Government Without Governance: When the State Fails In Its Fundamental Objectives -By Chris Ngwodo

Chris Ngwodo

Nigeria is not worth dying for. Why? Because the country does not give a damn; whether you live or die, it does not care. Whether you live or die, it is not bothered. Whether you eat, it cares less. Whether you go hungry, it does not matter to her at all. In Nigeria, everybody is O.Y.O: On Your Own – every man for himself, God for us all. Don’t expect anything from government, because government does not exist. Don’t think anybody cares about you because you simply do not exist. Therefore you are expendable and dispensable, simply because you are Nigerian…Nigeria is taking her last breath, killed by religion and ethnicity; killed by parochialism; by clueless leadership; by pedestrianism and narrow-mindedness; by terrorism; by greed and rapacity. – Femi Adesina, July 2012.

Why does the state exist? What is the moral and practical purpose of government? In times of national adversity, it is useful to ask such questions and revisit first principles. Last week, the Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh spoke on the recurrent bloody clashes between farmers and pastoralists that have claimed hundreds of lives across the federation. Mr. Ogbeh explained that Nigeria is a signatory to the Protocol on Transhumance crafted by the Economic Community of West African States.

Under this protocol, pastoralists from elsewhere in West Africa can freely enter Nigeria in search of pasture. The problem, Ogbeh said, is that these foreign herdsmen are typically armed with AK 47 assault rifles. This, he said, is “the complexity” of the situation. His proposal is that the Nigerian government provides security for farmers “for a fee.” In other words, Nigerian farmers who are already liable to pay tax and are at risk of attack by foreign marauders have to pay their own government for protection. This is the same government which is advocating the creation of grazing reserves for foreign pastoralists, thereby subsidising them at the expense of Nigerian citizens – the same citizens now being asked to pay the state to underwrite their constitutional right to life.

The minister’s statement was a bizarre confession that foreign herdsmen armed with assault rifles can freely enter Nigerian territory and massacre her citizens while these same citizens are to pay protection money to the federal government to secure their lives. It was an admission of the state’s utter unwillingness to address crime and terrorism. If there ever was an argument for the government’s irrelevance to Nigerians, this was it. It is surely rare in the annals of governance for an administration to so brazenly advertise its own incapacity; to confess a deficiency of sovereignty so openly. Mr Ogbeh’s pronouncement confirmed the belief that Nigerian elites love the pomp and pageantry of government but have no stomach for the actual rigours of governance. They hunger for the glitz but abhor the toil.

From prehistoric tribes to kingdoms and empires, humans have always clustered together primarily to protect themselves. Roughly two centuries ago, the nation state emerged as the most advanced territorial and political configuration for securing human beings. The Nigerian constitution bears witness to this elementary truth. In Section 14 (2), it proclaims that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” The sequence of tasks is significant and instructive. Security precedes welfare; the matter of mortality comes before macroeconomics. Securing the lives and property of the citizenry is the most fundamental duty of the state, the basis of its existence and the primary measure of its legitimacy.

By declaring that farmers should pay the government to secure them from foreign marauders, the agriculture minister effectively relegated them to civic insignificance. Rather than shame and embarrassment over its manifest inability to protect Nigerian lives, the administration demonstrated its perception of a chronic national security threat as a business opportunity to be leveraged. Apparently, the administration seeks to profiteer from its own fatal negligence and from the blood and tears of its citizens. The farmers are no longer citizens but potential customers and clients.

Does Buhari Give a Damn?

The administration virtually confirmed suspicions about its scale of priorities in crisis management. President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has always been more forthright, more categorical, and more specific when addressing the concerns of pastoralists, while telegraphing an indifferent ambiguity and vagueness in response to the need to protect farming communities. Buhari who customarily maintains a stoic statuesque silence to news of terror attacks in the Middle Belt and domestic tragedies in general, and whose spokesman, Femi Adesina, once argued that he does not need to visit sites of mass murder, recently donned his military fatigues and visited Zamfara to launch a military effort against cattle rustlers.

Cattle-rustling is certainly a problem but the fact that the president has not found it necessary to visit the theatres of carnage wrought by militant pastoralists suggests his greater sense of affinity for the herders. It also lends credence to the critiques of those who argue that this president lacks the nous to effectively wield a national mandate. In his May 29 address, the killings of farmers in the Middle Belt and further South – which have claimed even more lives than Boko Haram this year – did not even merit a mention.

