How
Insecurity Breeds Underdevelopment In Nigeria
Before going
into this topic: Insecurity & Underdevelopment In Nigeria, it is important
we understand the standard meaning of the word: security. Security is
defined differently by various academic and social disciplines according to
their uses, understandings and perceptions. But commonly, security means: safety;
freedom from risk or danger; freedom from doubt, anxiety, fear or want. It also
means confidence or something that gives or assures safety. It
further means a sense or feeling of being secured. Traditionally, security
is simply defined as a duty of the government to ensure that
majority of the citizens and their properties or belongings are secured at all
times from the hands of malicious individuals and criminal entities. Section
14 (2) (b) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 states: the
security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of the
Government.
The above
definition literally accommodates expanded notion of security or modern
notion of security and moves it away from the old or traditional
concept of security (i.e. protection of lives and properties or detection
and control of crimes and punishment of the offenders or a notion of forming
and arming by the State of policing bodies to control crimes and protect lives
and properties). This is referred to as gun-culture or militarized security.
Today, the word: security has undergone series of transformations. While the
traditional notion of security is largely retained, which include State
security, individual security or self defense and collective security or
community security (i.e. community vigilantism); security as a concept
or an idea has further been expanded. It is now referred to as Human
Security or Peopling Security.
Human Security or Peopling Security is simply an addition of human affair and human rights to the
notion of security. This was expertly coined and masterfully developed in 1994
by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The epochal UNDP
Human Development Report of 1994 contains: Human Security and its Seven
Concepts. The Seven Concepts of Human
Security developed by the UNDP in 1994 are: Economic Security, Health
Security, Environmental Security, Food Security, Community Security, Political
Security and Physical Security.
There is also Territorial
Security and other sub-securitization concepts. Robust job creation,
social security, economic growth and development, infrastructural development
and maintenance, friendly trade and investment environment, etc, represent environmental
security. Health Security is affordability and availability of primary
and tertiary health care and facilities, etc. Environmental Security is
sustenance of secured and safe environment as well as preservation of the
natural environment and control of environmental challenges, etc. Food
Security is absence of substandard and hazardous foods and drugs as
well as contaminated and unsafe water. Community Security is absence or
control of intra and inter-communal disharmony and communal militancy. Political
Security is absence or control of political monopoly, political intolerance,
political repression, political suppression, political segregation, political
exclusion, political terrorism and politico-structural violence, etc. Physical
Security is dutiful protection of lives and properties as well as
detection and control of crimes and punishment of the offenders, etc.
The grand
summary of the UNDP Report says: the concept of security has for too long
been interpreted narrowly: as security of territory from external aggression,
or as protection of national interests in foreign policy or as a global
security from the threat of a nuclear holocaust. It has been related more to
the nation-State than people…., for many of them, security symbolized
protection from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social
conflict, political repression and environmental hazards (UNDP Human
Development Report, 1994:22).
Gladly, leading
members of the comity of nations including South Africa and Canada have since
adopted this noble concept; disappointingly, Nigeria, till date, still operates
its outdated National Policy on Security, hugely premised on gun-culture
security, which was last updated in 1979 in the dying
days of Gen Olusegun Obasanjo’s military regime.
Having made the
foregoing fundamentally explainable, the next question is: what is insecurity? Insecurity
is simply the quality or state of being insecure. It also has to do with self-doubt
and instability; lack of confidence or assurance. Insecurity,
generally speaking, is synonymous with precariousness, shakiness and vulnerability.
As a matter of fact, insecurity is the opposite of safety
or absence of freedom from risk, danger, doubt, anxiety, fear and want. Put it
the other way round, insecurity is powered by risk,
danger, anxiety, fear, want, regime failures and regime atrocities.
What then is underdevelopment?
It can simply be understood as a
state of inadequate development. It is also a process of having a low level of economic
productivity and technological
sophistication or advancement within
the contemporary range
of possibility or in the midst of plenty or potentials of
economic greatness. Underdevelopment is
both societal and individual. The inability or failure of an individual citizen
to practicably realize his or her life potentials amounts to citizen-underdevelopment.
There is also stunted citizen development (i.e. a millionaire/billionaire or
a preacher with first school leaving certificate or acutely limited education
or a highly educated citizen wallowing in abject poverty). Societal
underdevelopment involves economic under-growth and economic underdevelopment as
well as general social and economic backwardness of a political territory
particularly in the midst of plenty owing to man-made inhibitions and
drawbacks.
Therefore, where Human
or Peopling Security is absent, there is Human or Peopling Insecurity
and where there is Human or Peopling Insecurity, there is Underdevelopment. In
other words, insecurity is synonymous with underdevelopment.
Triggers of insecurity in Nigeria originate from absence of environmental
security, health security, economic security, food security, community
security, physical security and political security. These are further
classified as triggers of divided society or social anarchy. Underdevelopment thrives
where insecurity is entrenched while development thrives under
a societal culture of human or peopling security. That is
to say that the greatest challenge facing Nigeria’s development today is
insecurity triggered off by years of stranglehold under kleptomaniac, avaricious, primordial,
hegemonic, wicked and conscienceless political class; grossly found lacking and
wanting in political statesmanship, vision, sagacity, uprightness, charisma and
impeccability.
