According to Transparency International in its report titled Nigeria: Corruption and Insecurity, it agreed with what has been a consensus notion that and from evidences that there is a nexus between corruption and insecurity in Nigeria
By Sonny Ogulewe
“Bandits demand N40 trillion, 11 Hilux Vans, 150 Motorcycles for release of abducted Kaduna residents”. (Arise news 11th March, 2024) “Outrage as bandits kidnap 280 pupils from schools in Kaduna state” (Punch 8th March, 2024). “Abductors of 15 Sokoto students demand N20m ransom. (Punch 12th March, 2024) “Gunmen disguising as herders killed 50 people in Benue, says Senator” (The Cable 6th March, 2024) “Corpses of 6 police officers killed by herdsmen in Delta community recovered.(Vanguard 6th March, 2024), “Gov. Adeleke raises alarm over planned attacks on schools, farms”(The Guardian 12th March, 2024). These were some of the headlines in many Nigerian newspapers between 6th and 12th March, 2024.
On April 14th, 2024, it will be ten years since the abduction of the 276 innocent Chibok girls from their school. Premium Times (April 18th, 2023) reported that “over 1,680 school children have been kidnapped in Nigeria since the Chibok school abduction”. Equally, there have been numerous underreported audacious attacks across the country by bandits, most spectacular was the Abuja-Kaduna train attack that took place on the 28th March, 2022, where about 160 passengers were abducted.
About nine years ago, the CNN on January 12, 2015 reported that “ during a raid that started on January 3rd, 2015, hundreds of gunmen seized the town of Baga and neighbouring villages as well as a multinational military base… 2,000 people were killed in the attack … and about 30,000 people displaced” An online blog Nigerian Finder also reported that “Since Boko Haram launched its campaign in 2009, the group has killed more than 20,000 people and forced two million others to flee their homes in Northern Nigeria”.
In a report, the “Round 35 December 2020 of Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) conducted by International Organization for Migration(IOM) , there were about 2, 150,243 million people living in displacement across Nigeria resulting from the activities of the Boko Haram, banditry and Herders-Farmer clashes across the country”.
Also Amnesty International TI in its August 10th 2021 release, detailed the “killing of over 112 people in Kaduna and Plateau states by bandits and gunmen within one month, while 160 individuals were abducted, with thousands displaced as a result of violent attacks”. The reports equally indicted the government for not doing enough to address the worsening situation noting that “beyond issuing statements and condemning attacks after they happen; government needs to rein in on the attackers and bring them justice”
Sadly, the 2020 Global Terrorism Index Nigeria ranks 3rd with 8.314 on 10 points scale behind of Afghanistan and Iran among 180 nations. What is even more worrisome is the fact Nigeria ranks ahead of the failed nations of Syria, Somalia and Yemen, while Botswana, Namibia and Togo are at the bottom on the ladder with 0.000 points respectively. Four years after this report was published and ten years after the savage abduction of the 276 innocent Chibok girls, what has changed is the question?
The answer is that the situation is becoming increasingly hopeless and the bandits more daring and sophisticated. Today, we have a near Hobbesian state of nature where “each man lives for himself and life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” and where travelling by road across the country has become a very dangerous and unpredictable adventure and going to the farm a huge risk. The uncertainties that have enveloped our social lives since this dramatic slide have brought to the fore the weaknesses and cluelessness of the immediate past administration that failed woefully to bring the situation under control.
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A diligent analysis of the dynamics of the challenge could be helpful in understanding why the menace is seemingly entrenched and problematic. This article therefore attempts to unveil and elucidate the salient elements in the Nigerian security challenge and to establish the nexus or the pattern of their intricate interface without which insecurity cannot exist. It is hopeful that this understanding would help to provide the basis for an honest consensus around which an appropriate framework could be designed to tackle the menace in more determined manner. It will also help to correct a rather defective perception of insecurity along primordial biases which has been a huge obstacle to building this invaluable national consensus. Analytically, the presupposition of this article is that poverty, corruption and poor leadership are complicit in the security challenge in Nigeria.
Insecurity as a universal phenomenon
Insecurity of lives and property is a global challenge and a phenomenon unamenable to a single and acceptable definition for any objective analysis. Like amoeba in the elementary biology, insecurity changes form depending on the permissive circumstances in each society and state which in essence means that every society or state has its own form of insecurity in a very unique and diverse form. Any kind of presumed generalization is therefore deceptive and ineffectual because each insecurity situation has unique features particular or peculiar to that society. The form, intensity or ferocity depends largely on the issues at stake. Where the stakes are high, essentially, solutions become more problematic and daunting particularly where the matter of existential threats is at the core. It is therefore difficult if not impossible to develop a globally acceptable or holistic framework to effectively deal with the situation in a globalized manner.
