(Being A Paper Presented by Emeka Umeagbalasi, 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. Umeagbalasi can be reached via: +23474090052. Email: emekaumeagbalasi@yahoo.co.uk.)
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.
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