group.
Over the past two years, Nigerian officials and international partners have repeatedly emphasized the need for a disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) strategy. Yet so far, the Nigerian government’s efforts in this regard have been disjointed. State authorities have set up a small-scale rehabilitation program for low-level fighters, as well as for low-risk women and children previously affiliated with Boko Haram. However, the program operates with little transparency, and the military’s criteria for screening detainees are opaque. Thousands of suspects remain in military detention, held without charges and often in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.
Sincerity is the solution to peace and security, which I believe to be the roadmap to sustainable development. The citizens willingly surrendered their powers to a group of individuals called “government” in order not to live in a state of nature which is brutish, short, poor and nasty and which can guarantee the improvement in their conditions of living. So, if there is sincerity in government (Good Governance) transparency, responsiveness and accountability, there will not be any reasons for conflict, which can lead to the absence of peace and insecurity which are the preconditions for sustainable development. The emergence of these situations is rooted in the issue of governance. The entity known as Nigeria was a pet project of British empire in 1914, got her independence in 1960, became a republic in 1963 and returned into a stable political democracy in 1999 after several series of military interventions. So, the question is why bad governance???
RETARDATION
Retardation can be defined as a delay or sedation of progress or development of the society. Example of places that have seen retardation as a result of insecurity in Nigeria include:
EFFECT OF INSECURITY ON THE EDUCATIONAL SECTOR
With an increase in the abduction of students and raiding of schools, a lot of schools in the North, specifically, at the primary and secondary school levels have had to shut down. With the most recent attack on the Nigerian Defense Academy in Kaduna, which was seen as a mark of humiliation on the Nigerian Military has also made the terrorist look more formidable. It has now become a choice between education and safety, with parents facing the daily fear that their children might not return from their school. This has led to the shutdown of most boarding schools in the North and has further denied the rights of children to an education and most importantly a chance for the youths to attain knowledge.
INSECURITY AND ITS EFFECT ON TOURISM AND TRANSPORTATION:
People are now afraid to travel to places within Nigeria. This has led to an increase in transportation rates and also a decline in visits to famous sites in Nigeria. The increased insecurity has made people wary of visiting new places and has led to a decline in tourism in our country
With the recent abduction of the British Nationals at the Kajura Castle I Kaduna state, and also the recent attack on the Abuja – Kaduna Train station, Nigeria has become a country where travels are warned against and modes of transportation and decided based on their shared risk factor. Although as at 2014 Nigeria was stated to be a safe and beautiful place to travel, by 2021, warnings had been given by both travel and security agencies that show most states in Nigeria are now high- medium risk places for visitation.
GOOD GOVERNANCE, BAD LEADERSHIP AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Development has not been instilled in her political, economic and social life as a result of dismal peace and security due to bad governance. That is why the general saying concerning the leadership structure in Nigeria is also said to be poor due to the inadequacies in accountability and transparency of public affairs managements in the nation. It is imperative to know that peace, security and sustainable development are a mirage without good governance. Whenever governance breaks down, a generative process of structural and societal dislocation begins.
This process transforms into violent conflicts, instability and underdevelopment, slowly but inevitably. Before this process degenerates, there are usually early warning signals such as sudden demographic changes, economic shocks, rising unemployment rates, destabilizing elections, a rise in societal intolerance, and an increase in the number of demonstrations, among numerous other developments.
It is worrisome that all this aforementioned warning signals have become a culture in Nigeria. Despite the return to stable democracy, availability of human and material resources required for development, there are no symptoms of development as a result of lack of good governance and the opposite, bad governance has been characterizing the government of the day which has now translated into political crisis, economic meltdown, ethnic crisis, religious crisis, insecurity, unemployment, mayhem and bloodshed as a result of lack of accountability, transparency, responsiveness, inclusive democracy, and rule of law which the citizens have been clamoring for during both the British rule and military regime.
Mimiko (1998) posited that “The decolonization allowed the crop of leaders that aligned with colonial power to take over Nigeria. This ensured the sustenance of a neo-colonial economy even after political independence. These leaders on assumption of power quickly turned up the repressive machinery of the colonial state rather than dismantling it. Significantly, they had no vision of development to accompany the efficient instrument of repression they inherited. All they were interested in was access to power and privileges and not development. The rising concern about the governance project in Nigeria cannot be explained outside the country’s historical experience, one that has laid the “solid” foundation for the current wave of ethno-religious and politico-economic crisis in the land. This state of affairs importantly raises some serious concerns about the question of good governance in Nigeria where the politics of deprivation and mismanagement of resources appears to be taking over the principles of accountability, transparency and responsibility (2013:57)”.
So, what has been the fate of Nigerians since the return to stable democracy in 1999 which is over twenty years with no achievements or signs towards sustainable development? This is rooted in the fact that good governance (which is lacking) guarantees the delivery of public goods and services in a manner that is responsive and accurate to public demands, transparency in the allocation of resources, and equitable in the distribution of goods. But the reverse is the case in Nigeria. This has prompted the citizenry to also retaliate and use any window of opportunity or armed struggles to also destabilize peace and security, since the government has failed to be responsive, accountable and transparent to them and also failed to contribute to sustainable development in both short and long run. These now stimulated the poor and weak people in all parts of the country to devise strategies to carry out mayhem and bloodshed in order to destabilize peace and security architecture in the country, and giving it different names; for example Boko Haram in the north- eastern part in which thousands of lives are daily lost, properties worth billions destroyed and millions of people displaced and abduction of over 300 school girls in Chibok and Dapchi; farmers and herdsmen crisis in the north- central and part of south- west in which lives and properties are lost; kidnapping for ransom and militants in the South- South and South- Eastern part of the country in which infrastructural facilities are damaged and lives lost; religious crisis and communal crises in Kaduna, Nasarawa and Plateau state;, election crisis in several parts of the country and clamor against marginalization by the Niger Delta Region. All these menaces are as the result of lack of good governance in which government had failed to provide basic necessities of life such as potable drinking water, stable power supply, good roads, free education, fair representation, inclusive government, protection of life, property, providing security to the citizens and employment opportunities.
ARMED CONFLICTS AND THE ROLE OF THE CIVIL SOCIETY
In any civilized society, one of the primary responsibilities of government, if not the most important, is the safeguarding of the welfare and security of its people. This is so, as the state possesses military capacity and threat of force which other sections of the society are often incapable of. However, this ‘security monopoly’ trend is fast changing. In a globalized world, preventing violent conflict and building sustainable peace require complex strategies which include cooperation with other stakeholders such as the civil society and staying true to good governance, transparency and accountability. But it is the case that the civil society in many countries of the world, especially Africa, which is conflict prone, has not been working to ensure peace in the society. In fact, as people become directly affected by armed conflict, civil society organizations (CSO) have developed interest in contributing to its resolution. The collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries and the birth of ‘Third Wave’ democracies signaled a strong re-entry of the term civil society around the world. In Africa, the civil society has been consistently on the rise since the post-independence era. (To be continued).
SERIOUS AND TRIVIAL
There are two sides to every coin. Life itself contains not only the good, but also the bad and the ugly. Let us now explore these.
“If you are at an advantaged position, allow others to reach and attain their small goals through your assistance. Be a pillar not an obstacle” – Anonymous.