Ironically, almost exactly four years ago, on July 13, 2012, presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, had authored a column in the Daily Sun entitled, “This country doesn’t give a damn,” in which he condemned the lack of official response to the episodic bloodbaths involving armed herders and farming communities in Plateau State. These tragedies, Adesina wrote, cast Nigeria as “a country where life is cheap, where human beings are killed like chickens” and as a land in which “human life means nothing.” The startling currency of Adesina’s jeremiad indicates that little has changed in the Nigerian state’s valuation of Nigerian life. Indeed, were Adesina not presently in government, it is quite possible that he would have by now written a follow-up piece aptly entitled, “Buhari doesn’t give a damn.”

It is not just that by its statements and acts, the Buhari administration is frittering away goodwill. The Nigerian state is also delegitimising itself. Implicit in the agriculture minister’s statements was a singular message to farmers and other Nigerians – “You are on your own.” Farming communities must now take every means necessary to protect their constitutionally-guaranteed right to security of life and property. There is no federal cavalry coming to the rescue. Communities must now begin to creatively exercise their rights, including that to self-defence.

This is a logical progression. Many Nigerians already provide their own social services – potable water, power supply and transportation. Upon auditing the reality of Nigerian life, one is hard pressed to find anywhere the Nigerian state exists as an empowering presence. Instead the state is either actively and compulsively predatory or passively negligent and thereby complicit in the constant degradation of Nigerian humanity.

A Costly Famine of Political Courage

Contrary to Mr. Ogbeh’s assertions, there is no complexity involved here. Nigeria is a sovereign nation and is the economic and administrative hub of ECOWAS. It has the moral, economic and political heft to seek a review of the ECOWAS protocols on transhumance and free movement in much the same way that Britain recently sought to redefine its relationship with the European Union. An argument can certainly be made that Nigeria’s international commitments are subjected to insufficient public debate and scant parliamentary scrutiny. (Nigeria’s loss of the strategic Bakassi Peninsular can be traced to this dynamic.) Even so, there is no evidence that free movement is to blame. Nowhere is freedom of movement for persons and goods interpreted as a license to ferry weapons across borders. The inability to stop the activities of militant pastoralists is a failure of Nigeria’s ruling elites and the national security establishment.

Paradoxically, the federal government is in a bind that is entirely of its own making. It cannot unilaterally create grazing reserves without amending the Land Use Act. The Act vests land management in states and local councils. In theory, Buhari could reach out to states and communities and build consensus on this issue. But because his administration has treated the victims of murderous pastoralists like collateral damage and acceptable fodder, it has squandered any trust that might have enabled it reconcile both herders and farmers. Benue and Ekiti have initiated legislation to outlaw open grazing in favour of regulated pasturing. In Plateau State, Governor Simon Lalong’s acquiescence to the federal establishment of reserves in defiance of popular local sentiments has created a politically-charged scenario in a historically volatile region.

The “complexity” to which Mr. Ogbeh referred is actually more banal. It is that Buhari is evidently reluctant and unwilling to move decisively against the armed herdsmen and clearly regards their heinous activities as a lower order of criminality than that of Niger Delta militants and cattle rustlers. The president’s lieutenants are perhaps too scared of losing power and privilege to draw his attention to the injustice inherent in his posture. In other words, political courage is at a premium and cowardice reigns. Buhari’s dubious posture leaves him vulnerable to charges of chauvinism and provincial myopia. The more coherent and realistic these accusations seem, the more the president’s actions and inaction will inspire militant expressions of micronational enthusiasms especially in a recessionary economic climate.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo recently described the groups carrying out attacks on the nation’s energy infrastructure in the Niger Delta as economic terrorists. That is fair enough. But why does such fiery candour elude the administration when describing murderous pastoralists? Why do its condemnations of their crimes seem so equivocal and perfunctory? For the avoidance of doubt, these armed herdsmen are economic terrorists. Their war of attrition against farmers is also decimating a key national economic asset. The Jos Plateau and the Benue Valley are in the epicentre of this conflict in the heartland of Nigeria’s food basket in the Middle Belt. Unrest in this area will surely imperil the administration’s plans to boost food production.

As it is, the controversy over the government’s appeasement of the pastoralists overshadowed “the Green Alternative”, Mr. Ogbeh’s programme to grow the agricultural sector. This is as it should be. Human beings matter more than rice or grass or, for that matter, livestock. Ensuring the security and sanctity of life is the paramount objective of the state. The tragedy is the awful human cost of our prolonged inability to embrace this fundamental principle of governance.

Chris Ngwodo is a writer, analyst and consultant.