Chidi Amuta

For the better part of the last decade and half, Nigeria’s national security status has come to be measured by human casualties.  Hardly any day passes without the news headlines featuring stories of gory mass murders and senseless killings. When such news breaks, the question is usually about the scale. How many died? If it is about one or two dead, people move on. Attention and feelings only begin to be incensed when the number of dead is in scores. As a society, our collective humanity has become so inured to the loss of human lives on an industrial scale that we are literally now an insensitive society.

In the last week or so, we have had the Uromi killings of over 18 alleged hunters by local vigilantes. The versions are varied. One says a lorry load of men armed with Dane guns was intercepted by local vigilantes in Uromi, an area of Edo state that has been constantly assaulted by armed ‘strangers’.  The armed men who happen to come from the northern parts of our country were killed by the vigilantes. In that single incident, so many aspects of our corporate existence as a national community were abused: citizens’ right to move around freely in their country, the responsibility of locals to guard their safety, the ultimate responsibility of law enforcement to determine who bears arms and for what etc.

In the same week, the familiar inter ethnic and inter communal clashes in Plateau state led to the loss of many lives. All hell was let loose in the state in a now familiar virtual state of emergency in which inter communal communications and interactions in the affected areas have become impossible. Again, religion, livelihood interests and socio cultural troubles were raked up. The Plateau state governor has lamented his loss of security control of many parts of the state to bandits and random armed gangs who have literally outgunned the security forces. Almost simultaneously, similar skirmishes have been reported in nearby Benue state with an attendant loss of yet to be determined number of lives.

In the same week, Governor Zulum of Borno state has cried out about the resurgence of Boko Haram induced violence in many parts of the state. According to him, a new wave of the Sahelian jihadist violence has erupted and is rapidly retaking many parts of the state. Beside these major theatres of violent eruptions, sporadic killings and violence have been reported in places like Zamfara, Enugu and Ebonyi states. These are only recent incidents in a spiral of insecurity and violence that has become a permanent feature of our national scene. Literally, we sleep and wake in a virtual pool of the blood of our innocent compatriots who live in the susceptible areas.

For the past over a decade, every annual national budget has seen spending on defense and security rise astronomically. The pattern of defense spending looks more and more like that of a nation in an openly declared war. Orders of fixed wing combat aircraft, helicopter gunships, missiles, armored personnel carriers (APC) and drones have since become part of the annual ritual of our defense and security budgeting. Nothing in our budgeting or defense orders suggests a nation at peace with itself.

Correspondingly, insecurity has come to occupy a permanent place in the rhetoric of our politicians and political actors. Every presidential candidate and virtually every other governorship aspirant has come to include the eradication of insecurity as a priority item in their manifestoes and agenda. There is in fact, a pervasive psychological state in the nation that seems to have come to accept insecurity as a permanent part of our reality.  We are a frightened nation. People are afraid of each other. People are afraid to travel along the highways, rail roads or urban alleys. A mood of fear has been added to the prevailing atmosphere of poverty, hunger and economic desperation in the land.

Because our land is among the top five most dangerous places in the world, the military has since become part and parcel of our internal security profile. In virtually all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, joint patrols of the police and all arms of the military have been joined by Civil Defense, Department of State Security personnel and even local hunters armed with charms and amulets in a daily round –the- clock chase after bandits, jihadists, kidnappers, abductors and sundry “unknown gunmen” in urban and rural parts of the country. Squads of combat joint patrol troops in pickup vans have become a common sight on our roads and streets.

Beyond animated physical chases of bad people by security agents, there seem to be little effort to intelligently interrogate the real causes and patterns of our insecurity. Yes indeed, there is a fancy office of a National Security Adviser (NSA) with a full compliment of the paraphernalia of high power. But it is routinely defied by armed non- state actors who terrorize the populace consistently.

In a nation that has weaponized faith as an instrument of national existence, religious zealots have found it attractive to arm their devotees with assault rifles, Improvised Explosive Devices and suicide vests to advance toxic versions of their faiths. In a nation where the government used to maintain a monopoly of ultimate violence and coercion, the availability of the instruments of violence to all and sundry at a market price has demystified the state. Uniforms have become common outfits made by tailors which should not frighten people. People are no longer afraid of the guns or uniforms of the state.

