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Interview: Boko Haram Insurgency Is Quite Troubling -- Prof. Iheduru By Benjamin Umuteme | |
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Tuesday, 23 April 2013 20:49| 
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Professor Okechukwu Chris Iheduru
Okechukwu Chris Iheduru is a Professor of Political Science at the Arizona State University in the United States. And he has been at the National Defense College, Abuja since September, 2011 on sabbatical working with Participants and the College to develop a curriculum that would help NDC transform into a Post Graduate Defense University.
In this interview with FrontiersNewscorrespondent Benjamin Umuteme, Prof. Iheduru spoke on the present state of insecurity saying that it is not doing the country's image any good. He also bared his mind on the issue of power rotation in Nigeria. Happy reading!
What do you make of the proposed Boko Haram amnesty committee setup by President Goodluck Jonathan?
The president has not granted amnesty to Boko Haram. What he did was to set up a committee to study the modalities and the principles; the feasibility of granting amnesty to members of the Boko Haram sect.
They are to submit the study to him from there they make a decision. It's not true that the federal government has granted amnesty to Boko Haram but you are right in that the President seems to have succumbed to the clamour and pressure instigated first by the Sultan of Sokoto and then it gathered momentum from most elites, religious and political leaders in the north, maybe in the south.
Now, a few in the military are supporting exploring amnesty as part of the solution-not the only solution as part of the solution to the Boko Haram insurgency in the north. It is quite troubling; it is one of the developments in the country that seems to be challenging the corporate existence of Nigeria. Even the little social cohesion that we had in this country, if not properly managed, it could threaten the very existence of the Nigerian state.
It is not just Boko Haram, there are daily reports of criminal gangs engaging the police, taking over communities. There is all kinds of non-military security threats; threats targeted at women, threats targeted at children, inter-ethnic violence between Anambra and Kogi state because they have found oil. Boundary disputes between Akwa Ibom and Abia state, some communities in Enugu and Ebonyi, Ebonyi versus Cross River. You have the killing fields of Plateau where the so called Fulani herdsmen versus the indigenous communities in Ryom local government, Plateau State. It is much more widespread there, but you also find it in many parts of the country.
General insecurity on the roads, carnage on our roads is occurring everyday. In many countries, the kind of accident that happened close to Benin recently is enough to force the minister of transport to resign.
We have the case of Ezu River in Anambra where 18-30 corpses showed up on the river, depending on who you ask. Not much seems to be happening and no one has been held accountable. Members of MASSOB claim that some of the dead were their members.
You have what seems to be a resurgence of the militancy in the Niger Delta. Domestic violence seems to be on the rise; the rape of even children has been escalating and also threat from the state against the individuals. Police brutality, sometimes the military when they are offended beat up everybody.
Yes, they are rising but you can also look at it in terms of what we call open societies and open technologies. It may appear that everything is coming to a head. We now have so many media outlets that every little problem anywhere gets publicized. We have i-reporters, we have our cell phones, and we can capture anything.
And so we are now hearing more and more of these security threats. They may have been happening in the past but we didn't hear about them, but with a more open society, we can talk more about what the military does, what the police does because we have the technology, we have the openness to do it. It is a democratic setting.
We are very loud in criticizing ourselves, self-deprecation! Nigeria is not as violent as we make it to look compared, to other countries. Where I live in Arizona, the Phoenix Metropolitan area is regarded as the kidnap capital of the United States. In 2010, 300 kidnappings in one state alone! Countries like Turkey, India, Brazil, Argentina have far more deadly violent occurrences. Yet, even if it is one person that is killed, you can't put a value on any human life. It is worrisome and has consequences for the image of Nigeria as a destination for foreign investors, as a destination for the Nigerian Diaspora to return with their skills, family and resources to invest.
