North-west and North-central governors in Nigeria were invited by The Africa Centre at the United States Institute for Peace, to a symposium on peace and security in Northern Nigeria. They have however come under fire for honouring such an invitation.
The usual and predictable fire is from none other than a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Sule Lamido. Lamido issued a statement berating the governors who are mostly of the All Progressives Congress,APC, with the exception of Plateau and Zamfara state governors. It is understandable that the remark is coming from the ‘new’ opposition party, even if it is unreasonable. I’m certain that those remarks wouldn’t have been made, if they were largely PDP governors.
We are all witnesses to the decadence in governance brought about by the 16 years of PDP misrule of the country. Eight years on, we are dealing with the hubris of the erstwhile ruling party’s waste that had plundered the nation’s resources, leaving no tangible infrastructural development.
The terrorism bedeviling the country was, in fact, ‘birthed’ during the PDP years, waxing stronger, subsuming an entire region of the country. If any, the lasting legacy of the PDP years is the terrorism the country is battling to rescue itself from, while deploying the meagre resources meant for developmental projects across the country. Berating northern governors for standing up for their region is mere opposition politics. The criticism failed to properly comprehend the workings of the symposium, its depth, content, and benefits.
The Africa Centre for Peace in the United States invited the governors to build their capacity in conflict prevention and fostering peace. The centre seeks to empower governors to address the underlying causes of instability and to strengthen peace building initiatives at local and state levels. They would be engaged by panelists that will focus on insecurity drivers and opportunities for stabilisation.
The symposium would deepen their understanding of the complex security landscape, identify the strategies to address the challenges and explore opportunities for sustainable peace and development in the region. The United State’s Centre for Peace is also hosting special panels in the symposium that would focus on strengthening commercial business and two way trade between Nigeria and the US. This will explore collaborative efforts between the governors, Nigerian civic groups, private businesses and the international community to attract investments, generate employment and foster economic development.
The criticisms against the symposium are totally misguided, as they do not reflect on the objective of the symposium and its actual content. The critics actually misunderstood the broad spectrum approach the symposium is bringing to the issues that have destabilised the region. Critics have taken a dig at the symposium as if it were a ‘military exercise’ for the governors, citing security as being on the exclusive legislative list, and concluding that the Office of the National Security Adviser ONSA ought to have hosted the symposium at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPSS, Kuru, near Jos, Plateau state.
The symposium is working on the root causes of the insecurity situation we have found ourselves in, and the deployment of multifaceted approaches towards curtailing the menace. It is emphasising on the need to bolster the economic well-being of the region as panacea for insecurity. The symposium is availing the governors networks of partnerships in the international community including private investors and other development partners, with whom they can work. The symposium is working on the carrot approach, also known as The non-kinetic strategy of fighting insecurity. There is nothing that can advance the security stability of the North better than the economic stability of the region, and that is the crux of the matter, which the symposium seeks to address.
Of course, the kinetic or fire-power approach across the country is yielding results. In the last eight months, more than 1,000 kidnap victims have been released. Thousands of terrorists have been annihilated across the war theatres from the North-east to the North-west, about 20 notorious bandit kingpins killed. The governors of Katsina, Zamfara and Sokoto states have put together community/vigilante corps to fight insecurity in their states, which is being replicated across all states.
States like Katsina and Niger have gone as far as procuring Armored Personnel Carriers to advance their fight against terrorism. The collaboration between the vigilantes and the Nigerian state security forces has been commended, with the police and the military extolling the gallantry of the community guards. So, numerous steps are being taken towards advancing peace in the North, aside the recent symposium.
TRT-Africa, a renowned global broadcast network, in its evaluation of the symposium, said there is nothing abnormal about the symposium attended by the governors, as they have been equipped with very revealing International surveillance reports about the insecurity bedeviling Northern Nigeria. The US has army and naval bases in all of Nigeria’s neighbouring countries and spends a lot of money in intelligence gathering, among other warfare expenditures.
Dr. Abdullahi Yelwa, an expert on security and conflict resolution, also reiterated the benefits of such a symposium, stating that it is a critical step towards understanding and resolving the insecurity in the North. The symposium equipped the governors with a variety of solutions and options that if properly deployed, can bring an end to insecurity. Criticising them for thinking outside the box and seeking alternative solutions to the problems in their region is definitely a disservice to a joint and committed efforts by the governors.
Tahir is Talban Bauchi
