As reactions continue to trail the decision last week by some governors under the auspices of the Northern Governors Forum to join Governor Dikko Radda of Katsina state in honouring the invitation of the Africa Centre at the United States Institute of Peace to attend a symposium on peace and security in Northern Nigeria, we at Daylight Reporters wish to take a look at the salient issues that have been raised and the implications therefrom.
To put the trip in clear perspective, Governor Dikko Radda of Katsina state and his counterparts: Uba Sani (Kaduna), Abba Yusuf (Kano), Nasir Idris (Kebbi), and Umar Namadi (Jigawa), Ahmad Aliyu (Sokoto), Dauda Lawal (Zamfara), Hyacinth Alia (Benue), Mohammed Bago (Niger) and Caleb Mutfwang (Plateau) were jointly invited to attend the symposium on peace in Washington, scheduled take place between 23 to 25 April, ostensibly to explore ways of mitigating the pressing security challenges in the domains of Nigeria’s most terrorised states.
The optics and the intendment for this journey immediately make a play for a grand and noble endeavour. It is, however, when other more cursory lenses are cast on it that questions begin to mount. The first, which we consider telling is whether or not the trip and reasons advanced for it is even worth the trouble. This is considering the fact that these governors have been enmeshed in the sociopolitical design of these states long before they were elected governors. It then begs the question, what strategic engagements have they put into mitigating insecurity and mainstreaming peace individually and collectively?
Answers to the above questions will naturally lead to more questions. Many Nigerians have wondered if a research institute in faraway America could be competent enough to champion discussions about Nigeria’s insecurity. But more hair-raising is the question would the governors have honoured the invitation with so much pomp and pageantry had they been invited by a Nigerian research institute or think-tank?
Other concerns with regard to the cost of financing such a trip have also found their way to the public space. But whereas we believe no cost should be spared to gain insights into possible information or strategies that could return the tide of insecurity in these Northwestern and Northcentral states, we can’t but wonder if it won’t be more economical to bring the resource persons into Nigeria perhaps in collaboration with a Nigerian university. We believe such a collaboration would not only cut costs, but it will also help to document and domicile such knowledge sharing in such a Nigerian institution while also affording researchers in the area to share and gain insights from the expatriate team.
We consider this journey to the United States of America in equal standing with the detestable pilgrimage to the Chatham House by virtually every Nigerian politician contesting for office. Such journeys do not only make pronounced, our painful history of colonialism but also expand the deepening inroads that neocolonialism is making into our national discourse.
The former Governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, referred to the trip by the Governors as a display of ignorance. He berated the governors for “abandoning the mounting insecurity in their region and electing to travel to the US for the summit, said it was an embarrassment to Nigeria… to attend the summit when their region was in the grip of terrorism and terrorists”. Whereas we could not be as dismissive as the elder statesman, we reckon that he is not too far from the collective thought of Nigerians on the matter. It is our strongest conviction that no government, let alone a policy think-tank should have the levity to summon our governors in their numbers to anywhere.
Were these governors serious about parleying on the state on insecurity in their states, they could have leveraged the idea of the invitation to organise a local summit on the issue. A Nigerian scholar, Murtala Ahmed Rufa’I author of the much-publicised book, “I am A Bandit”, decade-long research on Bandits Den in Zamfara state, has created a robust platform for not just research into activities of Bandit/terrorists but also laid a strong marker into discussions on the subject matter. One wonders why scholars like Rufa’i and many others trying to understand this phenomenon of non-state actors and swarths of ungoverned spaces will not be brought together to form a team of intelligentsia to champion local content towards proffering solutions to the menace of insecurity.
We believe the decision to overlook our local scholars and deep thinkers to go running to the USA to be huddled up into discursive colonies moderated by a foreigner on insecurity in Nigeria makes rubbish of the much-touted need for homemade solutions to our local problems. Once again, this trip reminds Nigerians of just how irrelevances are made to take the place of pressing issues requiring the attention of leaders at national and subnational levels.
However, now that they are there to attend security classes, and engage in bilateral business engagements, the least that indigenes of the states whose scarce resources have been deployed towards the trip would expect is a physical manifestation of the expected gains of this jamboree. Anything short of this will retire this trip into the sad halls of such previous trips signposted by wastage of public funds.
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