"Dog bites man" is no news but "Man bites dog" is often front page news. It is usually the bad news that gets highlighted and that is what people tend to read about Nigeria. We should also put it in context, all you need to do is go to the best hotels in Abuja and you find white people falling over one another. You can't even get a room. If Nigeria was that bad they wouldn't be coming here. But is it a problem? Yes, it is a big problem, and the government needs to do more. They are trying, sometimes we need to take a different approach otherwise when you have the widespread perception of insecurity and the feeling that nobody cares, then you are likely to have cases of self help approach. That will also exacerbate the general insecurity we are talking about.
What are the solutions you'll be looking at?
We tend to think that it is only the state and its coercive agencies that can solve the problems when in reality the state is actually the cause of the problem, either because the state is part of the political and social contestations over scarce resources, over the allocation of values; or, the state is biased or the state is unfair or perceived to be unfair by certain segments of the society. Therefore the state is already part of the struggle and it is highly unlikely that the state would be neutral in dealing with the remote and immediate causes of these insecurities.
Therefore, we can't leave or trust that the state alone can do it. We need to restate that the private sector needs to be involved, communities also need to be involved. In other words, this has to be a Public Private Partnership in dealing with the insecurities when they occur and also to tackle the remote and immediate causes of these insecurities. That means communities need to organise.
If you find a community that has a good bank of social capital, civic connectedness among citizens, a community where you have a lot of buy-in by the people on government community development projects, you are less likely to have inter-communal violence. You are less likely to have rape because the society will deal with it instantly or prevent it from happening in the first place.
But where you have a semblance of disempowerment of the communities due to over-reliance on the state, it becomes "their problem" not my problem and so we wait till the state comes to deal with it and in the process we lose our human agency. The state needs to think of ways of partnering with the communities.
Instead of community development being seen as another opportunity for the elite to feed from the feeding trough, it should also be seen as a way to manage the resources we have sustainably.
I am a firm believer in the ingenuity of young people. Very few of our communities are training young people in responsible leadership so that they can begin to see themselves as part and parcel of the communities. In pre-colonial African societies, it was young people that enforced the laws that helped to keep social deviance it in check.
And that also goes to the heart of the debate about the Police. Once you federalize these institutions, it is far removed from the people. Police needs to be part of the community. Whether we call it state police, local government police or community police, we need to start thinking about how to re-engineer the government, re-engineer the society, so that we can solve these problems.
And I'm not saying that the Police or the Army shouldn't be there. They should not be the only instruments. For instance, if you take the tanker fire that engulfed one community in Rivers State and killed almost 200 people in 2012. If you had a community development programme where the young have been trained in emergency and disaster relief management, once that tanker broke down, they would have activated their structures to ensure that people didn't come near, instead what you had was total chaos, absence of authority. They had chiefs; they had all kinds of people who wear all kinds of exotic regalia on festive occasions when government is bringing money.
But they have very little to offer in terms of emergency response management, in terms of heading off potential problems. And these local structures don't cost too much money actually to institute.
There is this school of thought that insecurity in the north would reduce if power returns to the north?
The reverse would be the case, actually. The insecurity you have in the north was caused by the power held by the north in the first place. When you have power without responsibility that is the harvest you get from it. The northerners who ruled for more than 29 years ruled without caring that much about where they came from. And the result is that social capital wasn't there; instead, they fostered over-reliance on the state. And so they ran rough shod over everybody and over every infrastructure and now once they have gone they are now being exposed.
The lies are being exposed in the sense that they were not there for their own people, either. They were not there for the north; neither were they there for the south. They were simply there for themselves.
And if that's the kind of return to power you are asking for, my argument is that it would actually exacerbate the problem. The way the various mobilization groups in the north – Arewa Consultative Forum, Northern State Governors' Forum, etc., are going about it, I'm not sure they have any sustainable developmental agenda that they are pursuing. All they seem to be interested in is getting power back.
