Insecurity is not peculiar to Nigeria.  It is now a disturbing trend in the North and West African subregions.  Apart from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, Cameroon and, to some extent, Benin and Cote d’Ivoire have been hit at one time or the other. Mozambique in southern Africa has not been spared. It would therefore not be inaccurate to speak of a belt of insecurity in Africa.

In northern Nigeria, particularly in the north west and the north east, highways are unsafe, farmers cannot go to their farms, innocent people are abducted even from their homes.  School children cannot continue their education as the Chibok abduction has been reenacted in more places. 

The opening remarks prepared for delivery on February 14, 2020 by Angela Gurría, Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) come to mind.  The occasion was the unveiling of the Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC)’s report on the Geography of Conflict in North and West Africa.  Gurría had this to say in her remarks entitled “The Evolution of Violence Across North and West Africa”: “The level of insecurity in the North and West African region escalated at a threatening rate over the last few years. The sharp increase in armed attacks on communities, schools, health centres and other public institutions and infrastructure has reached unprecedented levels, with violence disrupting livelihoods and access to social services.

“Growing insecurity has also exacerbated already chronic vulnerabilities in the region, including high levels of malnutrition, poor access to clean water and sanitation facilities.

“This is unprecedented. It is a threat to our entire globalized world, and we must talk about it. We must find viable solutions, together, to tackle a crisis that has the potential to affect all of us.”

The usual response of African governments has been to resort to military solution.  Reinforce the military.  Increase military budget spending.  Buy more guns and bullets.  Buy more war planes for surveillance and bombing. The level of insecurity has provided a convenient excuse for young soldiers to stage coups, as has happened in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso. 

For those who are familiar with the history of military coups in African, what is more worrisome is that a young African population, traumatized by insecurity and frustrated by bleak economic conditions enthusiastically welcomes coup plotters despite the fact that the military in Africa, like other security agencies on the continent, have not shown themselves to be friends of the people.  Most of the young Africans rejoicing over seizure of power by soldiers are either too young or were not even born during the dark nights of brutality, of violation of fundamental human rights by the African soldier that preceded the 1990s. 

The colonial origins and inspiration of the African soldier do not recommend the military in Africa as saviours.  African armies were established and trained by colonisers, not to protect but to oppress and intimidate the population.  African soldiers are yet to be purged of that job description.  Today, they shoot their way into power.  After years of mindless brutality and brutal dictatorship, they will replace their military uniforms with civilian garb, and organize “democratic elections” in which they will be competitors and umpires.  They then metamorphose into “born again democrats” and “democratically-elected Presidents”.  One question that needs to be asked is: whether the latest bout of opportunistic militarism is related to a new scramble for Africa?

Beyond the euphoria of messiahs in military fatigue, of impostors who shoot their way into power, there is need for proper diagnosis before therapy, a need to identify the factor or factors behind this disturbing trend of insecurity. Military intervention, either by way of counter-insurgency or by way of unlawful seizure of reins of government by opportunistic coup plotters, is an adventure that is to be called to question. 

As Gurría continued in her remarks, the Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi) used in the report that was being launched “shows that, while military interventions have generally reduced the intensity of violence in the short-term, and achieved their military objectives of stopping rebels, destroying the bases of violent organisations, or removing dictators, they have not brought about durable conflict resolution. Conflicts in the region have local roots; insurgencies emerge because of grievances, real or perceived, that should be addressed through civilian procedures and means. The use of the SCDi helps to show how military interventions can create both spaces and moments where violence is suppressed, but will not generate durable solutions to the political circumstances that gave rise to the violence in the first place.”

The primary factor is forgotten or ignored but certainly neglected. The factor to which other factors are related is failure of state.  The state is a collection of institutions established by the constitution to protect the land and its inhabitants as they go about in pursuit of objectives they need to attain for their well-being, and for the well-being of their dependents.  The fact, however, is that, as is the case in virtually every African country, African states are weak because constitutions redacted to regulate them are grossly deficient.  It therefore becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to address real or perceived grievances “through civilian procedures and means”, to use the words of Gurría.

A constitution establishes a framework for addressing grievances that can lead to insurgency.  It does so by establishing institutions that constitute the state.  These institutions are to be at the service of the citizen.  For them to function in this regard, they must be in the hands of leaders of requisite multiple competence, leaders with intellectual, ethical and technical competence.  The electoral process must, as much as possible, reflect the will of the people. 

However, almost all African countries operate constitutions that make their states to be more powerful than their citizens.  The state, in this case, is the head of state, and the head of state, by way of the African big man syndrome, is an absolute monarch, unquestioned and unaccountable.  The state is appropriated and personalized by the head of state.  Its institutions turn around him.  They are not run to be at the service of the citizen but at the service of the head of state.  For example, for decades, security forces in virtually every African country have been funded, trained and equipped, not to protect the citizen but to protect the head of state and the ruling elite.  Rather than protect the population, they intimidate, brutalise, maim and sometimes kill the citizen.  Imagine a situation where the security personnel you hire and pay to protect you and your family descends on you and the family.

To speak of the electoral process in many African countries is to speak of a process subject to the whims and caprices of persons lacking in democratic credentials and temperament.  They have the money to run expensive campaigns of vote buying, they have their militia used to commit electoral fraud and violence, they know how to make the votes count in their favour in the-more-you-look-the-less-you-see elections. Young Africans who are jubilating in support of coup plotters do not believe democracy can work.  But what has failed is not democracy.  It is the failure of African ruling elite to practice democracy.

It is now clear that security forces in many African countries are simply incapable of adequately responding to the complexities of insecurity that bedevil these countries.  Where the constitution is deficient and weak, state institutions are weak; and where institutions are weak, they become incapable of playing their primary role, which is, protection of the land, its citizens, and other inhabitants.  Faced with weak constitutions, weak states in the hands of powerful but incompetent dictators, faced with the collapse of vital institutions, the North and West African subregions are being overrun by bandits.

Instead of waiting till a military coup takes place in a member country before reacting, this is the time for leaders of subregional countries in Africa like the Economic Community of West African States, and leaders of countries on the African continent, the African Union, to do a serious soul searching and be frank in their conversations with their peoples and with one another.  Military coups are not the solution.  They in fact constitute a huge part of the problem.  The military has no business in government.  The very notion, the abomination of staging a coup to overthrow lawfully constituted government, as experience shows, destroys institutions necessary for freedom and stability. 

It is a well-known secret that suspension of the constitution, which is the first ignominious act of coup plotters, is the installation of the arbitrary.  In Nigeria, military rule destroyed federalism by suspending the federal constitution in the name of the Unification Decree of May 24, 1966.  Before the apparent departure of the military, first in 1979, and then in 1999, the constitution given to Nigerians, though labelled federal, is in fact the amplification and legitimization of the Unification Decree of 1966, the smuggling of a unitary system of government into a supposedly federal constitution. 

The 1999 constitution has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that it is incapable of facilitating security of the land and its people.  The incapacity is self-inflicted by the constitution’s placement of security of a vast and diverse country exclusively in the hands of the government at the centre.  The constitution has itself created grievances in an environment of mismanaged or even unmanaged diversity.  And it has proven to be incapable of addressing the grievances.  That is why Nigeria is in urgent need of restructuring either by way of a substantially modified constitution or by way of a new constitution altogether.  But Section 9 of the same constitution makes that a near mission impossible.