What is government’s policy on terrorism?

Not long after completing my National Youth Service Scheme (NYSC) and just a few months into my first job, I found myself practically making public policy. I was neither a politician nor senior civil servant. I’d merely been asked to develop what was supposed to be a draft of a speech for a minister to mark an international event.

How did it happen? It was at a federal government ministry and I had been deployed to the minister’s office. As every civil servant will confirm, most tasks get passed on to subordinate officers, so I found myself at the bottom of the rung. The task at hand was to draft a speech for the minister to commemorate activities marking Nigeria’s observation of the World Food Day in line with the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO.

None of the officers above me made any inputs into the speech, and I could not get clear policy guidelines or even find materials indicating Nigeria’s position. In short, I was stumped, but resolved to produce a rough draft. The outcome was a speech for the minister written entirely on my own, detailing what the situation in Nigeria was and what I thought government should do to enhance food security through the effective management of water resources and irrigated agriculture.
I expected my superiors to trash what I had written and replace it with a proper position paper for the minister’s nationally televised address. However, the speech did not only pass through unaltered and without additional inputs, but went straight to the minister who read it with a pious conviction on television and radio. The next day, practically all newspapers in the country reported the minister’s address as a key policy of government!

At that time, I was naive enough to be shocked. How could a simple essay written by a fresh employee with little experience, but more importantly, without serious research or considered opinions become government policy? Naturally, the speech was promptly filed away to gather dust, until the next impromptu policy statement needed to be made.
Though that incident happened quite awhile ago, little seems to have changed. Government policy is still mostly ad-hoc. There are few documents to guide the actions of public servants, or specific policy areas, and where they exist, few officials are aware of, or willing to use them if they conflict with vested interests.

Over time, I drafted what were intended as mere speeches that somehow became keynote addresses. Some of them reached the highest echelons of government and were presented as public policy. They were often written with minimal input from established frameworks because not many guides existed, or where they did, were of little use.
In the countdown to the 2015 elections, the same contradictions are obvious from the utterances and actions of President Goodluck Jonathan. Indeed, there have been several policy contradictions and reversals. Without doubt, in addition to a bungling president, the major challenge of Nigeria today is terrorism, yet no one knows what the government policy toward Boko Haram is, assuming there is one.

While displaying a determinedly ruthless streak in hounding opposition governors, President has displayed a lukewarm attitude to the war on terror. It took him all of three months to meet with some parents and escapees of the Chibok imbroglio, yet last week, received the Speaker and some members of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly who are tasked with impeaching a popular governor on spurious grounds. What were they discussing?

Forgive the digression. The crux of this piece is whether there is a line between speech writing in Nigeria and policy-making. In ideal circumstances, every course of government action should be guided by well streamlined policy processes from initiation to completion. Speeches and addresses should be excerpts from government policies and plans. But because public policy is often lacking in government, pedestrian speeches, keynote addresses and even ordinary comments by government officials often end up being reported or even regarded as public policy.

Part of the problem may be because the public service has been unable to reform to combine the tasks of effective policy development and implementation, which should be their key functions. In areas where we seem to have clear policies, they appear not to be sufficiently researched, or in need of review: A number of months ago, I pointed out the inherent contradiction in Nigeria’s cassava-bread policy. The way it stands, there is little chance that it will convert Nigerians into the cassava bread-eating automatons government wants.

Anyway, cassava-bread talkaside, what is the Federal Government’s policy on terrorism? Is it full scale war? Is it a combination of carrot and stick? Are there time lines to measure progress? Are there other alternatives? What exactly does President Jonathan mean, when speaks about winning the war on terror? Is he making ordinary speeches or public policy?