The dialogue initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari, aimed at engaging critical stakeholders, particularly the youths, in finding a solution to the #EndSARS problem, is step in the right direction.
A flurry of town hall meetings and entreaties, by prominent Nigerians, to the protesters to sheath their swords appears to be making the right impact. By happenstance, I witnessed the town hall meeting in Bauchi, where stakeholders beamed their searchlight on the protests: the events, probable causes and likely solutions.
Fireworks, there were: but ultimately, what obtained was akin to a family meeting where members subjected the existential threats confronting the nation, particularly Bauchi state, to honest and rigorous scrutiny.
Credit to all those present but more to the Bauchi State Governor, Senator Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed. To appreciate the yeoman’s role he played, one needs to understand the peculiarities of Bauchi State, in which the House of Assembly, is controlled by the leading opposition party in the state, the All Progressives Congress (APC); yet nobody could use the #EndSARS protest for political ends.
Why then did the youth of Bauchi state shun the protest in spite of pre-existing socio-economic conditions? One answer is the systematic shrinking of youth unemployment through sustained empowerment programmes by the Bala Mohammed administration.
As if the government envisaged the impending implosion, as lately as September 2020, it had started distributing 1000 tricycles and 250 transport vehicles to the youth, under a highly subsidised hire purchase scheme.
Before that, 4,000 youth, who were trained by the state government in modern farming techniques, had taken to farming and were no longer available for recruitment either as insurgents or protesters.
The implication is that, if an idle head is the devil’s workshop, then the devil could not recruit followers from Bauchi state.
One other important deterrent was Bala Mohammed’s commitment to pre-emptive security which entailed deploying resources to intelligence gathering, logistical support to the security paraphernalia of the state and the domestication of rural security in the hands of local leaders.
All the security chiefs at the meeting confirmed that the administration has encouraged various stakeholder groups, particularly the security agencies, to take ownership of internal security.
The result is the presence of an effective intelligence network that ensures that, more often than not, security threats are nipped in the bud before they get out of hand.
But if those were the remote conditions predisposing the youth of Bauchi into calm sobriety, his handling of the actual town hall meeting on, security, threw ample light on those leadership qualities of Bala Mohammed that have encouraged the people to take ownership of their own security and ultimately their lives.
As chairman of the occasion, the governor assumed the posture of a neutral leader, albeit in a deeply polarised political setting.
He had an ear for everyone who wanted to speak, empathised with every complainant, regretted the wanton killings that took place, assured every despondent person, assuaged some restless youth who, from their persistent gesture and thinly disguised heckling, had obviously targeted some of the guests at the meeting.
Emma Agu,
Abuja