This is a democracy! You can't just be in Aso Rock or go to the National Assembly and legislate for the north alone. You still need the support of other parts of the country. They don't have absolute majority to legislate only for the north. So it still has to involve bargaining, negotiations, give and take, tolerance for ambiguity, learning how to debate, how to present your issues. If power returns to the north, it would be similar to how Sharia was played up as the solution to the problems of the north.
They mobilized the poor in support of Sharia, the demand for Sharia reached the high heavens. What has happened? Has the Sharia solved the problem of the north? It has actually exacerbated it. Business people worry about investing in an area where either you are not conversant with the law or what the judicial system might do to your investment.
And so you are very wary about investing in such an environment. Sharia has cost the North dearly and if you return power to the north in such a vacuum, it would be putting the elite back to the feeding trough with very little to give to the poor. And you might begin to have a much bigger backlash than you are currently having.
Boko Haram, the popular interpretation is western education is evil or is not acceptable. The people who are calling themselves Boko Haram, they are using the Internet which is a product of western education. They are wearing their Nike hats and Nike shoes. What they are condemning is what the elites who have been the most important beneficiaries of western education and secular Nigerian state have done with their gift, the privileges that they have been given. 'So if this is what western education means then we don't want it to be part of it'-that is the original Mohammed Yusuf meaning of Boko Haram. And so, we in that respect, we have lots of Boko Haram in Nigeria. In fact, if they were not killing innocent people who have equally borne the brunt of elite brigandage, they would have had a lot of sympathy across the land.
So my fear is that if you return power to the same individuals who seem not to have any credible development plan, the people would be disappointed once more and that disappointment in an environment of open society, open technologies and open commerce, you are likely to have an even a much bigger insecurity problem for the country.
While I am for every part of the country benefitting from the Constitution and having an opportunity to rule or govern the country, I am not sure about that the way it's being done—it is our turn; it is not our turn—is the solution.
If it's your turn and you have very little to offer, then it's a much bigger problem than not having any turn at all because what you would have done is to facilitate or encourage a revolution in rising expectations that once the northerners occupy Aso Rock, the problem would be solved the same way we were told that once Sharia was adopted our social problems would be solved. You can agree with me that we haven't made a dent on social problems in the North.
It is even worst: if you look at all the elements of non-military security that I mentioned earlier, they are much more prevalent in the north—whether you are talking about abuses of the rights of children or violence targeted at women. Whether you are talking about all kinds of insecurities people face, they are much more prevalent in the northern part of the country. Poverty is another form of violence, another form of security threat. If you have 10 beggars on any Nigerian street, 9 of them are likely to come from the north. And it is not going to end over night if you put a northerner in Aso Rock.
Is there a linkage between the successful conduct of elections in 2015 and the security issues?
What I want to say is that 2015 will be a pivotal year for Nigeria in the sense that 2014 would be the Centenary of the founding of the modern Nigerian State. And it would be a year for us to look back and reflect on the leadership deficits we've had. The social cohesion deficit we've had which are responsible for many of the insecurities we have talked about. But 2015, whether power returns to the north or to the south or stays where it is, would be a pivotal year in the sense that it would be the year that Nigerians, in my opinion, would have to decide whether we really want to stay together or not. And if it is not properly managed, it could become a self-fulfilling prophesy in the sense that there are many people who have predicted the demise of Nigeria by 2015.
There are all kinds of pointers to danger lurking in the background. That could unravel the entire edifice we have been building for over 100 years. On the other hand, we are also a very resilient people who have the knack to put our gears in overdrive and approach the precipice but for some reason we always manage to swerve and not plunge head long. Will we be lucky next time around? I'm not sure. Hope is not a strategy. We really need to think carefully about what we are doing.
In 2015, even if President Jonathan gets returned to Aso Rock as President, it would still be a pivotal year for Nigeria, whoever occupies the Presidency because at that point, we would have had 18 years of democratic rule. Children who were born in 1999 would have been old enough to vote and so you cannot continue to tell them about how the military messed up Nigeria. They never met any military man holding office; neither do they know any white man or British colonial officer.
