- Why crossing the bounds will persist
By ONYEDIKA AGBEDO
AFTER 103 days outside the country on medical tourism, President Muhammadu Buhari returned home penultimate Saturday to meet a country whose unity has come under immense threat. And he was not ignorant of the situation. In his broadcast to the nation last Monday, he admitted that all was not well with the country, observing that some people had already crossed Nigeria’s national red lines.
“In the course of my stay in the United Kingdom, I have been kept in daily touch with events at home. Nigerians are robust and lively in discussing their affairs, but I was distressed to notice that some of the comments, especially in the social media, have crossed our national red lines by daring to question our collective existence as a nation. This is a step too far.
“In 2003 after I joined partisan politics, the late Chief Emeka Ojukwu came and stayed as my guest in my hometown Daura. Over two days we discussed in great depth till late into the night and analysed the problems of Nigeria. We both came to the conclusion that the country must remain one and united. Nigeria’s unity is settled and not negotiable. We shall not allow irresponsible elements to start trouble and when things get bad they run away and saddle others with the responsibility of bringing back order, if necessary with their blood. Every Nigerian has the right to live and pursue his business anywhere in Nigeria without let or hindrance. I believe the very vast majority of Nigerians share this view,” the President had said.
But does expressing one’s views about the state of affairs in one’s own country and proffering solutions amount to crossing the national red lines? Who are the culprits? What are the issues driving them and how can the country rise above such issues?
Former Minister of Information and Culture, Prince Tony Momoh, explained to Sunday Sun in an interview that some Nigerians cross the national red lines when they exercise their freedom of expression outside the limits provided by the constitution.
“The constitution is very clear. Our constitution provides for freedom of expression without interference but according law. The red line is where you start punching but goes on to punch another person’s nose because your freedom ends where another person’s right begins. If you punch beyond where you should punch and bruise my nose, then you are crossing the red line. Freedom of expression is freedom according to the law; you do not destroy people through running them aground, implying criminality to them and then destroying their profession and so on. Crossing the red line is the reason people go to court for defamation and libel. People also cross the red line when they appeal to the sensibilities of other people and call them to revolt; people cross the red line where one religion starts attacking other religions; people cross the red line when one ethnic group tries to insinuate wrongness on another ethnic group. That is what is called free speech plus; where you have free speech plus, you have crossed the red line. The fact is that the constitution is a document of dos and don’ts. If you do the dos, you have not crossed the red line but if you do the don’ts, you have crossed the red line,” Momoh said.
Momoh, who is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), listed those who had been crossing Nigeria’s national red lines to include the coalition of Arewa youths that issued quit notice to Igbos living in the North to leave the region by October 1, this year.
He added: “The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is crossing the red line by saying (if it is true) that there is Biafra secret service. El-zakzaky is crossing the red line by having a group in different colours stopping people from moving freely in Kaduna and Zaria. Boko Haram is crossing the red line with the insurgency in the North-east.”
Momoh, however, noted that those who had crossed the red lines might have done so as a result of some perceived imperfections in the system that ought to be addressed.
“People may be crossing the red line in reaction to what they consider injustices in the country. But they may move beyond the line that was drawn by free speech, in which case there has to be communication. You have to discuss and that is what I always say. You discuss grievances and resolve them because problems arise from lack of communication, inadequate communication or miscommunication,” he said.
He added further: “In my little book, ‘To Save Nigeria, Let’s Talk’, I emphasised that Nigeria is over stressed and the people are also over stressed. When people talk of restructuring, some people say that they don’t know what restructuring means. In that little book, I said we can attend to these grievances of inequity and so on and so forth through rearranging what we have now. When you rearrange them by decongesting the political space, economic deregulation is automatic. We need to reduce the power at the centre and move them to the regions. We don’t need two assemblies; let’s disband the House of Representatives. Let the Senate be the body that will make laws at the centre. There are about 93 items now that the National Assembly makes laws on. We can reduce them to about 18 and then all others will go to the regions. These regions will know how to distribute them within the states constituting them. And then you will reduce cost of governance.”
Momoh warned that until Nigeria alters the present system of governance and addresses the perceived injustices in the system, the problem of people crossing the national red lines would persist.
