Biafra agitation, bad administration, social disorder, and grounds for South East insecurity – Sam Amadi

Prof Sam Amadi, a social critic and the founder of Nigeria’s Center for Public Policy and Research, has identified lack of social order, weak governance, and a lack of attention to separatist agitators as the key causes of the current instability in Nigeria’s southeast region.

Amadi stated that as at 2016 the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, report indicated that the South East was the most peaceful and secured zone in Nigeria, but that things changed dramatically from 2019 and the region started seeing a dangerous turn around in security.

“Why did the most peaceful region become the most traumatized and insecure region in the country? The Igbo have a saying that truth in life and that you have to know where the rain started beating you to know when it ended,” Amadi said.

He noted that security was one of the critical drivers of development, which one cannot develop the economy without security.

“Economic growth is dependent on state order and state order has three variables; one, credible way of electing leaders, in our traditional culture we have a credible way of electing leaders, the Umunna gather and decide who will rule. The second aspect of social order is that the people in power can deliver goods, when you are elected you must deliver some benefits.

“Thirdly, you must have trust in the government. What I see in the south east is an increasing lack of social trust in institutions of leadership. Our young people, rightly or wrongly, have lost confidence that the leaders, informal or formal, can secure them and people have resorted to dangerous self help. Any society where people do not respect state order and everybody begins to achieve his own personal justice by his own understanding, it’s going to enter into anarchy. No matter how prosperous you are, anarchy will bring about poverty and that’s the order of nature.”

Amadi enunciated the critique when he spoke as the Keynote Speaker at the 2023 South East Security Summit, organized by Peace & Good Governance Group, in collaboration with the Enugu State command of the Nigeria Police, in Enugu on Wednesday. 

Amadi stressed that one common thing in any prosperous country is that there is always a reasonable state of order, discipline and security, adding that people cannot make investments except if they have security.

“The young people are the first casualties of insecurity. How? First, insecurity will disorient them into violence and when they become violent, they become unproductive. So today I want to encourage our young people to please care about security.

“Under M.I Okpara, the south east flourished, we became the fastest growing economy in the world, because we had the best social capital, what sustains an economy is social capital and it’s a capital that gets people united to achieve social harmony. The Igbo have the best social capital in the world. The Igbo state union, the Igbo elders, traditional rulers, and communities put heads together and trained the brightest and they came back and invested in the community.

“We don’t need police to police us every day, we have order, we have cultural norms, and the police are just to manage elements who veer off from the central cultural practice. Today, there is a generalized disorder and we have to fight it.

“While insecurity collapsed in the south east from 2019 was because of politics: The people who are at the center of the crisis are the politicians. Unregulated fight for political power led to the mobilization of the young people as touts and as thugs; that is politics without morality and without control.

“The second thing: some youths were killed in Emene some years ago and they said they were IPOB members. I asked the Governor of Enugu state to institute a judiciary commission of inquiry over the death of the 22 youths. The state government said I’m not from Enugu and asked why I was interested and I went to court and won the case. The High court asked the state government to set up an inquiry and they went on appeal.

“Now, if the government does not take responsibility to protect the lives of their own people and take it as a primary responsibility, it sends a message to the youths that they are on their own; therefore, you are telling them to disregard state order. The aggravator of insecurity in the south east today is the perception by the young people that nobody cares for them but they are victims of unfair state actions,” Amadi said.

Convener of the summit, Mr. Monday Diamond said he was motivated into convening the summit because he was a youth and because of the level of insecurity in the south eastern region, which he said has crippled the region’s economy for over two years.

He stated that the first thing to do in order to mitigate insecurity was for the governments to institute good governance and secondly for all hands to be on deck to facilitate the release of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu which he noted will also bring to an end the issue of Sit-at-Home.

“The issue of some youths who feel that they are not Nigerians, that they are Biafrans, will also understand that Nigeria is one country. Let the youths understand that taking up arms will not give us an independent country of Biafra. I subscribe to a better Nigeria where everybody will be recognized and valued,” Diamond said.