Non state actors have been emboldened to challenge the state and sometimes even outgun the state. The democratization of the technologies of violence, disruption and destruction through the internet and other dark channels have made the task of the state as possessor of the instruments of ultimate violence more herculean.

Add to this the recent rise of micro nationalism in different parts of the world and the popularization of the ideas of self-determination of minorities as part of the rhetoric of international political language. Weapons of war and their random deployment by all manner of militias and separatist non-state forces have become part of the language of international political interaction. A new dictum of sovereign assertion has emerged: “We shoot, therefore we are.”

Most dangerously, in parts of the developing world, politicians have come to be agents of insecurity because insecurity itself has also become a tool in the quest for political ascendancy and apex power. Investment in non- state violent expressions has become attractive to politicians and professional trouble makers. It is common knowledge in Nigerian politics that in successive years, politicians have been known to import military uniforms, assault rifles, light arms and tear gas grenades to threaten and frighten and intimidate their opponents.

Thus overwhelmed by rival coercive forces, the state has buckled and weakened under the pressure of violent intimidation. In the process, merchants of trouble and blood have forced the state to cede them space in an illicit power sharing arrangement. Bandit leaders have signed MOUs with elected governors literally ceding parts of the territories of states to bandits and terrorists. Farmlands have been known to be ceded to bandit squads as concessional territories for revenue collection. Farmers have to pay bandits to plant, weed and harvest their crops.

In the process of this parade of illegitimacy, our society has created and tacitly come to recognize new categories of errant citizens and outlaws. We have seen the emergence of new types and archetypes of the anti social hero- Unknown Gun men, Gun Men, Bandits, Cultists, Yahoo Boys, and Kidnappers etc. These categories literally wear their badges with swagger and a certain degree of ‘pride’. It is worse when each of these illicit undertakings yields troves of cash in returns. A society that has come to enthrone the worship of money is prepared to do obeisance before these new deities of money and power.

On the social and cultural canvas, an insensitivity to blood and human suffering has come to characterize our new collective psychology. Capturing people like animals, maiming them with pleasure and dismembering them no longer frightens people. New forms of trade have emerged. Trade in human parts for money rituals, human sacrifice to facilitate success in cybercrime ventures, the use of rape to test male prowess and access to supernatural powers is now a vogue in some parts. A new generation of Nigerian youth sent to universities to partake in the wonders of modernity in science and technology are ending up as ritualists, rapists, voodoo priests, campus cultists and all the direct opposites of the aims of modern higher education.  A society suffused in religious superstition and all manner of prehistoric beliefs rolls out the red carpet for the new heroes who are then rewarded with lavish accolades, traditional titles and honours.

In a society where literally everything is a form of organized crime, even the fight against violence and insecurity has itself become a form of organized crime. Security has become an industry in itself. Security personnel collude and collaborate with kidnappers, abductors and bandits to facilitate their operations in return for a commission. Field commanders have been known to trade in intelligence that endangers their men in return for cash.

Sometimes, commanders sit on the allowances of their subordinates. Racketeering in defense and security budgets are not strange to generals who aspire to retire as billionaire real estate moguls and big business people. All this fits snuggly into a socio economic ecosystem in which corruption has since become the other name of public service and state assignments.

Even our cash hungry banking system has informally recognized kidnapping ransom as a source of cash deposits. Ransoms are paid into known bank accounts and hardly any kidnapper- related arrests have been effected through information provided by the banks.

For the police, combating violence and insecurity has become more than the business of maintaining law and order. It is not even crime fighting in its classic meaning. For the military, the nation is neither at war nor at peace. It is in a state of “no man’s land”, a never land where everything goes and all is fair in a war neither declared nor absent. This is a new abnormal.

Yet we cannot accept that this nation is chained to a permanent cycle of violence and insecurity. But in order to restore the sanity of our polity and the values of our society, we need to tackle our insecurity differently. Chasing after squads of bandits with squads of armed soldiers in pickup vans will yield nothing. Deploying drones manned by illiterate soldiers will only lead to more collateral casualties. Bombing villagers in their natural habitats does not recognize the humanity of the defenseless. Killing innocent villagers with sophisticated American fighter jets will harden the hearts of the people against an uncaring state. A headcount of casualties of such reckless bombings in the name of ‘anti insurgency’ is a violation of human rights. Indiscriminately branding innocent casualties as “dead terrorists and bandits “ is an insult on innocent Nigerian villagers simply for the crime that they cannot defend their identity and rights in the English language.