“We spend more than 80 per cent of our earnings on recurrent expenditure, which if it is more than 25 per cent in any country, you go back to the drawing board. Nigeria is just more in democracy than in development. There is nowhere in the world where you put democracy before development; democracy is always a luxury of development. As long as you do not attend to these issues so that you cure the injustices people perceive now, there will always be this issue of crossing the national red lines because of people’s reaction to what they consider to be injustices in the system,” he noted.
Speaking in the same vein, the President/Lead Consultant at Africa Network for Peace and Justice (ANPeJ), Dr. Nick Idoko, said the President should have gone beyond declaring that “Nigeria’s unity is settled and not negotiable” to outline his plans towards ensuring that the constant threat to the corporate existence of the nation becomes a thing of the past.
Agitations for the dismemberment of the country had been rife in recent times. At the helm of the agitation are the IPOB and the Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) that have remained persistent in their call for the secession of the South-east geo-political zone from the country to form the Republic of Biafra. The agitation gained so much momentum in the zone lately, culminating in the resounding success of the May 3, 2017, sit-at-home order issued by the pro-Biafra groups. Irked by the development, a coalition of Arewa youth groups issued a quit notice to Igbos living in the northern parts of the country to leave on or before October 1, barely a month after. As the Federal Government was still working to calm frayed nerves and reassure Nigerians of their safety within any part of the country, a Yoruba group, the Yoruba Liberation Movement (YOLICOM), also banged the drum for the disintegration of Nigeria, recently declaring that Yorubas were set to secede from Nigeria to form Oduduwa Republic. The grievance of the group was the rejection of the Devolution of Powers Bill by the National Assembly, recently, in the ongoing constitution amendment exercise. A group of Niger Delta militants, the Adaka Boro Avengers (ABA) also recently said they would declare a Niger Delta Republic in the oil rich region on October 1. The group, which had sometime in 2016 issued a similar threat but later withdrew it, warned that there would be no going back this time around. Meanwhile, there had been a raft of reactions to the President’s speech positing that Nigeria’s unity is negotiable contrary to his position.
To Idoko, who is a conflict management expert and public affairs analyst, the solution to continuous threats to national unity lies in addressing the issues breeding them.
“When the President talked about crossing the national red lines, he was talking about people that are creating situations that will lead to division and break up of the country and that he would not allow that to happen under his watch. He made various references from the analysis of his speech. Yes, on assumption of office, he made security the bedrock of his administrational pursuit. So, he was warning that he wouldn’t condone any agitations from groups of people or individuals who may constitute themselves into roadblocks to national unity. That was why he went beyond that to say that the unity of the country is not negotiable. It is understandable from where he is coming but to many Nigerians, that is a throwback to 1984 when he was military Head of State. A lot has changed since 1984; this is 2017 not 1984. But that is not to say that one is wishing for the break up of the country. But if you do not want a break up of the country, if you do not want to condone these agitations, then you must address those concerns, which gave rise or are giving rise to them. But he didn’t tell us how he is going to address them.
“That is why I say that you were away for 103 days and you return from medical tourism and you are addressing the nation and you deliver a speech of less than six minutes. I call it under performance. It was an under performance because he needed to chart a new course and remind us where he left us and what we need to do going forward. So, he left Nigerians wondering what the speech was all about.
‘So, if he says he would not condone the agitations across the country, he has to address the issues. There is agitation for secession in the South-east. The issue of Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB was an issue he dealt with even before he took ill and he left it hanging. It has not been resolved,” he noted.
Idoko added: “In conflict resolution, there is what we call conflict transformation. Where you do not address those issues that led to the conflict originally, there will be a reversal. Until you get to the point of transformation, the conflict can start all over again. And the point of transformation is where you start addressing those original issues that brought about the conflict. This is what Nigeria has not done and that is why there is recurrence of agitations. The issues that led Nigeria to the civil war are still germane; they are still not being addressed holistically. So, if he doesn’t want agitations for secession, resource control and even Boko Haram insurgency, then he must address those issues that are giving rise to those agitations. And he must do that innovatively. You don’t expect a different result when you do the same thing the same way; it’s not possible.”
The President, from every indication, is fully aware of that, as he did note, in that same speech: “Our collective interest now is to eschew petty differences and come together to face common challenges of economic security, political evolution and integration as well as lasting peace among all Nigerians.” What appears to be lacking is the political will to pursue these lofty goals that will banish the issue of national red lines from Nigeria’s political lexicon. And Nigerians are looking up to him.