TINUBU AND INSECURITY: The masses must be impatient, by Ugoji Egbujo
The tunnel is dark and bleak. Is there a glint of light in it? But purposefulness is easy to see. The police force needs to be better funded and equipped. It needs an overhaul. The welfare of the officers and men is wretched. The orientation is out-of-joint; the attitude is feral. Any responsible government desirous of transforming a country with such a police force to contain rampaging lawlessness must start with some urgency. So where is our hope?
It’s easy to see indolence and hypocrisy. That easy recourse to backward finger-pointing while immediate problems requiring only courage and purposefulness threaten to capsize the nation boat. That constant demand for patience from the citizenry while no effort is made to swat away flies, pry out worms burrowing in daylight into the core of the nation-fruit. That insouciant persistence with flabby and rosy propaganda while data points to imminent implosion if a moral circumcision doesn’t take place at the helm. It is easy to see that this surreal chronic defiance of common sense to trenchantly demand sacrifice from the poor while turning a blind eye to the brazen looting of the public treasury and subsequent exhibitionistic display of ill-gotten wealth by political leaders is the surest path to national demise.
Flamboyant speeches given from the lips can rouse the rabble. But the heart of the leadership is all that matters. Every government will mouth inclusion and unity. Those are lovely concepts. But in their choices, leaders make known their real dispositions. Once they announce the first appointments, you can see whether it is equity, foresight and objectivity or blind parapoism and self-serving cronyism. When a government collects some EFCC-certified filth in suit and agbada and puts them in high places for political expediency, then it has chosen. It has chosen contagious mediocrity. It has chosen crass opportunism. It has chosen superficiality and stagnation over substance and sustainable progress.
Okomu oil used to be one of the most lucrative companies in the country. perhaps they still are. They have about 33,000 hectares of palm and rubber plantations. Recently, they have been hammered by insecurity. Over the last ten years, they suffered in the hands of criminal loggers of wood who have killed more than 10 of their employees and stolen their palm produce. Recently, a militant group named Ijaw Freedom Fighters, led by a known man, demanded 25% equity and a directorship. The militants have brazenly demanded a stake in the company. The company didn’t submit to the corporate hostage-taking. The company cried out. Recently, three of its workers were murdered on the plantation. The militants left a note. Okomu Oil plc contribute over 12 billion naira annually in taxes, hundreds of millions in CSR and thousands of jobs. But now they have to pay to protect themselves too. The country seeks foreign investors, but like Dunlop and Michelin, Okumu oil company now say they might shut down totally.
Politicians like to bandy manifestoes. These manifestoes are nearly always filled with colourful but false promises. But when a true leader assumes a crime-ridden situation, he must find sobriety and urgency. He can’t go around giving rambling speeches about how change must begin with the citizenry. He can’t go throwing about highfalutin concepts like trillion-dollar economy when rural farmers have all been sacked by bandits. He will make ministers understand the difference between statesmanship and petty partisan politics. They cannot go about bragging about their capacity to win the next elections in a country where the poor are dying in droves of hunger. They must sit down and define their vision and mobilize the citizenry to raise a mission force.
Right beside the troubled Okomu Oil plc is the Okomu National Park. Over many years, corruption and indolence have conspired to allow illegal logging decimate the park. They have finished the hardwoods. They are plundering the soft ones. The forest reserve is being looted, plundered, damaged by chronic passivity of government to crime. The managing director of Okomu Oils decribed it as a wholesale slaughter of the forest’s trees. The fauna of the nature reserve have been fundamentally displaced. At some point, there were over a hundred illegal logging camps in the Okomu reserve alone. A nation with forests filled with bandits feeding off their effrontery; some, stealing wood, and others, abducting people and taking ransom; all, sharing sovereignty with the weak state.
Sometimes, a new government might need time. It might need time to improve power generation and distribution. Time might be needed to enhance healthcare delivery. But a government that inherits an anaemic economy that relies on crude oil exports for blood cannot hesitate to stamp out industrial-level crude oil theft. If such a government travels the world pan-in-hand, begging for crumbs as loans without first seeking to staunch its leaking pipes at home, then it deserves the opprobrium of the people. The Chief of Defence Staff has announced a deadline of December 2024 for the security agencies to curtail crude oil theft. Ordinarily, that should be a marching order by the president who acts as the oil minister to all the service chiefs . Not just another theatrical political stunt to sound tough, but an indelible redline upon which the appraisal and subsequent retention, retirement, promotion or demotion of senior military officers will be based. Such a presidential message would relay earnestness that would reverberate across the land. Till today, crude oil theft still eats up over 30% of our oil output. But the government only talks tough to peaceful protesters
There is a local govt area in Imo called Orsu. It used to have about 200,000 vibrant people. Since 2021, when some insurgents converged on Orsu, the place has known no peace. Imo has a small land mass and is densely populated. It can easily be combed by security agencies. Yet Orsu is desolate. Churches have fled. The local govt HQ houses the military. The insurgents run the intestines of the villages. Orsu indigenes in diaspora have long stopped visiting home. Sometimes, when funerals compel a homecoming, permits must be obtained from the insurgents. The situation in Orsu and environs is a technical partition of sovereignty. The army stays on one side and, once in a while, dashes across to attack the insurgents. Otherwise, the army stays on the outskirts and the insurgents run the interior in a macabre peaceful coexistence. From nodes like Orsu, the insurgents conduct forays around the entire southeast. Any government that is intent on stamping law and order on the country can not settle into this shameful order of mind-boggling impotence.
A new government might demand patience. Because it needs a little time to study the situation and craft strategies. But if it is not impatient with lawlessness, if it fiddles while rogues run riot on poor people, if it sits astride and allows insurgents control territories that can easily be combed clean, its authority will dissipate quickly. If the government allows that humiliating surrender of communities to carnivorous sub state groups while it chases around harmless protesters, whistleblowers and rights activists with menace, it will deserve neither people’s nor God’s patience.
In Zamfara last year, one bandit called Damina levied some villages. The people of Kwana paid 30 million naira to buy peace. Sabon Mahuta paid 20 million. Unguwar Kawo could only gather 10 million naira. Damina and his boys wanted a total of 110 million naira. So they asked Mutunji to find the balance of 50 million naira. Mutunji was still struggling to gather the money when when Damina became angry with their tardiness. He sent his boys to Mutunji to teach them a lesson. After breaking bones and spilling blood they took away 100 Mutunji villagers and headed into the forest. Banditry has been allowed to become rampant and lucrative across the country. People fear to travel by road, rail or boat. The farms are deserted. This situation isn’t sustainable. The Tinubu government hasn’t fashioned any deterrence. Banditry and kidnapping are metastasising.
Perhaps Tinubu must start by appearing to be interested in fighting corruption. The federal government must exude the righteousness it seeks to instill in the forests. Without a visible attitudinal change at the highest levels of government to reflect an honest desire to stitch the moral fabric of the nation and enthrone the rule of law, the problem of insecurity cannot be cured easily. The state is weak.
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