Introduction
You need to travel around the country
on intra-state or inter-state business to realise that contradictory and
complex political contexts exists. Interaction is one measures of advancement
and progress within a territory and physical interaction via arterial routes
and especially highways is an important variable. Since no society is self-dependent,
independent or isolated, unimpeded interaction allows for trade, supply of shortages
and meeting demand obligations. Nigeria, her communities and multi-nations have
engaged in these interactions for thousands of years before New Economic Geography arrived behind Washington Consensus. The question now
is why are these lifelines dominated and choked each day by members of Nigerian
Armed Forces?
Stillborn Democracy
One of the worst expressions
which rightly mirror ontological stupidity is the media adoption of ‘nascent
democracy’ as code to narrowly legitimise appropriation of history. Sadly
revisionists continue to signpost Nigeria and her peoples with a 1914 start up.
No, the glorious peoples of various nations under Nigeria’s current leaking
umbrella have variable histories of democratic experiences over 1000s of years.
The idea of regarding democracy in the territory as ‘nascent’ indicates serious
historical neglect and abandonment.
Nevertheless, there is
unquestioned acknowledgement that the experiments in Nigeria since 1960 are
incomplete rather than ‘nascent’. The gaps, holes and ignorance of current
implementations in democratic dividends are glaring. One may go as far as
regarding the experiences as nuclei of confusion, malfeasance and degradation. At
every level of governance the principal stakeholder, the peoples, have
continued to be deprived and be marginalised including restricted of their
rights of unimpeded travel. Free movement is a right and the current experiment
has failed as most highways are imposed with illegal roadblocks manned by uniformed
armed members of the armed forces on average of every 4 kilometres. They are unaccountable,
extra-judicial and beyond the state though allegedly abuse the same state and
her peoples.
The question one now wonders is
what is the role of chief state security officer of states? The Executive
Governor of each state is constitutionally responsible for protecting his/her citizens
and encourage their collective growth including unimpeded movement. If the
administrations are civilo-democratic, what are members of Nigerian armed
forces doing on their roads in defiance? This is not Afghanistan, France or
Germany. This role has failed in every state rather Governors benefit from
their status with associate security details and siren to avoid daily
humiliation, bully, insults and abuse on the roads. Such serious abdication of
responsibility reveals the cancer of current political experience, which is the
lack of legitimacy from the people. The people are unprotected, exposed and
abandoned.
True Ugly Picture
What does these marauding bands
of uniformed armed men do at illegal roadblocks? To all intents and purposes,
there is nothing productive from their presence rather on the contrary
commuters and drivers live in perpetual fear. In the absence of internal
conflict and security deterioration, these armed uniformed men are imposed on
each route spread out at almost every 4km to harass, extort, bully, humiliate
and abuse innocent Nigerians. Most of the uniformed men are armed with AK – 47 Kalashnikov
assault rifle pointed towards each vehicle, towards unarmed civilians and towards
fearful citizens.
Unarmed citizen cannot negotiate with these uniformed armed men
who are law unto themselves and who sustain negative view of armed forces
ethos, traditions and objectives. Sadly they are also citizens of Nigeria but
one must admit their understanding of citizenship is maligned, distorted and
disabled. So in summary, the illegal roadblocks are illegal money collecting
shops. Sadly some innocent men, women
and children have been killed unlawfully without justice at these odious
roadblocks. Quite a dividend of democracy!
Institutional Abuse
While I refrain from US-que glorification
of armed forces, I must admit to the fact that the Nigeria I’m aware of has
never had the military far away from public life and public space. In any case
I do not subscribe to the imposed duality of choice of who runs the state or directs
governance. Nigerian military remains a
subject that needs to be studied carefully rather than celebrated without
reason or disrespected without calculation.
However as an institution it is a victim of
the project Nigeria from its emergence as a remnant of colonial baggage and
post-colonial political reconfigurations.
While its congenital disability is part of a wider problem, the sustained
absence of credible & people-friendly image has continued to diminish her ability
to meld seamlessly into the society as a force of positive change.
Nevertheless as a former British
colony and current client of Washington DC, it stands to reason that Nigerian military
remain unreconstructed consumer of strategic geopolitical outputs of the former
powers. The absence of internal national identity or distinct coherent cultural
template has forced this institution to maintain anti-people image rather than
a hope for positive change. In a sense it became a part of consolidation of
post-colonial power elite in the newly ‘independent’ countries a la Nigeria. Therefore the Nigerian armed
forces is in a cultural, temporal, political and strategic trap struggling to
clarify her battered image and identity. Rather it seems to easily go with the
flow of meeting wider needs of the power elite. To be part of the wider power
elite mean becoming their tool to some extent which involves compromising its
military processes and internal coherence greatly to the detriment of her
existence as a highly regarded institution in internal affairs.
A summary of the contradiction of
Nigerian Armed Forces or military is the imposition of strategic existential
threat on the country by the erstwhile head of state on the post-Nigeria-Biafra
war hubris that the main problem of the country is how to spend her bulging oil
wealth. In the absence of a strategic plan of wealth spending, the country
since has descended into a frenzy of cursed irresponsible spending of her
natural resources sales. This consolidated military contribution to Nigeria
problem or Nigeria question which is now inter-generational. What happens at
the illegal roadblocks is rather trickle-down effect of a compromised military rather
than mere abuse of military tradition and abuse of law.
In the final analysis, Nigeria military
have become an object of fear for ordinary Nigerians especially on the
highways, compatriots to be avoided at all cost as some communities will
testify; an institution still trapped with colonial mentality and uncertainty in
a country confused of her role in a geopolitically reconfiguring world.
Conclusion
One would hope for immediate positive
change where the military is withdrawn from Nigerian highways or reverse their
daily observation as enemy of progress via extortion, bullying, humiliation and
abuse and even extra-judicial killing. Nevertheless it is not easy to shush the
military back into the barrack and claim democracy incorporated. What is currently obtained is a cocktail of
political confusion in a vortex that has sucked the military among other things
into it. The democratic process or experience to ensure taking
responsibilities, that enhances institutional respectability and uplift the
common man will and should be unique, negotiated by all (including the
military) and committed and uncompromised.
If recovery of Nigeria’s dignity means that credible military take the
helm of affairs, such outcome shouldn’t be surprising, illegal or
unwarranted. Nevertheless our highways
and roads should be part of wider geography of free expression, free movement
and laboratories for experiencing positive democratic dividends which is
currently absent.
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