Hunger crisis, Security and conflict in Lagos: a state of precariousness -By Ojelabi Emmanuel Oluwaseun

To anybody who followed the history and activities of insurgents in the North-eastern part of Nigeria especially since 2009 and their modus operandi, the Lagos State Government’s decision to “enforce restrictions” over activities of or in simpler language, “ban” commercial motorcycles and tricycles in some areas of the state for safety and security reasons appears as a timely move to address the precarious state of security in the State especially as it concerns increase in criminal activities connected to the deployment of these equally commercially deployed vehicles.

The consequence of the enforcement early February was feared mostly by residents and social analysts to bear the propensity of leading to further increase in criminality as the move would naturally lead to loss of jobs and means of livelihood for a very large number of people dominantly of the youth denomination in Lagos State who struggle anyways to make ends meet with these economic activities. Noticeably, while the statistics of people who had been drafted and conscripted to the hospital beds by the activities of these riders via different sorts of avoidable auto-accidents due to reckless and careless riding were published to further justify the enforcement, same enthusiasm was not shown in publishing the statistics of people projected to lose their jobs as a result of the policy enforcement. However, inquiry from organised outlets and popular ride hailing companies and the informal sectors administered under government sanctioned Transport Unions indicated that the number job losses should be in the area of about 50,000-100,000 or more as it was found that barring the numbers of motorcycles and tricycles that is easily countable, in some cases, one asset (vehicle) serves up to 10 or more riders in a week. The obvious fact is, the numbers are not comprehensively quotable due to the lack of data and this makes the situation even more tenuous.

Arriving from this, pulsating attention may be given to the logical assumption that Lagos State may experience hike in number of crimes as these many people, in the range of 50,000-100,000 losing their jobs at once and in their mid-30s at most, may take up adventures in criminal activities in the absence of profitable businesses they could otherwise be engaged in.

It is amidst these worries that the entire world was hit with a pandemic that would require total restriction of movement and self isolation in order to curb the spread of a virus with the excruciating implication of total lockdown on all public gathering and economic activities. What would appear to be more worrisome is the absolute lack of adequate data that captures people in dire need of economic assistance by the government and even the apparent overwhelm of the system via sharp decline in oil pricing, strain on national budget and lack of timeously available loan facilities in the international system, at least one that may enrich the government enough to financially assist everyone in need, in other words, severe scarcity of resources.

The Federal Government (FG) intervention programme rolled out on the 1st of April, 2020, a palliative programme called “Conditional Cash Transfer” (CCT) as part of its Social Investment Programmes (SIPs) which has been in existence since 2016 through the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development and granted the sum of N20,000 to beneficiaries adjudged to be the “rural poor”, “poorest of the poor” or “vulnerable”. The programme projected to benefit about “2.6 million households” or “11 Million vulnerable people” in which each person would be credited the monthly CCT for four months (N5,000 per month) at once and this found its way to miss Lagos State as the FG envisaged providing the funds for the “poorest of the poor” in Abuja, Sokoto, Nasarawa, Kastina and Anambra States in the country. Following the decision of the FG to extend the lockdown period for another 2 weeks, made on Monday, the 14th of April, 2020 at about 7:30pm through a nation-wide presidential address broadcast, the FG decided in its magnanimity to extend the CCT money to an additional “large” number of 1,000,000 people of the “urban poor” who do not have up to N5,000 in their accounts or who have not been loading N100.00 in total average on their telephone as this group of people are seen as the people that really needs government palliative according to FG calculations.

The implication of this tenuous situation is the anticipated but denied situation of open rebellion and acts of physical and brazen looting and rapacity by criminal elements in some part of Lagos and Ogun States like Alagbado, Agbado Ijaye, Ifo, Akute, Alimosho, Agege, Abule Egba and Ota among others. The criminals have now brazen up to attack all the houses and people who they believed have stocked up with food and cash enough to sustain them through the lockdown. Active mobs have now on countless occasions, blazingly attacked and looted food transports in Lagos and Abuja even at great risks of their own lives. The obvious lack of security in these areas has also resulted in residents in conjunction with vigilantes taking up arms to secure their lives and property which is not only threatened by night but also day times by weapon wilding boys. The reaction to this development by some police officers has been coloured by their suspicions for propaganda and sensationalism rather than alertness to the actual situation of heavy breach of state-wide security and gradual deterioration in internal integrity.

