Nigeria not doing anything to tame insecurity — Bolaji Akinyemi

Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi was Director General, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs for many years after which he served as Minister of External Affairs. He recently appeared on a national television where he answered questions on burning national issues. ABUJA BUREAU CHIEF, SANYA ADEJOKUN monitored it and brings excerpts.

Why is the world not paying attention to Nigeria’s situation?

Nigeria is lucky in the sense that the rest of the world doesn’t have time to focus on Nigerian misfortunes now, since they have problems in Myanmar, they have problems with covid-19, they have problems even in the United States, all over the world. So, it’s not to say that the world is not paying attention to our misfortune, and that has been ably illustrated by the fact that while President Joe Biden was calling African leaders, and Vice-President Kamala Harris was also calling African leaders, they relegated Nigeria to the position where it was their foreign minister calling our foreign minister. So, we’ve been put in the third class category. This is very upsetting to those of us who have been in the field. It must be upsetting to other Africans, because you must recall that none other person than Nelson Mandela said in an interview with a Nigerian journalist, that the world will not accord Blacks their rightful status in the world until Nigeria gets its act together. The rightful insult meted out to Nigeria was a rightful insult meted out to all Blacks. And we must keep in mind that whatever we do in this country reflects on Blacks all over the world because we are the only authentic African country with the capacity to lift Blacks to a first class status. I said the only authentic African country because I’m aware that South Africa and Rwanda are there, but we are the only African power if I can still use that word without you bursting into laughter out of respect for our audience, we are the only country with the capacity to lift Africa from a third world status to a first world status if I can borrow from Lee Kuan Yew.

What are your thoughts on the efforts, meagre and modest as they may be, to improve our lot? Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar claimed that Nigeria has six million small arms in the hands of non-state actors resulting in the deaths of 80,000 people but another security expert insisted that those numbers are understated. What are your thoughts on that, and the strategies that have been proposed so far?

Yes, I do agree that that the number is understated. President (Goodluck) Jonathan set up a task committee on this same issue, and like everything else, they classified the result, and it wasn’t made known to the public. But because I was a member of what I call the “Boko-Haram Committee,” we got hold of a copy of the result, and maybe because of the content, it’s frightening that 6,000,000 is an understated figure. Arms are flooding into Nigeria as if Nigeria is a warzone. Maybe, it is going to be a war zone; maybe they are telling us the things that are going to come.

The moment Libya got destabilised if you recall the news, the arms depots were looted and those arms just came down south, and Nigeria at that time, which with  Boko-haram was flexing its muscle, was regarded as a rightful platform for which the arms could find usage, and they did a risk analysis of the problems of Nigeria, and they knew that we were not headed for a wedding ceremony, but for a turbulent future in this country, and there was money available to different groups who were being funded by people with money to procure the arms. And that’s why those arms found a respectable acceptance in Nigeria. And you have seen the evidence of how useful that calculation was to them, not to us, because from the Book-Haram insurgents in the North-East, now you have herdsmen, bandits, or whatever you call them all over Nigeria, and those arms are still flooding in.

Now, the question you asked basically wants to know what we are doing about it, and I dare say I’m sorry, I’m not in the business of running down government or running down anybody but we are doing pretty much nothing about it, because you know if you have problems in your home, what you will need to do after you yourself have done the analysis of what constitutes the problem. We still have an underpaid army. I don’t believe, in fact, don’t take my word for it, there is a United Nations report on the strength of national army and how we should increase the number every year until you meet that United Nations prescription, but we are not doing that. When you ask me “are we addressing the situation?”, what kind of an answer do you want me to give? The Nigerian Army is under staffed, I don’t know if they are well paid or not, and it’s under armed.

I’ve been dealing with the Nigerian Army, although I’m a civilian, but because of my field, I’ve been dealing with officers in the Nigerian Army since 1970, so, I do know their capability and mental preparedness. The Nigerian Army that I knew and interacted with in the 70s and 80s, I don’t believe that their barracks, cantonments can be overrun by a ragtag mob called Boko-Haram, I just don’t believe it. But that is what is happening.

There is a popular saying that where logic ends, that is where Congo begins. Is Nigeria not fast-becoming another Congo?

I am glad you used the words, “fast-becoming” because the answer really is yes. What separates us right now from Congo are two factors. One, we are still better organised as a society than The Congo because, if you look at our trajectory from say 1945 until the rain started falling on our head in the mid- 60s, we had time to build up a solid foundation, and it was a solid foundation that those founding fathers built on, and those foundations are still sustaining us from frankly disintegrating like The Congo has done. The Congo is not one country. The Congo is several countries under several authorities, but we haven’t got to that stage yet. Secondly, we still have a leadership that is basically elected so to speak by Nigerians, rather than leadership that is handpicked by foreign forces, and then given a veneer of a democratic election. To me, those two things separate us from The Congo.