Let us be fair to some chapters of the Nigerian state in the past. Serious concern about insecurity has been part of state thinking for decades. The most systematic was under the Babangida military regime. Towards the end of its tenure, the idea of a National Guard was being implemented. The recognition was that the Nigerian state was not a fully settled idea. There were too many grey zones and areas of unresolved nationalism. Neither the police nor the military was equipped to deal with these unsettled areas. The police was considered too tepid and civil while the military was designed for a more aggressive engagement with outright external enemies. There was a need for an intermediate force to manage the unresolved areas of our nationalism such as the farmer-settler issues in the Middle Belt, the unresolved animosities of the Biafran secession, the seething anger of the porous oil and gas rich Niger Delta and the highly exposed Sahelian northern fringes bordering North Africa. These were the residual tasks of the National Guard.

In subsequent years, the idea of the National Guard was dropped even before it was ever tried in the field. Later civilian dispensations thought of Community Policing but lacked the political will to fully articulate or implement it. Recently, the idea of a State Police structure was considered. No one knows what has become of that idea which is fraught with political and conceptual booby traps.

While the dithering continues, violent insecurity has spread to previously unlikely places like the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja, now the setting for abductions, kidnappings and senseless killings of people even in their very homes. There is no escaping a serious intelligent conversation about violence and insecurity in our land. Fancy military hardware and fiery political rhetoric cannot replace the power of serious thought to restore our humanity as a nation. The abiding question now is: when shall we be serious enough to remove insecurity from our political agenda by ending it permanently in our reality?

Chidi Amuta

In recent weeks, we seem to have been wrestling with the very idea of democracy. After all, our political system has passed through the Westminster parliamentary system and over three decades of the Washington type presidential system. There is a prolonged assumption that we are indeed a thriving democracy and ought by now to have come to take certain issues for granted. But on a daily basis, our politicians and political elite seem more confused about the essence and meaning of democracy itself. This is clearly an illustration of the vagrant and unserious nature of our political elite.

Surprisingly, however, our political elite has this curious habit of returning to interrogate our democratic credentials ever so frequently. Last week, a major gathering of consequential political voices gathered in Abuja to nark the 60^th birthday of former House Speaker, Emeka Ihedioha. It was yet another opportunity to interrogate the efficacy of our democracy and indeed the very appropriateness of our democratic route.

Former President Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo, chairman of the occasion was his predictable cynical self, skeptical as ever about the appropriateness of Western democracy for Africa. His contention was essentially a cultural conservative reservation about the alien roots of democracy as practiced in most African countries. Bishop Kukah in the role of keynote speaker asked the question as to whether democracy has failed in Africa. Former Sokoto State Governor, Aminu  Tambuwal was definitive in disagreeing. For him, democracy has not quite failed in the country or indeed the continent. Peter Obi was non equivocal in asserting that democracy has failed totally in Africa. Segun Adeniyi was typically journalistic in saying that democracy has neither succeeded nor failed in Africa. He instead zeroed in on the individual foibles of the political leadership as unserious mascots of democracy in Africa. Other voices found weaknesses in the practitioners of our democracy, insisting that nothing is wrong with the various concepts of democracy as practiced in Nigeria or indeed Africa.

Pitfalls like corruption, disruptive governance, abuses of due process by politicians have combined to give democracy a bad name.  In all of these attempts to understand the failings of democracy in our country, politicians and the elite have tended to uproot the concept of democracy from is European roots. The fact of mouthing democratic concepts and systems is unfortunately not likely to make us a democracy. Our society has not paid its dues. We have not passed through the economic crucible of evolving a productive economy first before exploring the most apt system of government. In Europe, the

Industrial Revolution and the tyranny of kings and oligarchs preceded the rise of democracy. Similarly, economic independence and the emergence of a political consensus among the urban elite created the necessity for popular democracy as an alternative to monarchical absolutism.