The United States, one of the most sophisticated countries of the world on September 11, 2001, experienced the most horrific terror attack in modern history. The attack according to ABC online news left “2,997 people dead on that fall day as a direct result of the attack most of them at the World Trade Centre in New York, others in the attacks at the Pentagon and the United Airline Flight 93 that crashed at Pennsylvania… and about 20,874 claimants eligible for compensation and has awarded more than $4.3 Billion.
The United Kingdom over the years has been grabbing with its own share of insecurity. At exactly 8.45am on 7th July, 2005 according to reports, three bombs were detonated onboard London underground trains within 50 seconds of each other…and 52 persons were killed and hundreds injured in the attacks. We have cited these examples to underscore the fact that insecurity is not limited to the poor countries alone but could happen anywhere. However, this is not to justify the form of insecurity that is experienced in Nigeria presently.
Between poverty and insecurity in Nigeria
Poverty is a revolutionary spirit and “if you must fight insecurity you must first fight poverty”. Growing insecurity in Nigeria in recent years has coincided with rising poverty as Nigeria now has an estimated 91 million people (43% of its population) living in extreme poverty (less than $2 a day). “This is up 29% from 70 million in 2016 and this is projected to reach about 106.6 million by 2030. Nigeria is presently regarded as the “world’s poverty capital”.
Nigeria is in a very delicate situation where multi-dimensional poverty is on the rise and people are daily being thrown into poverty bracket because they are unable to go to their farms due to insecurity. Today, dwindling disposable income occasioned by rising food prices has affected in a very significant manner Nigeria’s much cherished social system of being our brother’s keeper. Those earning some kind of income are no longer in a position to help others because they can no longer do so within their disposable income. This situation has elevated the level of anger, hatred and violence in families which is a dangerous slide yet underreported in Nigeria. This is the sad reality.
Insecurity has further escalated the deplorable rating of Nigeria on the table of Global Ease of Doing Business in the world. Nigeria 2019 ranked 131 about 56.9% in EoDB among 180 countries, whereas Mauritius and Rwanda, African countries ranked 13 (81.5%) and 38 (76.5%) respectively. Kenya and Ghana, that share similar historical experience with Nigeria are ranked 56 (73.2%) and 118 (60.0%) respectively.
The poor business climate consequent upon insecurity has driven away Foreign Direct Investments FDI, and of course massive disinvestment by the International Oil Companies (IOCs) from Nigeria oil upstream sector making it impossible for Nigeria to meet its OPEC quota. The aggregate of this disinvestment which in essence means that the poor injection of foreign capital into the Nigerian economy has exerted so much pressure on Nigeria’s limited foreign exchange earnings making it almost impossible for her to meet her foreign exchange needs. This has reflected on the prices of essential commodities considering again the sad fact that Nigeria is primarily an import dependent economy which has driven underground few manufacturing companies and thrown many Nigerians out of job.
Nigeria’s former President, Muhammad Buhari decried this deplorable situation where he observed that “ despite having the biggest economy in Africa, Nigeria only received 4% which is about $3billion of the $75 billion invested in the continent in the first term of his (Buhari) administration…a decrease of 48.5%”(Vanguard 12th 2021). Added to the Nigerian’s poor business climate, World Bank in its FY21, August, 2021 release reported that Nigeria is 5th among the top 10 countries with high debt risk with the IDA debt stock of $11.7 billion. According to the WB “country credit risk is the risk of loss due to a country not meeting its contractual obligation”. The catch phrase (high debt risk) was however disputed by the Debt Management Office (DMO), which of course did not clear Nigeria of the substantive issue of being among the 10 top non-debt-performing countries.
