President Muhammadu Buhari, in Lagos, for the umpteenth time, has called on Nigerians to believe in the capability of the armed forces to protect lives and property and restore peace and stability to the country.
The current security crises seizing Nigeria include banditry and kidnappings for ransom. A few years ago, the spotlight was on violent conflict between farmers and herders. Before that, it was Boko Haram. Even earlier, it was the tensions in the Niger Delta.
As Nigeria lurches from one violent conflict to another, the country’s leaders become easily and, perhaps, understandably fixated on the latest manifestations of insecurity.
The President spoke on the occasion of the opening of the 12th Nigerian Navy Games tagged: LAGOS 2022.
The President, who also commissioned the newly constructed Nigerian Navy Sports Complex, commended the Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo, for investing in sports development.
He said: “Over the years, sports have remained a tool to strengthen the ties between troops, instilling discipline and readiness to serve a common cause in the military. I am sure that these Games will create the forum for the Nigerian Navy to achieve these objectives and more.”
According to the President, the armed forces personnel possess the capabilities, equipment and readiness to guarantee peace and sustain their operations in that regard.
The President expressed hope that the games would provide the needed platform and avenue for the discovery of new talents that will represent the Navy and Nigeria in international competitions.
He urged all participating athletes to inculcate the spirit of fair play and exhibit a high level of decorum during the competition.
Expectedly, the President emphasised the importance of collaboration among the armed forces, other security agencies and the general public for peace and security to exist.
While the need for collaboration between and among the security agencies and the civilian population and, in fact, the use of military power cannot be overemphasised, the larger problem, however, is that the state of insecurity will not change unless the nation’s focus turns more firmly and consistently to the issues of the failures of governance.
Nigeria’s shortcomings in making government accountable to its citizens form an urgent issue not only for the country but for the larger region. The country’s population is projected to surpass that of the United States of America by 2050 and getting governance right in Africa must start with Nigeria.
Throughout the two decades since Nigeria’s transition from military rule to democracy, the country has experienced some kind of widespread violence. Repeated inadequate responses by governments have disillusioned Nigeria’s citizens.
So Nigerian leaders need to reinvigorate and sustain a focus on getting governance right through engendering better mechanisms of accountability for top officials and reducing corruption and other abuses that fuel violence.
Achieving greater accountability, a goal sought by the growing number of Nigerians requires improvements on two of the country’s most difficult underlying issues that include the implementation of a federal governing structure.
Nigeria is a federal republic, a logical structure for a large, diverse nation. Yet, its constitutional arrangement grants the central government overwhelming power. The governors of the 36 states are powerful politically, but much weaker in their abilities to govern and manage security.
In fact, this week, the 19 northern states’ governors and all the traditional rulers in the region have called for the amendment of the 1999 Constitution to give legal backing to state police.
They said this is the only way to tackle the myriad security challenges affecting the region and the country at large, among them banditry, insurgency, kidnapping and other forms of criminalities.
Presently, most states depend wholly on the statutory allocations from the federation account, making local authorities more beholden to central power brokers than to their citizens. And nearly 70 per cent of Nigeria’s revenue comes from the oil-rich Niger Delta region, leaving the resources for good governance dependent on the world’s fluctuating oil prices.
Before now, leaders have debated structural changes on different occasions such as the national conference in 2014 which generated 600 resolutions and a 10,335-page report but little actual change. So, calls for restructuring continue to grow amid economic stress, political uncertainty and persistent violent conflicts.
The Nigerian Police Force tends to be starved of adequate personnel and resources, and it is too centrally controlled to respond well to local conditions. As a result, the government too frequently uses the military for internal security, distracting that force from the border and regional threats.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Nigerian military played pivotal peacekeeping roles in West Africa, bolstering regional security and stabilising war-torn countries. Today, it is most often deployed to battle internal threats.
Years of mismanagement and corruption are also weakening the military. A reformed Nigerian military would be better able to defend its citizens and assist in the global fight against terrorism in the Lake Chad basin and the Sahel.
Thus, Nigeria’s leaders must take the initiative to tackle the structural problems at the root of Nigeria’s violence. Failure will only increase internal instability that will radiate across the country’s borders and threaten regional and global security.
Already, more than two million Nigerians, a population as large as the nation of Gambia, are internally displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency.
It is, ultimately, up to Nigerians to address these issues of accountability and governance, as many civil society groups are campaigning to do. A vital need is to connect those civic efforts to government leadership.
Of course, the need to sustain the use of military power against the criminals cannot be underestimated and, thankfully, the Chief of Naval Staff pledged that the Navy would sustain the fight against crude oil theft and other forms of maritime crimes.
The Naval Chief thanked the President for his support to the Nigerian Navy, saying: ‘‘The president, within the last year, approved the acquisition of two 76m High Endurance Offshore Patrol Vessels and 3 helicopters to join the recently acquired hydrographic survey ship and the Landing Ship Transport, including numerous fast attack craft to boost maritime security operations. Mr President, it is pertinent to state that induction of Landing Ship Tank, Nigerian Navy Ship KADA into the Fleet has further enhanced Nigerian Navy’s naval power projection, within the region and beyond.”
He said that contemporary warfare generally described as being volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, places a huge demand on personnel combat readiness and thus necessitates the need to sustain high levels of physical fitness and mental alertness.
Osinbajo’s intervention in maximising benefits of Nigerian gas reserves Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, this week, in Abuja, highlighted the need for Nigeria to maximise the benefits of its enormous gas reserves.
Osinbajo said this when he received the U.S Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Change, Mr John Kerry, at the Presidential Villa.
Due to unsustainable exploitation practices coupled with the lack of gas utilisation infrastructures, Nigeria flares a substantial proportion of the gas it produces and the country lags far behind when compared to other oil-producing nations in terms of associated gas conservation and utilisation.
According to Osinbajo, if Nigeria uses gas efficiently and effectively, it will serve as a way of arresting deforestation and shift the country away from dirtier fuels like diesel, kerosene and petrol.
He said that Nigeria, a country blessed with the largest gas reserves in the world, should use its resource to kick-start its genuine process of industrialisation.
Ironically, Osinbsjo’s call to shift focus to gas could not have come at a better time than now when the measurement of heat radiation from gas flaring as one of the menaces of gas flaring in Nigeria has become apparent.
Reports have it that up to 69% on diesel, 29.85% on low pour fuel oil, and 69% on electricity could be saved, translating to millions of dollars in five years if conventional fuel and energy are substituted with natural gas.
It is in this regard, therefore, that the remarks made by Kerry praising Nigeria for its energy transition plan and its efforts to step up the use of renewables, especially solar and hydropower as major components of the energy mix, can be appreciated.
However, as John Kerry has called for, Nigeria needs to be seen to be serious in this respect and adopt additional use of renewable options, especially in the areas of electric vehicles.
Thankfully, Kerry promised to assist Nigeria with expertise with a view to moving the country towards the goal of energy for all by the year 2030 and net zero carbon emissions by 2060.