It was this combination of forces that compelled Europe to behead and dethrone kings and queens and overthrow or reform the monarchy in favour of elective popular governance. Representatives of the people took over power through a system of representative democracy to ensure that the taxes paid by the productive populace were spent by representative governments to fund social programs and services. The modern nation state was born on the foundations of elective democracy based on the popular mandate of economically empowered citizens. With democracy, subjects became citizens. Citizens acquired rights and rulers were compelled to accountability to ‘the people’.

Elsewhere especially in Asia where democracy later took roots, it was the rise of authoritarian military regimes which suppressed workers rights,  whittled down civil rights, forced people to fight for the rights they wanted to enjoy and assiduously grew the economies to create the wealth and prosperity that empowered people to demand certain rights and privileges of freedom and representative government. Like in Europe, it was the empowerment of the people that forced them to demand certain rights especially the right of citizenship and political representation.

In each of these instances, democracy was not a ‘given’ handout or arrangement. It was not an organized syndicate or arrangement agreed upon by a departing colonial order and its successor local political elite of trade unionists, traditional rulers and western educated elite as in most African countries. Democracy in either the European West or Asian dictatorships did not emerge in and of itself but as a consequence of compulsive economic and social forces.

In the Nigerian instance, our ‘democracy’ has transformed from an arrangement of colonial selection to one cultivated by self- appointed military dictatorships. Representatives of the people have been selected whether by a colonial order or by an imposed military dictatorship. The popular masses were literally ‘invited’ or coopted into the democratic wagon and taught the rituals of periodic electioneering. Consequently, our democracy has hardly had organic roots in and among the people. At best, the people have been ‘invited’ during election cycles to the seasonal political agenda, told major issues in contention and the major personae contending for power. In the post election periods, the politicians disappeared to the centres of power from where they lord it over the masses until the next election season. In most of Africa and in Nigeria especially, there has not been a process of consciousness creation about the rudiments of democratic culture. At best, democracy has been merely a dialect of political speak.

Democracy is not however a voluntary self -generating force. It is an outcome, a momentum unleashed and driven by social and economic forces of a historical nature such as happened in Europe and Asia. The driving forces include an urgent compulsion by productive working people who demand accountability for their hard earned tax money. It is the vortex of pressure by the masses which wanted their views and perspectives heard and reflected in the way the society was governed and manifested itself. Taxation is guaranteed by representation. That is the basis of accountability in governance which confers power on the people.

Therefore, when modern constitutions and other social contract documents begin with the expression “We the People”, it is a conscious expression of the real power of the people as tax payers, citizens and voters. It is the people’s power of tax money, the power of labor power and the exertions of workers as an organized force that propels the economy. It is in addition the momentum of the cultural solidarity and the willful surrender of the power of independent self- defense in preference for collective security embodied in an elected sovereign. We the people hereby surrender unto you the right and power to preside over us and protect us from one another and from hostile others!

That is the foundation of the Social Contract, the intangible contract that binds the broad majority to the sovereign elected authority who wields state power on the collective behalf of the “people”. Thus is born the modern nation state as the foundation of world order.

Democracy does not give birth to itself nor does it protect and sustain itself. It has certain guardrails in the nature of institutions which it needs to operate and survive. The elected sovereign is a guided executive authority. That authority is guided and guarded along the path of law and order by a judiciary of trained honest judges and a battery of lawyers. An executive not guarded or guided by a judiciary is bound to degenerate into an unregulated anarchy, the lawless Hobbesian state of nature in which the laws of nature reign and bloody violence rules the affairs of men.

In turn, elected conclaves representing the people as a constituent whole are empanelled as parliaments and assemblies to ensure that the affairs of the state reflect the interests of the majority and diversity of the public.

The collective feedback voice of the people is wielded through the power of the media- the agencies of the mass media which function as the unofficial monitor and regulator of the conduct of state and its officials. It does not matter whether the media is the legacy print and electronic media that we have since come to know or the contemporary social media platforms in which everyman is a media owner and practitioner. The functions of the media in a democracy remain basically the same- moderation and modulation of public opinion in the service of the enlightened governance of the state.

The rest of the society whose interests and opinions matter in the progression of the society is what has come to be known as civil society, that amorphous collective of chattering voices in the market of society that is usually the first to gather at the venue of protests against bad governance. It can be organized into pressure groups and interest groups or show uo facelessly as a mob.

