The struggle to reclaim chunks of
Nigeria’s territorial space violated by Boko Haram continues to make
headlines, nationally and internationally. Unlike the dreaded Ebola
scourge which government appears for the moment to have successfully
contained, the insurgents seem to be constantly replenishing their
tactics, illustrated by recent occupation of territory and the
declaration of an
Islamic Republic in Gworza. The ebbs and flows of the
military campaigns, the swelling ranks of refugees and the sensational
revelations of Stephen Davis, have found wide play in the media and
national conversation.
Little noticed, however, much less
discussed are the heroic exertions of rag tag local militias, one of
which reportedly overpowered 75 insurgents around Mubi, Adamawa State,
last week. Nor is this an isolated event. The hunters around Chibok, a
village that entered the world map through the April 14 cruel abduction
of over 200 schoolgirls have been actively involved in repelling
skirmishes and ambushes of Boko Haram in the vicinity of their
homelands. It is interesting that the largely unsung acts of these
militias now dovetail into the formation of a Civilian Joint Task Force
giving backup to the military formations.
The third example of impressive
volunteering comes from the recent report that about 10, 000 Maiduguri
youths demonstrated against the ceaseless attacks of Boko Haram and
expressed their readiness to be conscripted into the battle against the
sect. This report must of course be placed in the context of recent
raids and forays around Maiduguri signalling a military confrontation
between the Nigerian Army and Boko Haram. In other words, as several
besieged citizens scampered out of Maiduguri, these youths decided to
stay back and ward off the invading terrorists.
What is significant about these acts of
courage is that they point to prospects of civic renewal, a virtually
invisible chapter in our national chronicle. The decay of a state that
has more or less orphaned its hapless citizens has been much lamented.
We have heard very little however about civic decay, that is the failure
of the civil society to take action on its own behalf if only to remedy
the consequences of state paralysis. A colleague, who came from the
United States recently, narrated to me how he got down from a car taking
him to Lagos from Ibadan in order to put a few stones and some sand on a
particularly dangerous spot on the expressway. What alarmed him, he
explained to me, is not the well-known fact that it had taken so long
for government to carry out ongoing repairs on that busy road but the
fact that Nigerian citizens, some of who ply that road on a daily basis,
go on the road in blissful indifference to simple remedial steps which
would have made it a less dangerous road. Of course, it can be submitted
that it is not the duty of the citizens to repair roads for which funds
are perennially appropriated. Nonetheless, the anecdote illustrates how
far away we are from the kind of communal self-help that can change
things in little ways.
Akin Mabogunje, renowned professor of
Geography, it was who marvelled at the state of mind of Nigerians who
have no qualms in removing railings from a newly constructed bridge in
order to sell them. Hence, instead of a civic conscience energising and
motivating purposeful action that will benefit society, we have an
emerging “uncivil” society prepared to destroy public property for
self-enrichment. The oil pipeline vandals and bunkering barons, exam
malpractice racketeers, fake drug merchants and other criminalised gangs
point to a society that has cast off all restraints and slipping back
into the Hobbesian state of nature. Remarkably, these foot soldiers
and generals waxing fat at the expense of a degraded society will turn
round someday and blame the government that things are not working. What
is not factored is that the trade union leader who converts union funds
into private wealth, pastors and Imams stealing their congregations
blind, delinquent lecturers who trade marks for sex and cash are just as
culpable as politicians who have merely stretched this mode of impunity
to an industrial level.
To be sure, some of the problems began
with the inherited colonial state which made it a point of duty to
isolate itself from the community by building Government Reservation
Areas for the tiny colonial overlords. In Jebba, Kwara State, the GRA
sits aloft a high hill in splendid isolation from the presumed commotion
in the rest of the town. This is a perfect metaphor for the Nigerian
state run by experts, foreign or local, but hardly affecting the lives
of those it purports to govern. Consequently, our democracy is one of
representation narrowly concerned with rights, mainly political rights,
but hardly participatory or deliberative in the sense of harnessing the
energies of communities let alone making them the focus of governance.
That is why what passes for local government is neither truly local
since it is derivative of a vertical geography of power sanctified by
trickle down philosophy nor is it government properly speaking since it
does not seek the opinions of the communities around it and is perfectly
content to carry on without them.
In other words, state decay is
complemented by and reproduced through civic decay as state and society
are caught in a politics of irresponsibility. The hunters of Borno and
the youth volunteer militias of Adamawa in standing up to Boko Haram
have shown a different model of state society collaboration indicating
that civic renewal and the reconstruction of the Nigerian state are not
mutually isolated but complementary projects.
None of the foregoing arguments are
meant to excuse or apologise for Nigeria’s bandit political class. The
point must be made however that the state cannot be reconstructed or
transformed without drawing upon the untapped energies, knowledge
systems and heroism of civic communities which must now be fully
enlisted in the search for redemptive governance through a bottom-up
approach.
How can this be brought about? There is
the need to put the people rather than experts with rescue mission
mindset at the heart of governance. If government will not do this, then
the people must seize the initiative. Nothing stops communities and
their representatives from taking active interest in how the budget for
health or education is drawn up and expended. It is too late to complain
about poorly furnished hospitals after a comparative paltry sum has
been allocated to the health sector. Similarly, it is crying over spilt
milk to lament the decay in education after the yearly budget has been
constituted. Civic renewal would mean that swathes of non-partisan
groups will hold town hall meetings in the prelude to the drawing up of
yearly budgets to discuss and establish priorities. This will also
involve groups set up by the people to monitor and cross check the
claims made by government on what and what they have achieved at various
times.
The bottom line is that the valiant acts
of the vigilantes of the North-East should be turned into an occasion
for civic renewal and the re-engineering of the Nigerian state.