Curiously, India, Bangladish, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana and Uganda are among the top ten countries classified as high debt risk countries. Yet while India, Pakistan and Ghana ranks 131,143 and 138 respectively on the 2020 Human Development Index, Nigeria ranks 161 among 189 countries. Again, in 2020 Global Youth Development Index YDI, Nigeria ranks 161 among 181 countries of the world and again, curiously, the report noted that countries like Afghanistan, India, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso were the top five improvers, advancing their score, on the average by 15.75%”. YDI “ranks countries according to developments in youth education, employment, health, equity and inclusion, peace and security as well as civic participation” Considering all these indicators it is apposite to therefore state that things have been in the decline over the years, for example according to “
A survey conducted by UNICEF in 2018, indicates that the population of out of school children in Nigeria has risen from 10.5 million to 13.2 million, the highest in the world” Of course this number has obviously increased considering the fact the cause has not abated, although the Federal government release has disputed this figure but reported that only 10,193,918 children are out-of-school. Whichever, it has not disputed the fact that Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world. In the area of youth unemployment, Nigeria also ranks 3rd in the world after Angola and South Africa, which has seen youth unemployment increased from 40.80% in the Q2 of 2020 t0 53.40% in Q4” according to reports. Statistics has clearly shown why insecurity in Nigeria is on the increase?
Between corruption and insecurity in Nigeria
The book Fighting Corruption is Dangerous, captures the President of the World Trade Organization, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala’s experience as the Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, attempting to fight corruption and the extent of its monstrosity. In the book, she made astonishing revelations that succinctly captures the pattern of stealing in Nigeria. She revealed that in the celebrated subsidy scam, that “The Presidential Committee found subsidy claims for shipment by ‘ghost vessels’ that never supplied any products and the shipments by vessels that were in China and the South Pacific at the times it was claimed they were transshipping off the coast of Cotonu, Benin. These were verified by Lloyd’s Register, which tracks the movement of ships all over the world. There were subsidy claims which there were no shipping documents or evidence of payments for the products in foreign exchange. Various over payments, wrongful claims and breaches of the Petroleum Subsidy Fund guidelines also were detected. The Presidential Committee found that of the 3.3 Trillion ($8.8 billion) verified, N382 Billion ($2.5billion) was fraudulent or questionable”
This is just a snippet of the monumental corruption in Nigeria. Sadly, some of those indicted are occupying various elective and appointive positions today. Transparency International TI in its Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2020 indicates that Nigeria occupies 149th position out of 180 countries surveyed. This is a worrisome decline from 137th position out of 175 countries surveyed in the CPI 2014 report.
Nigeria at independence held a lot of promises for the entire black race and was projected to catalyze Africa’s socio-economic and political renaissance. It ranked ahead of countries like Ghana, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore among so many others that gained independence from Britain within the same historical time bracket in development indices. But today the optimism has evaporated .
Whereas the 2019 estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of South Korea was USD 2.308 Trillion and GDP Per Capita USD 31.431 that of Nigeria were mere USD 446.543 Billion and USD 6,055 respectively. According CIA World Fact Book updated in 2019, the estimated percentage of citizens of South Korea living below poverty line was mere 14.4%, whereas the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in its 2019 report indicated that an estimated 40% of Nigerian citizens live below poverty line of an average of $381.75 per year. This figure is however disputed by the World Poverty Clock as reported by Sahara Reporters in its news report of June, 5th, 2019, which put the percentage at 46.5% of Nigerians who live below $1.9 a day. According World Bank Report, in 2016, Nigerians living below poverty line constitutes about 33.1% of the population compared to Ghana which the World Bank commended for having taken remarkable steps to reduce the percentage of its citizens within the poverty bracket to mere 13.3%.
In the 2020 World Bank reports, Nigeria has over 91million living in poverty of less $2 a day which is about 43% of our population. Although, there are different reports regarding Nigeria’s economic performance which maybe a subject of scholarly interrogations, essentially whatever is the outcome in the final analysis will never be generous to Nigeria. As a scholar, I am constrained to argue that the average of $2 a day is too generous if we must juxtapose the rising food prices and the uncontrollably escalating foreign exchange rates. In my honest consideration, I think 90cents a day could have been more approximate to Nigeria’s dilemma.
Some scholars may argue that South Korea gained independence almost ten years ahead of Nigeria. This argument may pale into insignificance considering the devastating Korean War, which ensued immediately after her independence. But then, comparing Nigeria and Ghana that got independence within the same period, the argument becomes technically defective. Again, placing Nigeria side by side Singapore that got independence from Britain in 1965, five clear years after Nigeria, reveals a similar discomforting disparity in economic progress. World Bank reports that the GDP Per capita of Singapore in 2018 was USD 64,581.94, whereas Nigeria was a mere USD 2,028.18 in same period.