The first incident of security breach of this nature in the State during the commencement of the lockdown was when reportedly unidentified crowd in the Abule Egba district of the Agege Local Government Area had busted into the Local Government Secretariat to loot the state government’s palliative provisions meant to be shared to the “most vunerables” during the first two weeks of the lockdown period. This same palliative have been widely criticised across the State by youth members of the society some of who received a loaf of bread to be shared by a whole building which housed roughly 15 to 25 persons at the time of sharing and that was even one of the best scenarios.

The future of the state-wide breakdown in law and order was glimpsed during the tension of the South African xenophobic attacks against Nigerians and other African countries in their country in September, 2019. Nigerians witnessed an absolutely alien occurrence in the realm of criminality in its constitutionally regulated society, wherein people blazingly broke into malls, stalls, shops and installations presumably owned by South African nationals in Nigeria to destroy and loot their goods. In these illegal acts, looters went into the malls to move all goods, eatable and non consumables they could carry. This incident lasted for a few days as suspected hoodlums accosted private cars mostly in traffic where they see or sense the presence of a white person to ask if the foreigners were from South Africa positive of which they attack, rob and disposes them of their properties safe the car. Some hiding under the situation went ahead in their robbery activities on the express mostly around Lekki and Ajah axis of the state.

In the weeks following this incidence, pockets of armed robbery were experienced across Lagos in Epe, Ajah, Lekki and Badagry Express, Festac among others wherein robbers attacked commuters in traffic of their valuables while committing further acts of destruction in the process that led to many physical injuries on the victims. One striking reality however is that despite several outcries online backed with video evidences, the police has held that cases officially reported to them at their police stations on these cases were relatively low and thus hinted that taking up further precautionary measures beyond the normal may be unnecessary. Same situation was reported in the recent wild growth in robbery, gang and cultist activities in some areas of Lagos and Ogun States like Alagbado, Agbado Ijaye, Iffo, Akute Alimosho, Agege, Abule Egba, Iyana Ipaja, Mongoro among others within the first two weeks of the Federal Government lockdown 31st of March- 14th April, 2020.

On the side of the Lagos State Government, the recent initiative to involve the distribution of the food through local kitchens to 100,000 youths out of the population of the Lagos State is a very good development. Indeed, very laudable as the government would appear to have started to develop an understanding of the situation on ground. However, like the previous palliative measures, it bears serious features of serious inadequacy and insufficiency. Firstly, because it does not take much of a mathematician to know that providing for 100,000 youths out of a population of about 20,000,000 people in which the youths denomination occupy about half or more of total population is tendencious at resulting to chronic inadequacy. Even when that first issue is settled or ignored, the second and most important is the implementation and monitoring.

First in this realm, government before anything else, must consider with brazing alacrity areas with large numbers of youth population but have not yet started deteriorating into violence in order to stop all manifestation of same before it starts. This is because in the event that such palliative eludes this area, elements that have previously controlled themselves to keep the peace of the area despite imminent socio-economic disadvantages may begin to find social disturbance and rapacity fashionable. The move would send a message also to the erring areas also that government would reward compliance and good citizenship. The scheme should eventually plan to at least, touch every area in the state.

Furthermore, the scheme must be backed up with serious monitoring in order to stop saboteurs from attacking and reducing it impact on the already inadequately targeted beneficiaries. This is so because as many incidents after the sharing of the first palliative round shows, the circulation was marred with so many misappropriations by some quarters. Indeed, some eye witnesses blamed palliative hoarding as the reason why the crowd stormed the Agege Local Government Secretariat. As their fears would be confirmed, the crowd emerged from the local government office with bags of the palliative meant to have been shared to the beneficiaries days before. Based on video evidences that emerged from complainants on the internet, it would be worrisome to establish the fact that State Government provided just a pack of 5kg rice for an entire local government or local government development area. What all these shouts is sabotage at some stage of the palliative sharing.

