Road to State Failure?

Nigeria is a bubbling theatre of conflicts and violent uncertainties. The Nigerian government, including security forces, appears to be grossly overwhelmed by the nation\’s avalanche of security challenges. Thus, the exponential increase in violent incidents, casualty, and kidnapping figures. In the first five months of 2021, about 311 incidents with 1,579 deaths and 939 kidnapping victims were recorded, according to the Nextier SPD violent conflicts database. In 2020, there were 306 attacks with 1,409 deaths and 721 kidnappings. With seven months to go, the statistics of 2021 has already surpassed what was recorded in the previous year.

Due to the government\’s apparent ineffectiveness in securing lives, livelihoods and ensuring governance equity, many ethnic-based groups have capitalised on the extant issues to provide safety and pursue other ambitions. For example, self-rule interests are now interwoven with achieving safety for groups in society, and the impact has been telling on already depleting insecurity. Clear and latest examples are the creation of the Eastern Security Network (ESN), the Yoruba nation movement, and the relatively mundane Biafra Customary Government (BCG).

The new ethnic-based agitating groups are new actors in the unfolding violent scenes. The relevance of these groups grows as rural insecurity deepen. The ESN purportedly rose to secure the lives and properties of the Igbo people. The Yoruba nation movement, currently led by Sunday Adeniyi Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, has been responding to the current violent attacks in the southwest zone. On Monday 7th June 2021, he led hundreds of youths to Igangan in Oyo state to assess the impact of an armed attack, which reportedly left scores of residents killed.

Evidently, from the preceding, beyond the government\’s inefficiency to save people from inherent security threats, new groups are emerging to play government\’s role and demand self-determination. The trend reflects poorly on the social contract where people give up some of their natural rights in return for state protection. Just as the benefits of the social contract have become a luxury, the competition over the state\’s supposed monopoly of violence is likely. In a Foreign Policy article by Robert I. Robert, a founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School\’s programme on Intrastate Conflict, and John Campbell, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, Nigeria has become \”a fully failed state of critical geopolitical concern\”.

Robert and Campbell\’s stance appears to be more focused on the regional impact of Nigeria\’s collapse, with considerable mention of its large economic potential, West African hegemony and spillover of Boko Haram terrorism from the country into Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. Internally, the duo\’s diagnosis of Nigeria\’s state failure simply lies in political theory, projections from organisations such as Freedom House, the human rights reports of the U.S. State Department, and the anticorruption perception indices of Transparency international and evidence-based analysis of current security issues in Nigeria. However, they affirm that the first step to restoring stability and security is recognising that the government has lost control.

Therefore, to navigate Nigeria out of the current escalating crisis of violence and deaths means recognising an increasing deterioration of general peace and security. The January affirmations of the new service chiefs have statistically not reduced recurring violence and threats. Hence, a comprehensive security framework reorganisation is needed to capture existing and emerging violent threats beyond political and ethnoreligious purviews to an objective and solution-focused strategy. In essence, the Nigerian security operatives need to tackle the menace of insecurity and ensure the safety of lives and properties. The Nigerian government must also provide adequate resources in advanced training and security hardware to position the nation\’s troops to be effective and efficient.

Also, based on perceived security threats and unfavourable governance, current conversations on self-rule are valid, at least in the sense of maintaining stability. Therefore, government must shift from a hard-line and standby offensive against such conversations to include room for dialogue. Agitating groups need to see government put action to words in securing lives and investments. The relevance of many self-imposed regional group leaders will decline if government delivers good governance. This also includes promoting all forms of inclusion and balanced public goods delivery, ensuring peace and security, and providing an enabling environment for people to advance their ambitions within the legal ecosystem. Although Nigeria\’s state failure is largely debatable, it is clear that the current dynamics reflect a steady journey towards a violent and unsurprising halt.