Prince Marshal Okafor Anyanwu, pioneer chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), Imo State, former state chairman All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) and Special Adviser to the Minister of State for Education speaks JOHNKENNEDY UZOMA on the present insecurity in the country, especially the burning anger of youths in the South-East and solutions to the crisis.
WHAT is your view on the insecurity in the country and South-East in particular?
As you can see, he that never planned well has planned to fail and any country that disregards its youths will never succeed and must face doom. First, something begets another. If you want to talk about insecurity, you must first and foremost talk about substantive jobs for the youths, because any mind that is gainfully employed will never indulge in any of these things. At least, they would maintain a far distance from social vices. The primary cause of insecurity in the states and in the country is nothing but lack of jobs for the youth as well as poor management of the resources and economy of the country. These are the causes of insecurity which we are seeing today. This thing [insecurity] did not grow wings overnight and because nothing was done to nip it in the bud, it degenerated to what we are seeing today. If you refer back to a country like Libya where there was this kind of insecurity, it was when the youths there were not engaged and could not resist the social vices. They became enemies of the state because they didn’t have anything doing. They didn’t have any option but to fall back to crimes. Idle mind, they say, is the devil’s workshop. So, primarily, this is why we have insecurity in the land today.
In the South-East, the attackers are targeting security formations such as police, the prisons. What do you think is their reason?
In my own definition, crime is crime. You ask yourself this question: how is it being perpetrated? Any time a crime is perpetrated against the state, it connotes that the attackers and people piloting the attacks have something to do with the state, because they don’t go to individuals and attack them, unless it is accidental. Otherwise from what we have been reading on the pages of newspapers, it is narrowed down to the same type of crime. They have continued to fight against government that has apparatus to find out what is really happening. There is urgent need for government to engage the security agencies so that they can engage the people. Government should create jobs for the angry youths, the kind of jobs created, for example, during the time of President [Umaru] Yar’Adua of blessed memory, when there was breakdown of law and order in the Niger Delta region. There was total restiveness in that region then with oil workers in the area kidnapped on a daily basis. Yar’Adua then looked inwards to determine where the whole thing was coming from and nipped it in the bud by creating the Amnesty Programme.
What government should do is not just beating about the bush or looking for an individual to blame or maltreat just as they have been doing. When the security operatives see an innocent gentleman, they go behind to maltreat him by subjecting the person to all forms of hardship like doing frog jump. This is unfortunate. Some couple of days ago, we heard that some students were shot dead by security personnel. These things should not be seen in the society because it is an eyesore. If the society had been properly driven, there would not have been the situation we are witnessing today. And everyday things continue to degenerate and will continue until we get to the level where everybody will become afraid of the next person. They must do something to stop it from escalating.
Is it correct to say that the attack in the South-East is a fall out of the situation in the zone?
If one tries to be sentimental, you may say it is because Igbo are not being treated fairly. But in all sense of giving, I want to let you know that every region of this country is crying, not only the Igbo. When you talk about marginalisation, people tend to think it is only when you are appointed in a particular system. What about when the national incentives that are supposed to come to you did not get to you? It is as good as being marginalised. Today, the Igbo are not classified as first class, second class or third class. I don’t know which class the Igbo belong to in this country. The president is from the North; the vice-president from the South-West; Senate president from the North; speaker from South-West; the deputy speaker from the North. Attorney-General of the Federation and CJN are from the North. The whole principal officers that pilot the affairs of this country are from a particular area. It is only when one is involved in a particular thing that he will begin to tell you how he feels. It is then that his voice could be heard, but a situation where one is sidelined and not welcome when matters concerning the country are discussed, it shows the area is forgotten. When you talk about security, nobody here will inundate the centre on what is happening and that is why they can sit down there to dispatch a large number of soldiers to the South-East to shoot at sight.
You are aware of how many innocent citizens that have been killed, kidnapped while on their normal businesses. Even in the North-East that we know to be a troubled area, nobody has given the shoot-at-sight order. This is the area where bandits are operating freely. What I am saying is that once a system is working against the other, these things are bound to happen. I am not in support of this crisis and I am against the killing of innocent officers, but the government has failed to arrest the situation even when they have the apparatus to do so. No day passes without more than 30 people being killed. If it is not through kidnapping, it is by unknown gunmen. If it is not Boko Haram today, it will be Fulani herdsmen tomorrow. In all these things that have been happening, we have never heard that government has taken any measure to contain the ugly situation in the country. They are rather allowing them and the more you do that, the more they get expanded.
The attacks appear to have caused a crack in the unity of ethnic integration in the country. Do you agree with this?
I can’t agree less. The agitation is no longer by the usual Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The Middle Belt, the Arewa have also started agitating. Unfortunately, government is not doing anything to curtail the trouble; they are rather allowing it to continue. My anger is that the level of bloodletting is alarming. Nigeria is supposed to be a good country. You can see the kind of opportunities the country has in the areas of tourism, but today such are no longer there. Could you imagine that many institutions have left the country to Ghana? And when you talk about the economy, who would help you to assure people to come into the country?
What do you think are the solutions?
The solution is that there should be a roundtable discussion. If the president and his advisers have listening ears, they ought not to have jettisoned the recommendations of the 2014 constitutional conference because government is continuum. When President Goodluck Jonathan discovered the direction everything was tilting towards during the 2015elections, he conceded. President Buhari’s government, rather than adopt the decision of the 2014 confab, decided to throw it away, saying the confab was for the infidels. So the only solution is that, let government embrace any methodology that will bring back Nigeria and in doing that, they should shelve religious and tribal sentiments. If they must appoint people, it must be people who will look at your face and tell you the root cause of the problem and proffer solutions to it. But where they go ahead to appoint the same people that have not yielded any good result, it will kill the country the more. The president knows what to do to bring back the country. After all, they campaigned before the 2015 elections, but where are the campaign promises they made to the people? Those ideas they sold to the people, where have they left them? This is the right time to implement them. They cannot be giving all the positions to Fulani people and everything cannot be Fulani in this country. There is the need to give a sense of belonging to all people who are part of the country so that they can contribute to what is happening.
The Igbo drive the economy of this country, no matter how you look at it. The Igbo man is the person that can move to any part of the country or the world and reside there. Do you know how many trailer loads of Dangote cement go to the East? Let him take them to the North and see who buys it there. Yet you don’t feel the Igbo people are worth it. Let the government do the right thing by not putting a square peg in a round hole and the country will be reclaimed from the brink of ruins.
YOU SHOULD NOT MISS THESE HEADLINES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
We Have Not Had Water Supply In Months ― Abeokuta Residents
In spite of the huge investment in the water sector by the government and international organisations, water scarcity has grown to become a perennial nightmare for residents of Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital. This report x-rays the lives and experiences of residents in getting clean, potable and affordable water amidst the surge of COVID-19 cases in the state…Stakeholders in ICT react Stakeholders in ICT react
Selfies, video calls and Chinese documentaries: The things you’ll meet onboard Lagos-Ibadan train
The Lagos-Ibadan railway was inaugurated recently for a full paid operation by the Nigerian Railway Corporation after about a year of free test-run. Our reporter joined the train to and fro Lagos from Ibadan and tells his experience in this report…Stakeholders in ICT react Stakeholders in ICT react
and then