At this point, a lesson from history is instructive to the State Government and indeed, the Federal Government from the old French revolution. While it is not the opinion of this piece to discuss or preach revolution, it is instructive that in order to avoid the disruptiveness and pernicious nature of anarchy, we must draw useful information from events in the past that we wish not to reoccur in our reality. The French Revolution of 1789-1799 like the first Russian Revolution of 1905 were occasioned by events that have persisted for ages but some series of immediate occurrences like the Bread Riot of July 1789 and the Red Sunday of January, 1905 in Paris and St. Petersburg respectively, acted as the immediate trigger of those events which later effects changed the world amid a bloody and disruptive history. The recent awakening of criminal mob actions and attacks across Lagos State and other places in the country is indicative of rising issue of unprecedented but expectable anarchy. The natural reaction of the government which is to deploy the Army on the streets to maintain law and order in this situation may be the recipe for mass actions by the Army boys as past events have abundantly shown. This in itself may account for not only many cases of human abuses but state and/or nation-wide tension amidst so much chaos. Bearing in mind the reason for the entire, situation of the lockdown this situation may not only defeat its purpose, it plunge the country under anarchy.

In a Lagos of so much youthful capacity of roughly 60 percent of her 20 million population, the present ratio of security man capacity to the population is somewhere between 1 security agent to 100,000 people and that is being very much optimistic. It would be foolhardy and almost reckless for security planers to sit on the assumption that the state has the capacity to capture a city-wide breakdown in law and order in the event that it happens. More disturbing is the seeming denial of open realities of events happening in the State. While gang activities have risen to the roof, criminal elements have seized the opportunity to carry out attacks on the civilian population in rape, robbery, shootings and other forms of nefariousness. The scariest part of this development is that even the top echelons of the police publicly stated their delusion of the security state of the State when the Police PRO in Lagos State implied that reports from multiple unrelated sources may be exaggerative. The consequence of this situation is that there are two realities existing; the public experience on the one side and the official related story from the “authorities” on the other side.

Barring the infrastructural deficit in security in Lagos a la surveillance videos, adequate quick mobility facilities, report/communication ease, security agencies are naturally expected to conduct investigations into probable, possible and liable criminality within their domains. The attitude is necessary for the security of any state as the lives and properties of people within the state is dependent on the ability of the state’s security agencies to investigate and take proactive steps on neutralising potential insecurity issues. What is expected is that even in cases of exaggerated reports, the security agencies of the state should be able to present evidence-backed reports of what the situation is. As a matter of fact, when the security agencies hide behind the assumption of sensationalization of reports and that incidents are “not as big as reported”, it begs the question, what incidence rate will qualify as big enough? What is sure is that yes, incidences are occurring and cases are abound in the state.

The truth is sensationalization or not, lives and properties are essential and any danger these are exposed to no matter how little, bears the consequence of loss no matter how minimal regulators or government may describe them. The government’s social contract with the people is first the security of “all” their lives and properties. It therefore matters less whether or not there is sensationalisation, what is expected is that government and security agents execute their jobs and arrest criminality that threatens the peace of the state even if it is not within their scope of “significant threat”.

It is therefore, the call of this article to security planners to take serious cognisance of the rising restiveness of the populace especially amidst the youths of the state across all the Local Governments Areas (LGAs) and Local Government Development Areas (LGDAs) in order to arrest seeming cases of brazing and blazing criminality and lack of state responsiveness or the inadequacy of the same. Furthermore, this article calls for the dramatic improvement of food circulation and other “palliative” in all the local governments and streets so as to reach a wider audience and to better saturate the basic needs of poor and vulnerable people during the lockdown.

Ojelabi Emmanuel Oluwaseun
M.A. History and Strategic Studies