Continued from last week
Being text of a keynote address delivered by Chairman, Governing Council, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Prof. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, at the public commissioning of Mive Legals (Ballason Chambers)’s Centre for Medical Law and Matrimonial Counseling Centre in Kaduna recently.
Remembering Molluma, thanking Mabeiam
Second, in the race for power, our politicians seem mostly to be unwilling to observe rules of respect lawful constraints on what they can do. In (paragraph 15 of) its 2011 report, the Presidential Committee on Security challenges in the North-East Zone of Nigeria (also known as the Galtimari Committee Report), concluded:
It is also important for Government to direct the security agencies to dig deeper in their investigations of the (JALISWAJ) sect by beaming their searchlight on some key politicians and individuals that were culpable in establishing, funding and utilizing the sect for political or other selfish reasons.
Third, contrary to their oaths of office, many of our political leaders have not much cared about the best interests of our people. Take the example of Borno State. Around 14 December 2006, then Governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff, in response to wide spread criticism of his record (or lack of it) as Governor, declared as follows:
A lot of falsehood has been published over the years in newspapers about my government and I never lose sleep over them because less than five per cent of Borno people can read and understand what is written in newspapers.
Very few noticed this statement at the time. But Thisday Newspapers was sufficiently alarmed about it to highlight it on its back page on 15 December 2006. Today, we all and not just the people of Borno State, live with the consequences of the cynicism of a senior public officer who deliberately decided to under-develop the people whose sacred mandate he exercised for eight years as Governor and for another four as a legislator.
Now to inequality. Under Section 15(2) of our Constitution, “national integration shall be actively encouraged, whilst discrimination on the grounds of place of origin, sex, religion, status, ethnic or linguistic association or ties shall be prohibited.” Accordingly, Section 15(3) of the same constitution requires government to, among other things:
• provide adequate facilities for and encourage free mobility of people, goods and services throughout the Federation;
• secure full residence rights for every citizen in all parts of the Federation;
• encourage inter-marriage among persons from different places of origin, or of different religious, ethnic or linguistic association or ties; and
• promote or encourage the formation of associations that cut across ethnic, linguistic, religious and or other sectional barriers.
Despite these provisions of the Constitution, discrimination is the norm not the exception. Wherever you look, Nigerians are settlers and indigenes in their country. Every State in Nigeria would compete to have Aliko Dangote as their resident, paying taxes and employing their people but only in Kano State would Aliko be able to run for office. Our economics is garrisoned from our politics and the separation is protected with instruments of violence. In Plateau State, over 15,000 people have been killed; hundreds of thousands and have been displaced; and Jos has become desolate in over one decade of indigene-settler mass killings. Races and sects are now garrisoned behind Kaduna’s invisible but very real lines of division. In 2010, the Abia State Government sacked nearly 5,000 workers from different states in south-eastern Nigeria on the claim that they were non-indigenes of Abia State. At the last count, over 200 of these workers have died, a rate of mortality that is very much in excess of the national average.
Next, let’s look briefly at climate change. Is it an accident that the two most ecologically fragile and endangered parts of our country – the Sahelian frontiers of the Lake Chad Basin and the Mangrove and rainforest creeks of the Niger Delta – are also the two most deeply insecure? Only about 40% of our 923,000 Square Km is arable and the greatest loss of arable territory has occurred in the Niger Delta due to hydro-carbons exploration and the Sahel due to the south-ward march of neo-Sahelian climate change. In northern Nigeria, it is estimated that about 29 million people live in the 10 States of Nigeria’s Sahelian fringes. As the Sahel spreads south-wards, populations affected by it migrate further south, increasing inter-communal tensions. In the past decade, the Lake Chad has shrunk by 40%; by 90% in the last half-century. Livelihood has grown much harder for the transboundary communities that depend on it for water, energy, and sanitation. Yet, with this kind of information at our disposal, our responses have comprised the two extremes of martial interventions or amnesties but nothing in the form of climate or governance adaptation?
We’ll take globalization and innovation together as both have spurred one another. The result has been paradoxically both greater global inter-dependence and greater regional tension and insecurity. The violent end-game in Libya was brought about by indiscriminate supply of hardware to various anti-Ghaddafi militias from beyond Africa. Its aftermath has de-commissioned considerable hardware and unleashed a vast supply of ordnance and mercenaries across the Sahel, feeding large-scale insurgencies across the region. Without this background, it is impossible to understand the recent escalation in the situation in north-east Nigeria.
An emerging field of existential concern to Nigeria is our Sahelian neighbourhood, the largely desert and semi-desert region that stretches from the Arab Maghreb in the north to Equatorial Africa, and from the Atlantic in the west to the Blue Nile in Sudan. It embraces Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad as well as territory in southern Algeria and Libya, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan. The Sahel now presents what may be Nigeria and Africa’s most daunting challenge yet: how we respond to this will have a defining impact on our future. In adopting the enforcement resolution on Mali on 19 December 2012, the United Nations Security Council called attention to the:
Insecurity and the significant ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Sahel region, which is further complicated by the presence of armed groups, including separatist movements, terrorist and criminal networks, and their increased activities, as well as the continued proliferation of weapons from within and outside the region that threaten peace, security, and stability of States in this region.
To be concluded next week
