By Idris Miliki Abdul.
There are, unavoidably, social, economic and political implications of the periodic eruption of violence in Nigeria. The truth is T that the occurrence of persistent social turmoil, such as large-scale violence perpetrated by ethnic militant groups and by aggrieved individuals and groups in society, as witness in the post elections violence and the current Terrorism and banditry crisis have negative effects on the possibility of democratic institutionalization, least alone sustainable democracy.
Similarly, violent conflicts cannot create the conducive environment necessary for political stability and economic development. An environment where there are frequent eruptions of intra and inter ethnic clashes, riots, violent demonstrations, armed confrontations, breakdown of law and order, and political assassinations, legislative impunity will be found unfriendly to investment, either local or foreign, and by extension, cannot engender development. The bitter animosities, bloodshed and displacement of people, consequent upon civil strife, are sufficient reasons for wide condemnation of the use of violence for the resolution of grievances, which make it absolutely necessary for the Government of Kogi State to constitute a permanent committee that can respond to crises and even violent in any part of the State. Such committee should comprise people of proven integrity from the three senatorial districts of the state who are not partisan politically, these would include Security Agents, Genuine Civil Society Organizations, Media Practitioners, Nigeria Bar Association, Youths, Women Groups and Religious leaders.
Although every one condemns violence, it’s use has been wide spread in society both by official and private sources within all established democratic societies there is popular belief in the democratic culture of the settlement of conflicts peacefully rather than by coercive methods. However, Nigeria’s experience from independence to date suggests a wide gap between the ideal of democratic governance and the reality of governance. The explanations for this are many and varied. On the part of those who govern, high premium is put on the acquisition and retention of power, hence their political intolerance, unbridled partisanship, political corruption, disregard for constitutionalism, and the rule of law, transparency and accountability. In short, the political class uses the coercive instruments of the state to perpetuate themselves in power on the other hand as previously argued within the Nigerian pluralistic society, there are deep cleavage, cutting across ethnic, religious and social-political line.
The Government in Kogi state must be ready to face and skilfully manage the challenges relating to identity, legitimacy and distribution, in order to consolidate the authority of the state over it citizens. When the government fails to meet and response to these crises of political development, violent conflicts become inevitable. Participation and distributional crises would serve as a threat to national stability. In other words, power must be collectively exercised in most inclusive manner, just as the authoritative allocation of values requires transparency and equity amongst the different members of our society. The Nigerian State was a product of colonial imperialism, hence the state was not only an imposition by an alien authority for predatory and exploitative purpose, the Nigerian State from the word go was alienating, undemocratic and anti-people.
A fall out of this was the development of patronizing concepts of citizens into indigenes and settlers. The settlers, despite the constitutional provision on equal and non-discrimination on the basis of place of birth, gender, religion, and education. We must appreciate the fact that, conflicts cannot be wished away in any human organization, whatever the size, ideological orientation, the pursuit of divergent and contradictory interest, goals and aspirations by individual or groups provides the bedrock for conflicts in societies. A universally constant fact pertaining to conflicts is the fact of its impossibility outside the struggle and competitions over resources that are not unlimited. Though this scarce resource may be power, given its scarcity, one can safely say that all conflicts have economic character, that are a product of the problems of scarcity and the need to either secure one’s individual or group privileges, protest perceived injustices and inequalities in allocation of resources, and or strive to obtain without regards whether others are currently having a lager and bigger share of available scare resources.
The combinations of economic factors and power in the engendering all conflicts, whether violent or non-violent, even religious conflicts, which ultimately can be reduced to power over peoples believes, thoughts, mind, and what happens to them in the hereafter, can be understood in the context of power. The twin problematic of violence and democracy which is our concern in this write up. Therefore, the political economic frame work offer us a very rigorous and systematic basis for interrogating and understanding the issues and contradictions these twin concern had generated and continue to generate in Nigerian Society. I must warn that all conflicts are not class conflicts, that find expressions in ethnic and communal or group conflicts. The fact that community politics is highly instrumental, provides opportunities for ethnic entrepreneurs to cash on communal sentiments in furtherance of class objectives. Beyond a narrative of the historical occurrences of violent conflict in Nigeria, conflicts are by nature a product of history, contrary to the believe that conflict just happen or rooted in the present, all conflict have deep historical roots. The ethnic militia deploys violence against any institutions and groups perceived as constituting a threat to the interests of their primordial groups. However, since the militia phenomenon is a highly unregulated, structural deficient, under the leadership of intellectually bankrupt. As the experience of the violent crises in Nigeria are unleashed even against members of the same ethnic group they claim to be defending. This raises a fundamental question as to the genuineness of the objectives of these groups. This is however not to say that there are no genuine concerns from their struggle. However, the Nigeria people must realize that what cannot be settle peacefully would not be achieved by violent.
