Restructuring will solve Nigeria’s security problem — ED CASER, Tietie
By Taofeek LAWAL, Abuja
The present state of insecurity in Nigeria has been attributed to the quasi-federalism system of government being run by the Nigerian Government. A social commentator and an Abuja-based legal practitioner, Frank Tietie, stated during an interaction with Nigerian NewsDirect on Wednesday.
Tietie said the secessionist tendencies currently being witnessed in the country is as a result of the gap in security arrangements on the part of the police and the military. Nigeria has, almost on a daily basis, witnessed killings by terrorists and bandits, kidnapping of its citizens for ransom and abductions of children from the schools mostly in the northern part of the country.
He added that the security architecture in Nigeria has collapsed totally and this he said has eroded the confidence of the citizens in the ability of the security agents in securing them.
He said, “The present state of insecurity in Nigeria is unprecedented. There has been nothing like it after the civil war. Now, we are talking of ethnic cleavages that are clamouring for secessionist states out of Nigeria, it has not been this bad. We should not be looking at these secessionist tendencies as actually the problem but what actually are which precipitated this current state of secessionist in the South East and the South West is because security generally has failed in terms of stemming the tides of kidnapping, banditry and the biggest one of them; insurgency. Over time, the Nigerian society has been under serious barrage of insecurity issues and the average Nigerian has lost faith in Nigerian security arrangement in terms of the Police and the Military in providing security. These ethnic nationalists have therefore reason because of that gap that has been created by the Nigerian security forces in their failure to stem the tide of armed banditry and kidnapping. We hope that there can be a change because what is happening in the South East right now is expected because of failure of the general security system in Nigeria and it could also get worse.”
To get out of the insecurity situation, Tietie, who is the Executive Director, Citizens Advocacy for Social & Economic Rights (CASER), said the only way is to allow for proper restructuring of the federating and the developmental units such as the states and the local governments and allow them to be independent of the Federal Government for optimal level performance. He said the continuous running of the Nigerian federation like a unitary system will continue to slow down the security arrangement in the country.
“The way out is clear and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is a clear need to restructure this country. You cannot run a federation with a unitary security system. Let the federating units and the developmental units like the local governments and the area councils together with communities take an active constitutional role in providing security. So long as there is any form of exercise of political power by the people at any unit, such unit must also exercise the powers to establish measures and institutions that can provide form of law enforcement. So, restructuring is the answer. Restructure the Nigerian federation to give responsibility, to share responsibility in providing security to all persons. Clearly, what we have operated as a unitary police system has failed. It is now time to tell ourselves the truth and operate the federal structure the way it should be,” he concluded.