If one of those two things are allowed to come under the same forces that have led Congo to where it is, then, we will be in big trouble, and that is where we are headed if we are not careful. Look at what happened at the Police Station in Imo State. Now, you tell me please, where you have a prison yard that shares a common fence with Police headquarters, that shares another common fence with Government House, you know as well as I do, that there will be a CCTV camera or a camera system being monitored from central control by security agents located in one of those establishments. You mean this camera did not pick up the approach of a mob? To me, anything more than 10 people is a mob. And it didn’t raise an alarm? And they had time to attack the Police Station and the Correction Service and loot that place, and there was no reaction from security forces? That should be the best guarded place in that state, and this could happen? Then I ask: what is going on? Is the CCTV camera system not working? Was it sabotaged? Or did it pick what it was supposed to pick up? And the governor said there are forces behind this. If the Government House, where it is located can be a target, where it was located like this, then who is safe and what is safe in Nigeria?

The South-West has not been pushing a separatist agenda before now. Is there truly what we can call a Southwest agenda in that direction?

There are manifestations of disagreements in the South-West. It started just, well, I don’t even know when exactly I can say it started. I would say it started in 1963 or thereabout. Some people will maintain that it started before then, but It started in 1963 when in the cause of a conspiracy between the North and the East, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was jailed, emergency declared in the South-West, and the second manifestation of insurrection reared its head.

The first manifestation was the Tiv insurrection in the Middle Belt. This was the second one. The rest of the story, you know, the Civil War and the like, and then after the civil war, a whole lot of things, and the destruction of the federalist structure. One of the fundamental agreements of our founding fathers in terms of the structure of Nigeria, was a federalist structure, a federalist foundation. And there is sufficient statistics to show that between the late 1940s and 1960, that structure produced result. You only need to look at the way the regions developed. The destruction of that federalist foundation has now led us to where we are as exhibited by the refusal to go back to that structure. People thought the rain will only fall on the South-West but now, we are seeing that the rain is falling on the whole country. What baffles me is the refusal by the federal authorities to return to that founding structure agreed to by our founding fathers.

Alright, power is sweet. Nobody wants to give over power voluntarily. Those who are benefitting from it want to hold on to it. I accept that as part of the argument but it is evident now to the blind and the deaf, that the rain is falling now on all our heads. What then baffles me is why those in authority cannot see that even the space of their authority is shrinking per day. Does the federal authority operate where Boko-Haram operates? Does the power of the federal authority operate amongst the herdsmen, and the bandits, and the secessionist movement, or the self-determination movement? No. When you push people to the wall, they fight back. And I just hope that it’s a matter of common sense, even though common sense, at times, does not appear to be too common in Nigeria. If you have a festering sore caused by diabetes on one finger, and you ignore it, gradually, it spreads, and before you know it, surgeons have to now operate on the other hand to which it has spread to. When people say they don’t know what restructuring is all about, I will advise them to go and read what Professor Attahiru Jega said while addressing the political science group in the North-East recently. There is too much centalised power. We borrowed that from the military, or the military imposed that on us. Take the 1963 and 1999 constitutions and see the difference between the two in terms of shared powers and powers left in the hands of the state and make the necessary adjustments. That is what we did in the national conference, and that report is still there. But when people ask me, ‘when will that report be taken seriously?’, I say don’t worry, when they cannot govern anymore, they will then go back to that report. But I hope by then, a report designed in 2015 will not prove to have been too little too late.

What is your reaction to the recent holocaust remembrance in Israel, especially bearing in mind that since the 1950s, $80 billion has been paid in reparations to holocaust survivors whereas nothing has been done to compensate Africa for slave trade? 

There is no black African country that is sufficiently powerful to make such demands on behalf of Africa. The only African county who could, and who should, and who will I am sure, make this drive for reparation, for commemoration, is Nigeria. But Nigeria is really not interested because the leading forces in Nigeria still, for religious reasons, don’t want to focus on the Arab connection to this slave trade, and because of that, they don’t want to focus on the commemoration of slavery at all. Ghana under Kwame Nkruma, under J. J. Rawlings, and under the present government, has tried, and I doff my hat to Ghana for that. Remember that Stevie Wonder has just decided to relocate from the United States to Ghana.

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