Omoniyi Salaudeen
Elusive search for peace in Nigeria appears to have been on forever. Like a needle lost in a haystack, every successive government had spent a good chunk of its time searching for a way to restore peace to the land, but all to no avail. And now, more than any other time in the recent past, the country is facing the most challenging security threat, especially with the increasing sophistication of the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents, rising incident of farmers/herdsmen clashes, arm proliferation, banditry, kidnapping, among other criminalities. All of these combined with the seeming lacklustre attitude of the Buhari administration to address the issues of ethnic chauvinism, religious intolerance as well as mutual suspicion among different nationalities have put the country on the edge of the precipice.
It was out of this concern that some eminent concerned statesmen, notably former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Prof Wole Soyinka, suggested the idea of another national dialogue to resolve some of the issues fuelling separatist agitations in the country. Debate is now rife among stakeholders as to the desirability or otherwise of the initiative. While those in support see it as an antidote for imminent disintegration, the antagonists of the idea dismissed it as a waste of time. However, one consensus on which all are agreed is the need for collective action against foreign meddlesomeness, as well as sponsorship by some unscrupulous individuals suspected to be fuelling the crisis.
According to Abubakar Tsav, a former commissioner of police, the alarming sophistication, which the terrorist groups have assumed in the recent time is a pointer to the fact that some powerful sponsors within are working in concert with foreign interests to bring down the country. He further noted that the alleged insincerity of some security personnel who were said to be making money from the raging insecurity that seems to have defied all solutions has worsened the situation, pointing at the intrigues trailing the case of the soldiers who recently made away with N400 million belonging to the troops fighting the Boko Haram insurgents.
His words: “There may be some level of dishonesty among some of our security agencies. They are making a lot of money from the present insecurity. Only recently, some soldiers were alleged to have made away with about N400 million. This is just a tip of the iceberg. For so long this insecurity lasts, so long will these people continue to make money. What government needs to do is to increase the number of security agencies. We have so many young people roaming the streets doing nothing, but ready to do anything that will give them money. For me, the answer is: recruitment, training and retraining. Our population has exploded and we have not been able to recruit more policemen to meet the United Nations recommended ratio of one policeman to 400 people. The few numbers of policemen in service have been attached to politicians.”
Querying the relevance of the proposed dialogue to the current situation in the country, he added: “I think the issue now is not about the question of holding a conference or dialogue on security. The issue is for everybody to cooperate with the government of the day to expose these actors and get rid of the security challenge. If we are going to hold a dialogue, what issues are we going to be discussing? Are we going to say they should ban the police and bring in new ones from heaven? Or are we going to say they should sack all the Service Chiefs and bring new ones? Whoever is brought in there is a Nigerian.
“We cannot have this level of insecurity in the country unless people are sponsoring the whole thing. From what is happening, it is like some people are sponsoring the whole thing. We heard from the police that some of the people arrested for kidnapping confessed that they were trained in Libya on how to operate and service AK47 rifle and they mentioned; though the police did not tell the public, the names of their sponsors. I think this issue of organizing dialogue on security does not arise. Government should increase the number of security agencies, train them and pay them well and let’s see what will happen. National dialogue will not solve the problems.”
A former governor of the old Kaduna State, Balarabe Musa, corroborating the same view, attributed the intractable national security challenge facing the country to what he described as internal and foreign imperialism, saying that national reconciliation is the only way out of the quagmire.
He argued: “We have problem of imperialism both internal and foreign. If we have a stable government, Nigeria will be one of the five most developed countries in the world. At present, Britain is occupying that position. Do you think imperialism, which still exists will tolerate Nigeria coming into that position? They will use everything to make sure that that does not happen. Within ourselves, we have a gang of thieves who decide the future of Nigeria. Because they are forever afraid of being probed, they will not want to see a stable Nigeria where they will be probed. This is what we should understand and stop quarreling among ourselves.
“What Nigeria needs is national reconciliation. Let Nigerians reconcile themselves and agree to unite the country so that there will be progress. If you read the controversy over RUGA, cattle colony or whatever you call it, you will see clearly that Nigeria needs unity first before any other thing. Let us have a meeting to reconcile Nigerians. And this reconciliation should involve those for and those against the controversy.