According World Fact Book Singapore ranks distant “78th in the list of the world’s oil producing countries” and Nigeria 10th in the same report. Again reports has it that “Singapore has very few mineral resources” compared to Nigeria that has large deposits of mineral resources. Then the question could be asked, why are more Nigerians within the poverty bracket compared to Singaporeans? The answer weighs more on the effects of human factors than any other consideration. The same report noted that whereas Singapore “takes full advantage of those few they have”, Nigeria has not exhibited same capacity. What is wrong with the giant of Africa?.
Nigeria’s revered scholar, late Prof Chinua Achebe aptly answered the question in his small book The Trouble With Nigeria (1993), he warned that “corruption in Nigeria has passed the alarming and entered the fatal state, and Nigeria will die if we keeping pretending that she is only slightly indisposed” This was his observation in 1983, yet in 2024 about 41 years after, Nigeria is yet to even understand the dynamics of corruption least the framework to tackle it. Sadly, in my view one is tempted to unequivocally state that Nigeria has entered the last stage of corruption.
According to Transparency International in its report titled Nigeria: Corruption and Insecurity, it agreed with what has been a consensus notion that and from evidences that there is a nexus between corruption and insecurity in Nigeria noting that “there is a strong link between corruption and insecurity. When a country’s institutions are weak, its security forces are not trusted and its borders are not strong, as is the case of Nigeria, giving terrorist organization room to flourish”.
The report further argued that “unfortunately, simply bringing in financial help and military hardware from around the world to help locate the missing girls is only a stop-gap measure for Nigeria: it must halt the endemic problem of corruption that fuels insecurity” This was the report released in May, 2014. Has anything changed for the better?
What kind of society are Nigerians expecting where according to Adebanjoko & Okorie in their article in the Global Journal of Human Social Science, NY (2014), described corruption and insecurity as interwoven. They noted that “Recently over 480 soldiers were said to have defected to Cameroun while running away from the Boko Haram sect. During the same period, over 28 police officers at a Police Academy at Gwoza were abducted by the sect and in one of the interviews granted a few days later, one Assistant Inspector General of police announced publicly that the sect was able to overpower the police because the former had more sophisticated weapons in addition to be more in number. The question is, where did the billions allocated for military hardware go to? It is a known fact that many corrupt officials profit from the ongoing insecurity in the country. Such people make the polity ungovernable. They not only embezzle funds earmarked to fight terrorism but sometimes use such funds to oppress the people by sponsoring these terrorists. In the same vein, funds allocated for infrastructural development have been embezzled and diverted into private accounts”.
According to reports ”the N2.659 trillion for military arms was the total approved,… for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 and was appropriated during the time of Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai (rtd.), the former Chief of Defence Staff, General Abayomi Olonisakin (rtd.), the former Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (rtd.) and the former Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar (rtd.)”
Sahara Reporters reported that, a breakdown shows that “in 2015, the military spent N397 billion on arms; in 2016, N444 billion; in 2017, N495 billion; in N2018; N654 billion; in 2019; N669 billion. The N2.659 trillion, according Sahara Reporters in one of their publications noted that the figure “is outside the controversial $1 billion Excess Crude Account Fund which was approved by Buhari in April 2018 despite public outcry” and the controversial $2billion alleged to have been approved by the Goodluck Jonathan administration for the procurement of arms. In frustration of the daunting insecurity in Nigeria, the National Security Adviser to former President Buhari, was quoted to have complained that “It is not that we are not working to end the security challenge in the country. The President has done his own part and allocated huge amounts of money to purchase weapons, but they are yet to be here. We don’t know where they are”. This is our tragedy.
Between politics, leadership and insecurity in Nigeria.
The inaugural Chandler Good Governance Index (CGGI) in 2020 ranked Nigeria 102nd out of 104 countries on good governance. The CGGI using data extracted from World Bank and UN classifies government capabilities and outcomes on the following parameters – responsiveness, equitability and inclusiveness, participatory and consensus oriented. These parameters are again subjected to test on the following matrix – leadership foresight, robust laws and policies, strong institutions, financial stewardship, attractive market place and reputation etc. On the overall, Nigeria scored 0.319 only above Zimbabwe and Venezuela. Mauritius the overall best in Africa ranked 38th with an index score of 0.5670, a signal that Nigeria has leadership challenge.
Prof Achebe was therefore right in his assessment 41 years ago in his book The Trouble with Nigeria that “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which is the hallmarks of true leadership”
Ruchir Sharma in his book The Rise and Fall of Nations, alluded to Achebe’s assertion by clearly stating that overall development is not simple and that “no nation has an entitlement to economic greatness, so leaders need to push for it and keep pushing”. It is all about leadership, giving and directing positive energy and impetus towards better outcomes which must be a product of vision, open mindedness, transparency, justice and collectiveness. As a nation Nigeria has never had an opportunity to have leaders in the character and stature of Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore that elevated a fractured poor nation to a first world nation.