We hereby submit
here and now that development has eluded Nigeria in all fronts owing to the
above named negative triggers, to the extent that the country’s social and
economic peers of the 60s and 70s have today overtaken the country four-folds
in all international positive social ratings. Today,
Nigeria is no match to the likes of China, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore,
Malaysia, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Brazil;
most of which the Nigeria was comfortably ahead of in the 60s and the 70s. Nigeria
has continued to run from pillar to pole in its governance without direction
project; leading to present intensification of abject mass poverty and
hyper insecurity.
In 1994, former President Julius
Nyerere (born in 1922 and died in 1999) of the United Republic of Tanzania
(Tanganyika and Zanzibar) raised an immortal question and threw it in the
direction of primordial and kleptomaniac African political leaders. He had
asked: why is it that when Europeans, Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEANs) and North Americans are busy finding their routes to the moon,
Africans are busy going back to the cave?
Today, Nigeria is acutely lacking in
all indices of good governance and economic growth and development. The
country’s education is in quandary and its securitization defense and
intelligence have reached the nadir of failure and intractability. The state of
the Federal Government’s 34,400 kilometers of the country’s total of 198,000
kilometers of road network as well as its 3,600 kilometers of railway is
acutely nothing to write home about. The country’s existing road network is
acutely overused and over-populated; likewise its 22 local and international
airports. Nigeria’s 8600 kilometers of inland waterways and its four
trans-national borders are porously secured. The level of graft or official
corruption in its institutions and corridors of power has risen to an apogee.
Its energy sector has gone from bad to worst and the physical security sector
is in comatose; with hundreds of defenseless and law abiding citizens being
butchered with reckless abandon every monthly. To make the matter worse,
Nigeria’s security forces are now fully involved in massacring of thousands of
nonviolent, defenseless and unarmed citizens with rabid impunity.
The truth about Nigeria is that
literatures and creative minds discussing or writing about its insecurity and
underdevelopment are extensively inexhaustible. That is to say that discussion
about Nigeria’s governance failures, its insecurity and underdevelopment can
never be exhausted in a year, not to talk of under few hours. Nigeria of
present time and circumstance may no longer be credibly and popularly called the
Federal Republic of Nigeria. The best way to describe the country is: the
Federal Republic of Insecurity and Underdevelopment.
This grassroots lecture
therefore is uniquely important in that it has extensively resolved the
question as per whether there exists substantially insecurity and
underdevelopment in Nigeria of present time and composition. And the
answer is CAPITAL yes! The next question is: what do we do as members of the
civil society or non-State actor individuals and entities? The best
approach to this is to adopt a sick person and lab diagnosis approach! That
is to say that sickness is half cured the moment its cause (s) is effectively
and correctly diagnosed.
It is a truism that the challenge
facing members of the civil society or non-State entities in the country today
and in the midst of these social toxemias is civil unconsciousness or to borrow
from the Holy Bible: lack of knowledge. This is where
politicians and other political actors catch in and exploit to perpetually ride
on the collective intelligence of the populace. It is technically referred to
as psychology
of politics or exploitation of public gullibility.
While the authorities of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church Parish, Fegge, Onitsha and the
Catholic’s Justice, Development & Peace Commission (JDPC) are exceptionally
commended for organizing this august event in July, the Catholic Church and its
Parishes should do more than this. The Church should invest heavily in adult
literacy education to educate and empower its teeming parishioners with limited
education. It is not only money that defies lateness at a fundraising occasion;
education, too, and most importantly, defies lateness and has no age limits. We
must particularly disassociate ourselves at all times from Prof Jubril Aminu’s
immortal but unpopular advice to members of the public to try illiteracy if they think that
education is costly and unaffordable.
It must be deeply appreciated that
the Catholic Church has ensured and insisted that no person with limited education
is ordained a priest of the Church; but the Church must also
extend such gesture to its parishioners or laity as it is more worthwhile to
people the Church with educated and liberated congregations than to
people it with an assemblage of the educationally or academically challenged, who
constitute silent and castrated majority in the moment of social challenges and
political upheavals. This is because they can only bark but cannot bite!
Finally, the Catholic Church as well
as other churches and non-Christian bodies must go a step further to inculcate
in their members the culture of constitutionalization or a process
of making it mandatory for every adult parishioner who has a copy of Holy Bible
to also have a copy of the 1999 Constitution. We have extensively investigated
and found that any parishioner that can read, quote, cite and understand the Holy Bible
primarily, can as well read, quote, cite and understand the basics of the 1999
Constitution.
By marrying the 1999
Constitution at all times just as they marry Holy Bible and other sacred
religious books, citizens’ awareness about their constitutionally guaranteed liberties
and process of governance will not only increase, but will also offer them
avenues of knowing the dos and don’ts or constitutional limits of the public
office holders as well as their constitutional protections and civic
responsibilities as citizens. When citizens are armed with requisite education
and exposure, they will be better prepared to position themselves for noble
societal roles of changing the country for better through citizens’ proactive
participation.
A conscious citizen is one who is
educated, connected and coordinated with ability to think and move ahead of his
or her immediate environment in moment of challenges or societal ups and downs.
In all, citizens’ consciousness and participation are direly needed to wriggle
Nigeria out of its deepening insecurity and underdevelopment afflicted on all
Nigerians by the political class, occasioned by deepening citizens’ docility
and social castration.
A Paper Presented by Emeka Umeagbalasi
(graduate of Criminology & Security Studies), Board Chairman, International
Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law at a Grassroots Lecture
Organized by the JDPC for Parishioners of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic
Church, Fegge, Onitsha, Anambra State, Nigeria on July 12, 2016. Mobile Line:
+23474090052. Email: emekaumeagbalasi@yahoo.co.uk.
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