The inability of democracy to change the exploitative condition of the people and the reality of their continued disempowerment is responsible for the escalation of violent conflicts in Nigeria and particularly in Kogi state. Hence, the preference is for ethnic justice, exclusiveness, corruption, injustices, domination, and executive gangsterism, legislative lawlessness, impunity, and miscarriage of justice as we currently experience in Nigeria. Conflict sensitivity involves the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of development projects so that they are better adapted to conflict environments and also have some ameliorative impacts on the conflict or at least, not worsen them. It concerns the ability of the development process to work more effectively not only ‘in’ and ‘around’ conflicts areas, but also on the conflicts themselves. A direct and practical way to tackle these priorities in my own opinion is to explore the specific interactions that occur between development in these environment. Such a review can alert development practitioners to the threat that conflicts represent to development and also help
to try merely to repress the violence, for violence is just a hash symptom of deep-rooted socio-economic and political malaise. Towards this end, policies and programmes that qualify and well-being of the citizens must be vigorously put in place. There must be help toward social and economic security. The issues of human resources development capacity building and utilization must be tackled with urgency and the necessary political will.
Uunderdevelopment
Obviously, underdevelopment is not the absence of development, because every person have developed in one way or another and to a greater or lesser extent. Underdevelopment makes sense only as a means of comparing level of development. It is very much tied to the fact that human social development has been uneven and forms a strictly economic view-point, while some human groups have advance further by producing more and becoming wealthier. The moment that one group appears to be wealthier than others, some enquiry is bound to take place as to the reason for the differences. At all times, therefore, one of the ideas behind underdevelopment is a comparative one. It is possible to compare the economic conditions at two different periods for the same country and determine whether or not it had developed. In some quarters, it has often been though wise to substitute the term “developing” for “underdevelopment.” One of the reasons for so doing is to avoid any unpleasantness which may be attach to the second term, which might be interpreted as meaning underdevelopment mentally, physically, morally or in any other respect. The social services provided by a country are of importance equal to that of its material production in bringing about human well-being and happiness. It is universally accepted that the state has the responsibility to establish schools and hospitals, but whether these are provided by the government or private agencies, their numbers can be established in relation to the size of the population. The services are available in a country can also be measured indirectly by looking at the life expectancy, the frequency of the deaths among children, the amount of malnutrition, the occurrence of disease which could be prevented by inoculation and public health services, and the proportion of illiterates. In all these respects the comparison between the develop and underdeveloped countries huge and even frightening differences.
The Tragedy of the Moment
The tragedy of these times is that those who plunged this nation into so much needless stress have shown no remorse whatsoever for their actions. For several years, they have systematically planted land mines on our path to greatness. Ethnic land mines, religious land mines, induced inter and intra party strife, arm twisting of the legislature and threat of banana peels, refusal to obey court orders, not to talk of the economic ruination of the common man and the market women etc. I fear that the atmosphere is so polluted with spite, personal interest, untruths, distrust, pretense and vengeful intents, that even if every Nigerian resolved today to work with all the dedication possible to ensure a safe passage, the road to greatness will still be extremely difficult to traverse. Therefore, we need to be vigilant, alert and ready to frustrate every evil plot.
Conclusion
Conflict, crises and violent cannot be eliminated from human society. However, to avoid their escalation and the unpleasant consequences, political societies can be sustained only through the successful management in terms of prevention, resolution and transformation of conflict and crises of any kind. For the consolidation of Nigeria’s fledgling democracy civilian leaders must practice good governance. This requires imbibing the appropriate civilized attitudes which facilitate political co-operation and limit the stakes of engagement in politics. The leaders in public office must maintain an open government, discard a common sit-tight approach to political power in order to free themselves from too much dependent on bad agents to perpetuate a rule of mediocre and the status quo. Its recurrence must therefore be prevented. Finally, it has become a categorical imperative to radically restructure the Nigerian Federation, and radically transform the dependent, exploitative and anti-people state system. Without this all the suggestion above will come to naught. As we said earlier, the structure and processes of the state is germane to what can be achieved in terms of democratic institutionalization, human capital development, peaceful co-existence, violent free elections and society, and not the least, national integration, genuine democracy, that is democracy of empowerment and not liberal and market democracy is the ultimate cure of violent conflicts in Nigeria. This is the real challenge Nigerians are faced with as we move towards the 2027 general election.
– Idris Miliki Abdul is the Executive Director, Conscience for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution (CHRCR)