“Every part of Nigeria is talking about separation in different ways. But we all know that each one of them will lose more if Nigeria disintegrates. If Biafra is created, the Igbo will lose more than they will ever gain because they will need population, need resources, and so on. What will the Southwest gain if the Yoruba decide to go on their own? They are too quarrelsome among themselves. And in any case, do they have the resources to maintain a nation? What will the North that is proud of population get if there is separation? Nothing! All the benefits of their population will be useless.
“We are living in a world where large population is very important. At the moment, Nigeria has the fourth largest population in the world. Let us maintain that unity. And you cannot maintain that unity in the midst of all these.”
But a renowned historian and respected Yoruba leader of thought, Prof Banji Akintoye, quickly debunked the argument and stressed the urgency of national dialogue to rescue the country from the precipice. “Obasanjo said it that we need to negotiate and I think we have reached a point at which we must yield to that and start some negotiation. I don’t care whether it is going to be national conference, we need to negotiate now. We need to sit in a conference and negotiate,” he posited.
From the previous experience, such dialogue often turns out to be an exclusive affair of the political class whose action or inaction results in the crisis in the first instance, and at the end of the day, comes up with a wrong diagnosis of the problems and a solution that falls short of meeting the challenge. Asked about what would be the position of the Yoruba at the dialogue table, he said: “We will be negotiating whether or not we want to be in this country together and on what basis. We Yoruba, for instance, will say we cannot live in a country where they are killing people. We don’t kill people. It is not part of our culture. We don’t want to be forced to kill foreigners. If it is inevitable that we must kill foreigners among us, we don’t want to be part of it all. We have to make up our minds on what we want to do. Other nationalities too will go there and say their own things. But that is a very important thing for the Yoruba man.”
Speaking further on how to select genuine representatives who would stand in for the Southwest people at the conference, he declared: “Our people will decide that. How many of them (politicians) will dare come out now and say they are representing the Yoruba in this matter? They are free to share money in Abuja, but in this Fulani enclave in our land, they can’t speak for us. We are going to resist that except if we have held a meeting with them, agreed on what we want and what they want and ask them to speak for us.”
The National Chairman of the UPP, Chief Chekwas Okorie, aligned his argument with Akintoye, saying there could be no better time for national dialogue than now. “I have been an advocate of dialogue. I supported the previous one even though I was not part of it. And I was very pleased that most of the decisions reached at that time were made by consensus.
But unfortunately, the President who organised it foot-dragged and so could not implement it. Dialogue has resolved conflicts all over the world. There are so many conflicts that need to be resolved in the country now.
It is necessary and will even help the government to focus on good governance, as most of the people who are distracting the President now will be using that conference to resolve all of these conflicts. Several distractions are coming from different angles. Some of them are politically motivated. Such a dialogue will put together champions of ethnic agitations under one roof to resolve some of these conflicts and it will be healthy for us. A country as complex, diverse and complicated as Nigeria needs a dialogue. The importance of having a national dialogue cannot be overemphasized particularly at this time,” he insisted.
According to him, the composition of the dialogue should include all former heads of government, as well as other people who had gained experience in the past.
The Spokesperson of the Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-cultural group, Yinka Odumakin, who was a delegate to the 2014 national conference, also lent his voice to the debate, stressing the need for the various components to discuss the way forward.
“We had a national conference which if it had been implemented, would have got us out of this mess. But since the government in power is not interested in the report, and Nigeria is drifting towards disintegration, I think it is not a bad idea if we have a three or four-day national dialogue to resolve some of these issues of insecurity in the land. That is the sense in which Prof Wole Soyinka and former President Olusegun Obasanjo are calling for a national dialogue not the kind of national conference we had in 2014 which lasted for three months,” he explained.
At no time in the recent past had Nigeria been this threatened by security challenges.
Therefore, any suggestion that could forestall the looming national disaster, stakeholders say, would be a welcome development.