The PDP cannot continue in this crisis mode that it has run its affairs for 14 years without something giving in. The opposition has not done well, either. I am hopeful that somebody will sit back and realize that we've been on this hope train for quite a long time; the train might run out of gas this time around.
And if it does, it would be a serious problem not just for Nigeria but the entire sub-region. Which country in West Africa can absorb 20 million Nigerian refugees? If you send 2 million Nigerian refugees across the border to Benin Republic that government would collapse in one month. Think of 5 million refugees moving to Cameroun, it could cause the collapse of that government too. We really need to hold the rulers—hold their feet to the fire—so that they realize this is serious stuff. We cannot continue to just amble along anymore.
Insecurity in West Africa: Where do we stand?
We have always had maritime security in West Africa. The sea has always brought bad luck to Africa and a lot of good luck, too. Almost weekly we have cases of people perishing at sea because they are riding in rickety boats or boats that carrying over capacity. Another aspect of maritime insecurity is the pillage of marine resources in West Africa. West Africa is very rich in marine fisheries, but there is unregulated, unreported illegal fishing going on. Fishing trawlers from Europe and Asia are having a field day off our coasts and nothing is been done about it.
The emphasis on piracy may mean that we ignore other aspects of maritime insecurity in West Africa. That is because the international opinion makers have no incentive to make it a priority issue because the cheap fish ends up on their dining tables in Europe.
When you have exploitation of maritime resources, when you have dumping of toxic waste from Europe, we are the one's bearing the brunt of their lifestyle. And so it would be nice if they would also make those priority issues in discussing the overall insecurity in our oceans in West Africa. But the focus now is on pirate attacks and the potential threats to oil installations. Are these serious problems? Yes, they are. It is also important that our security agencies or partners should ensure that we are part of the agenda.
While they are interested in protecting vessels, we should try and include in that agenda other aspects of maritime insecurity that are of immediate interest to us. Our coasts are being washed away. We are losing a lot of fisheries due to port pollution. If you take the case of Senegal and Gambia, for example; what you see happening is that the criminal activities along the coast in many cases as a spillover of what is happening on the mainland. There is actually a connection between rising cases of violence or criminality on our coasts and the general insecurity we talked about earlier because the sea is always part of the mainland.
It seems there are not enough efforts among West African States?
West African States do collaborate. But, you see, many of them don't have the wherewithal to actually fight maritime insecurity. Many don't have anything to write home about their Navy or Coastguards. Even those of them who can put out to sea can only do that with used vessels donated to them by the US Coast Guard or the US government. We have navies that don't go out to sea; they don't have the platform, and they don't have the equipment. Many of the officers are well trained and capable but they lack the facilities, they lack the right equipment to do the job. You can go to the annual summits of heads of states and governments and sign documents but there is very little these governments can do, coupled with the fact of dependence of many African governments on foreign fund.
Sometimes they know what to do but they look the other way because they cannot afford to antagonize their major sources of development funding. If you take the case of Sierra-Leone, more than $250 million of fish is stolen every year from Sierra-Leone. This is enough to pay off the debt of that country, and it's more than all the official development assistance coming into the country yearly. I'm sure if the Sierra-Leonean government truly wants, it can put a handle on the problem.
Yes, we need collaboration but it is high time we also started thinking about merging these Navies. Rather than Benin operating a small ineffective Navy, Togo doing the same, Ghana doing the same thing, we could have central naval operations that can help them in monitoring the sea in the West African sub-region.
There is still room for collaboration on the part of West African governments. Hoping that foreigners will do it for us is asking too much because they will only be interested in insecurity issues that affect their pecuniary interests. Everybody is talking about piracy, hostage taking; those are serious problems that damage our image abroad but they are not really the most important issues of maritime insecurity in the region.