Against the backdrop of these expectations on political leadership as ably argued by Sharman and of course the example of true leadership typified by Kuan Yew of Singapore, what would one say is wrong with our leadership in Nigeria? One can firmly argue that Nigeria’s leadership recruitment process should be blamed because it is grossly defective and leadership perception among the political class fundamentally flawed. One could stretch the argument further that since leadership recruitment process is flawed without any form of “institutional restraints” it therefore follows the perception of leadership is simply about what revered Claude Ake termed simply seeking to “control state power to strengthen their material base…and in this struggle everything including development, the law and security are marginalized”
Essentially, leadership in Nigeria demands a unique skill set and political will considering the realities of conflicted diversities and the role these sentiments play in her political engineering processes which are often ignored. A Nigerian leader should therefore have that requisite skill to navigate these foundational constraints and balance them into a system that works for everyone in justice and equity. But Nigerian leadership overtime have serially demonstrated gross incapacity to rise beyond their ethnic and sectional biases to give the country true leadership firmly anchored on the determination to build a nation of a people with one destiny because it is perceived as being functional to their access and hold on to power. The consequence of this is that we have a dysfunctional “geographical expression” instead of a nation where statecraft is anchored on primordial biases of ethnicity and religion.
The worst was that painful historical slide between 2015 and 2023, when we had a rather intemperate President who was propelled by ethnic triumphalism and who weaponized state structures in pursuit of this narrow agenda and in the process exacerbated our national fault lines making it impossible to perceive insecurity in Nigeria objectively. This leadership failure created that latitude that was sufficient to embolden the outlaws to commit monumental havoc that has brought us to the present situation. Nigerians witnessed under the immediate past administration the pampering of the terrorists by the Nigerian state which has become a motivation for others to commit similar crimes without fear of institutional restraints. The newspaper headlines on 11th August, 2021 were awash with the news that over 1000 Boko Haram terrorists had surrendered and asked for forgiveness from Nigerians. As welcoming as the news was, it was rather counterproductive and a compulsive double standard that is unhelpful to the security situation in the country and equally set a new paradigm for the interpretation of insecurity and its measured tolerance. As it were, it has essentially obfuscated a dynamic perception and interpretation of insecurity beyond narrow lenses of ethnicity and religion. What could be more revealing of this very primordial and dysfunctional interpretation of insecurity in Nigeria than a statement credited to Sheik Gumi advocating amnesty for bandits arguing that “the common factor is that the Niger Delta militants were vandalizing our petroleum which is a good source of national income but also the herdsmen militants are stopping people from farming. Farming is also a very important source of our GDP. I see that comparisons the way we deal with the Niger Delta to with these people the same way” This is a source of confusion and the reason why insecurity in Nigerian is yet to be abated. .
In a diverse country such as ours, tribalism and nepotism as a governance model is a recipe for insecurity which could start as agitations against marginalization or social-political imbalance and which could graduate to armed resistance. It is therefore important that the present administration distances itself from those fundamental flaws of the immediate past administration that elevated tribalism and nepotism to a near state policy thereby fostering the present circumstance. The Tinubu administration should consider articulating an appropriate bipartisan framework for a national unity that recognizes the apparent diversities as a necessary step towards addressing the prevailing security challenge across the country. The framework should give every section of the country equal sense of worth and inclusion thereby fostering national cohesion needed for peace and development to flourish.
It is therefore apposite to say that the failure of the Nigerian leadership to take appropriate, pragmatic, resolute and unbiased steps in addressing insecurity in the country is dialectical to its evidential sophistication that has left everyone with that debilitating conviction that insecurity has become a norm or perhaps a novel bargaining weapon within Nigeria’s political space.
In conclusion, we have taken time in this paper to elucidate the existential contradictions in the Nigerian state that has given vent to the present state of insecurity in the country. We have equally noted that poverty, corruption and a corrupted political leadership are complicit in our present circumstance. This paper therefore opines that only an objective interpretation of the Nigerian insecurity variant and honestly addressing the foundational, structural and systemic anomalies identified in a determined, transparent and comprehensive manner would guarantee a quick resolution of the matter so that Nigeria could be secure and safe for her citizens to actualize their full potentials.
Sonny Ogulewe PhD, wrote from Abuja