(Being text of the lead paper presented at a conference on drivers of insecurity in Nigeria organized by the Faculty of Social Science, Osun State University, Osogbo at its Okuku campus on Wednesday, 27 November, 2024)
When I was asked to come and present a paper here, and on the theme of insecurity and what drives it, I asked myself: Why me? I am not one of you, neither am I of the brotherhood of the gun and sword. My first degree is in English Studies, my Masters is in Communication and Language Arts, my doctoral is on Social Media and Politics, my second first degree is in Law. Yet, all of these combined do not make me one of you in the strictest sense of what you do.
I am, however, aware that the way to the market is made up of many roads. And, it is not strange to hear our ancestors tell the unsure: ko di’gba ti a ba wo igbo’ro ka to dagba awo. How do I translate that? One does not necessarily have to be initiated in the sacred grove of the ancestors before one can become an elder in spirituality. So, in writing what I will be speaking on here today, I have tried so hard to wash my two palms, fingers, wrists, all, so that I can dine with you and enjoy the meal.
This conference is themed on what drives insecurity in Nigeria. What is security? What is insecurity?
I know I would be asked to make some conceptual clarifications before I can proceed to say whatever I know about this issue. That is your tradition. And, I am going to attempt to put my feet in the exact places where those who created this space put theirs.
Before you ask me, I have asked myself: What is insecurity? So, I checked and I have read William Bruce Cameron and Thomas C. McCormick’s May 1954 seminal piece on the “Concepts of Security and Insecurity.” I have perused the sociological treatment of those concepts, their classification into several categories: security as a goal of life; insecurity as emotional response to sudden external threats; insecurity as a function of belief, especially religious; insecurity as inimical to the development of the personality and, insecurity as the cause of certain kinds of attitudes and behaviours such as envy and jealousy.
In simple terms, insecurity is what my Oxford English dictionary says it is: “the state of being open to danger or threat, lack of protection.”
This gathering is about “drivers of insecurity”. What do the organizers mean by “drivers”? If you go to any major park around here and ask for the definition of ‘driver’, you are most certainly going to receive the same definition: “a person who drives a vehicle.” But, here in this room are a professional group of people called social scientists. Their own definition of ‘driver’ won’t be as simple and straightforward as the unlettered member of the NURTW. They will define ‘driver’ as the significant factor, or the key element, or force that actively influences or pushes a particular social phenomenon to occur.
So, what is making our people vulnerable to “danger, threats, and lack of protection” today? My people say if we shout Horror (iboosi) gently, quietly, it will become a song, or even a music, and the world will join us to dance to its beautiful beats. I should not bore you with what I should not. I do not have the isms that you have. What I have are stories and allusions and “a story well told is a gift that keeps giving.” The timeless words of those who saw their tomorrow which is our today should provide us with the right explanations for where we are and what we’ve become. I am a media man, born and bred into storytelling. So, I will pick what I have, largely from the media. I start with Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
When Chief Obafemi Awolowo turned 72 on March 6, 1981, he told the Nigerian Tribune in a birthday interview what has turned prescient about Boko Haram in the northeast and banditry in the northwest. I crave your indulgence to start my contribution to this discourse by quoting him, and it is fairly long. Bear with me. Awolowo said: “I don’t think we are doing anything about our security at all, and I hope that Gaddafi won’t take advantage of our neglect of this very important aspect of our nation’s integrity and then infiltrate into the country. I have my suspicion that right now Gaddafi may be infiltrating part of the north because people who live in Chad can pass off very easily like people who are Nigerians. Only rivers in some places divide Nigeria from Chad. People on the other side have relatives here. People here have relatives on the other side and the children meet in the same river to swim and play, It is easy for them to mix.
“And large areas of land in that part are uninhabited and during the rainy season, these areas are waterlogged, and so it is possible for him to establish posts in every part of the place and put in up to 10,000 people, who are well trained, and if they launch against us, we may have about half a million soldiers, but soldiers can only fight against pitched soldiers on the other side and not against guerrillas who are scattered all over the place, burning houses, killing this, killing that, and raping women all over the place. The effect of that would be that hundreds of thousands of people would start running down South to other places for safety. So, I have very poor thought about what we are doing about our nation’s security.”
The response of the people in government that time was that the elder statesman was crying wolf where there was none. Well, Gaddafi did not really come directly to infiltrate us but thousands of his weapons and men did after his death. And they did exactly as Awolowo said they would do: killing, maiming, and raping women while the lucky ones keep escaping to the south. Even when what Awolowo predicted manifested in Boko Haram in 2009, it took years before those directly impacted by its cruelty accepted that they had a problem.
The Yoruba say oojo ko ni ori nburu (head does not go bad in just one day). What we have here did not start today. I have someone’s eyewitness account. In an interview with The Guardian on 7 February, 2021, a retired General of the Nigerian Army who has also been military administrator of Lagos State and later, governor of Osun State, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, gave what I would call a rare insight into the poisonous salad bowl that birthed insecurity in northern Nigeria.
Oyinlola said after he left Lagos as administrator, he was posted to Maiduguri as Brigade commander. At a Borno State security meeting, he called the attention of the authorities to the threat posed by the prevalence of out-of-school children, thousands of whom were always seen under dogonyaro trees, the Almajiri taking Quranic studies. He said he told the meeting “look, this is potent danger for the future. If these ones will grow up to become men and they have no means of livelihood, they have to fend for themselves in whichever way. So, I suggested that more classrooms should be constructed so as to accommodate them in schools, where Quranic studies will also be taken. And surprisingly, one of the commissioners at the meeting said if we did that, the Mallams (the Quranic teachers) would be thrown out of job. I was so furious and told him that if you were one of those unfortunate Almajiri under the tree and you had no basic education, would you be in this meeting? You would be under the Dogoyaro trees too. I said ‘let me tell you, if nothing is done now and we leave them to grow up to be men, many of you will not sleep again.’ I told him at the meeting ‘you all that think you are big men will not sleep again (at night); and they will break your house by daytime. They are grown-ups and they must feed and if there is no social means of livelihood, it would be every time robbery. They have grown and that’s why we have trouble there and the orientation, educationally is, obey Mallam.”
So, how many years did it take for that jungle to mature? Chief Awolowo’s warning of 1981 which was ignored; and Oyinlola’s warning 40 years later perfectly situated the point where the rains started beating us. Again, all the elite in that axis of the country, as warned by Oyinlola, stopped having peace of mind a long time ago. The entire country is the victim.
In a perfect case of penny-wise, pound-foolish, scarce resources that should have been used to educate the children of the north are now being pumped into an interminable war with terrorists and bandits. All the drivers of insecurity that anyone would identify are in those two warnings: bad governance will encourage bad cultural practice; both will lead to a regime of mass illiteracy and ignorance which will breed joblessness. A combination of mass illiteracy, mass unemployment, mass indoctrination will complete the cycle of dangerous belief systems and injurious cultural behaviors. The result is today’s Hobbesian state of nature: life is nasty, brutish and short.
To be continued tomorrow.
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