The conspiracy or invisible hand of the unknown gunmen threatening and violating life and properties among individuals and nationalities in Nigeria remains an unanswered question in Nigeria polity. The flash and hot spots at the length and breadth of Nigeria are an evidence of the depth of insecurity and impending conflagration threatening to engulf Nigerian nation-state.
Separatist resistance in the Southeast, herders/Fulani war in the North central, Fulani violent incursions in the west and south-south, e.g. the Abraka war against the Housa/Fulani residents and the jihadist insurgency in Northern Nigeria are proof of the failure of a wobbly state, manipulated by the so called “Deep state”, ie, state exploited by billionaires.
Faulty constitutional foundation, unitary federation, ethnicity, religious bigotry, regional disharmony, lack of political shared framework and institutions , elite-centered politics and poverty have exacerbated the syndrome at national and subnational levels. Professor Charles Chukwuna Soludo recently discovered that, also, inordinate traditional occultism and religious institutions were culprits, enablers and partners to most of the hydra headed crimes in Anambra State.
This has, at least, proven that each state in the federation has its peculiar security and insecurity terrain, to be intelligently studied by sub-nationals’ security apparatuses.
So, the question is, therefore,: how can citizens with fundamental and comprehensive different religious, cultural and moral worldviews and doctrines (pluralism) live together under shared institutions of political power? Nigeria has had difficulties experimenting liberal tools and concepts such as, freedom, equality, equity, liberal legitimacy, natural duty of justice, moral duty of civility and public reason. The failure in the application of these ideal liberal instruments might have caused serial insecurity at substantial levels without the state doing anything.
Nigerian security digest shows that it is not only ethnic, religious or sectionally motivated, but also bears the insignia of class consciousness of war of each against all. The insecurity problems of banditry in the North east and North west , the unknown gunmen in the southeast, kidnapping in the south south and southwest as well as ritual killings in all the south are class conscious maladies in a society that have difficulties appropriating liberal tools of government.
Nigerian nation state is a plural society and if pluralism is not regulated, bad economy and corruption could lead to class resentments against public trusts and liabilities. Beyond pluralism of interests or preferences, the archetype of Nigerian deep diversity in religion, culture and ethnic nationalities are not merely private beliefs but are constitutive of personal and collective identity which often demand public recognition and political expression.
In a pluralistic polity, absence of good leadership, diversity, religions, cultures and ethnicity become vices weaponised. And where paternalism and expert/boss fallacy fails as the opium of the masses, insecurity soars as citizens abandons the tools of natural duty of justice, moral duty of civility and liberal constitution to take their destinies in their hands. More so, when politics becomes a zero-sum game of group survival, the stakes are existential, as liberal tools becomes foreign or insufficient.
Apart from colonial and amalgamation fallacy in the creation of Nigeria, separatist agitations, banditry, kidnapping, ritualistic moneymaking and corruption are creations of systemic injustice; lack of fidelity to natural justice, civility and law.
Political legitimacy requires that political power be justifiable to all reasonable citizens on grounds that they can accept. Yet, citizens do not share a baseline idea of what is “reasonable” and so, liberal principles continue to slumber and somersault.
Sharia law in the North is against secular law in the South with the suspicion of Western liberalism as neocolonial or anti-religious and south’s secularism is suspicious of Northern agenda. All this leads to fragmented public reasoning — what is legitimate for one group is intolerable to another. Nigerian factor of “anything goes” sublimates in the consciousness of Nigeria as fragmented public reasoning leading to vices, impunities and crimes with the conviction that the end justifies the means.
It is not only banditry, kidnapping, robbery and insurgency that bread violence, corruption in public office is also a special kind of violence that destroys the society. Where natural duty of justice ensures that citizens have a moral duty to support just institutions, corruption in form of election rigging, ethnicity and favoritism declares otherwise.
Where moral duty of civility expects political decisions to go the ways others can reasonably accept, mutual suspicions erode the space and provide seat for crime, religious bigotry and separatism. When people feel existentially threatened, they may reject compromise and resort to lawlessness- banditry, kidnapping and impunity, or justified civil disobedience, secessionist agitation in the Southeast and mutual distrust of national institutions hold sway.. In short, when the moral foundations of cooperation collapses the public sphere becomes a battlefield for the survival of the fittest.
How would Nigerian state evolve out of this inbuilt systemic insecurity, “audacious survival of the fittest”? Consociationalism or rotation of offices could not be propagated because of elite capture and identity politics. Multinational federalism or cultural self rule and legal pluralism have been resisted by centralist elites. On each of these possible courses of action out of the delirium the Nigerian factor of “who owes which and what” breads impunities and crimes that overwhelm liberal values and assumptions.
To avoid this spiral insecurity, Nigeria needs a new political imaginaries beyond colonial and liberal inheritances with emphasis on voice and contestation that allows thick local identities to flourish within a shared constitutional order. Without this true federalist principles based on natural duty of justice, moral duty of civility and liberal political legitimacy, each state in the federation, in its peculiar security and insecurity terrain, would remain burdensomely systemic against each and all, but for Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo’s Abambra security initiative.
Prof. Dukor is the president/Editor-in-Chief, Essence Library (Cultural and Scientific Development Centre), UNIZIK.