The guardian elite of a democracy consists of both the practicing political elite and the broad spectrum of enlightened voices-professionals and interested others with an abiding interest in the survival of the society either as a functioning state or thriving democracy. An elite cannot possibly be illiterate or ignorant. An illiterate or ignorant national elite is a danger to itself and to the perpetuation of the society it pretends to serve and represent. A national elite must share a common commitment to the wellbeing and continuity of the society.  When a bunch of vagrants, casual thugs and unemployed political jobbers control the commanding heights of the political space, the result is a perennial confusion as to the meaning and plight of democracy. Mob rule could be mistaken for democracy.

When illiteracy, ignorance and lack of enlightenment dominates a political space, even the simplest challenges of routine democratic practice are presented as systemic earthquakes. The budget process is often rigged in favor of paddings by the legislators just as the executive muzzles its way through questionable bills. Legislators are not certain how to vote for simple legislations.  Debates on the floor of parliament are either not held at all or are muzzled through the nefarious power of open bribery. Or legislators as licensed thugs scream their way through troublesome sessions.

The executive frequently read or deliberately misinterpret the constitution to serve their narrow political interests. Both unfortunate features have been displayed recklessly with the President’s recent declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State.

Those who are still troubled by the present sorry state of democracy in Nigeria should look even harder at the character of our national elite especially those who call themselves politicians. The time is approaching when we shall ask our political class to educate us on whether politics in Nigeria is a career, a vocation, a profession, a trade or part time unregulated business.

Chidi Amuta

President Bola Tinubu has dealt a fatal punch on Nigeria’s democratic prospects. As the head of the executive branch, he has injured the judiciary and subverted the legislature in what promises to be a dangerous drift towards authoritarianism.  On the Rivers crisis, the Supreme Court ruled on the side of deploying democratic methods to resolve outstanding issues in the crisis. The embattled Governor, Mr. Similayi Fubara, was in the process of obeying the Supreme Court when Tinubu struck a lethal political blow. The path of democratic resolution was shut in preference for the President’s preference for authoritarian fiat.

An untidy State of Emergency was declared to the astonishment of the nation. The President hastily announced a suspension of the governor and his deputy as well as all democratic structures in the state. He appointed a sole administrator for the state and inaugurated Mr. Ebas, a retired Navy Chief to run the oil rich State as he deems fit for the next six months. With literally no immediate national security concern, the Attorney General of the federation tacitly admitted that the presidential action may have been somewhat hasty but was in a bid to avert an anticipated ugly security situation in the future; the fear of what had not yet taken place. But the constitution provides for real credible security threats or real insecurity, not speculative fears of dangers lurking in the unknown future. You cannot invoke a constitutional measure against an anticipatory risk!

The expectation that the National Assembly could overturn the strange emergency declaration has also been dubiously subverted. Instead of a straightforward electronic or manual vote count followed by a numerical count to determine two thirds majority on either side of the proposition, the two arms of the National Assembly adopted a nebulous voice vote to hastily and sheepishly approve the presidential declaration of an emergency over Rivers state. There was hardly any informed debate on such a serious matter that took place on the floor of the National Assembly. There was scarcely any review of the security situation in the state to necessitate the emergency declaration. Just a robotic rubber stamp “yes” in a manner that has become signature for the Tinubu era legislature. No one has yet verified the veracity of beer parlor rumors that the parliamentary rubber stamp came at a prices ranging from $25,000(for senators) and $10,000 (for representatives)!

Prior to this sorry rubberstamp endorsement, national outcry against the declaration of the emergency had gone viral and widespread. Informed voices in Rivers State had cried out. So also had the leaders of the South-South region, the Ijaw ethnic nationality and opposition political figures in the state. Governors of the South-South geopolitical zone had unanimously opposed the president’s declaration and suspension of Fubara and his Deputy. Notable lawyers in the nation have either as individuals or associations punched legal holes on the process and substance of the emergency declaration.

More significantly, key national opposition figures have since been screaming themselves hoarse on the illegality of the path taken by the president to arrive at this curious emergency declaration. Messrs. Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Peter Obi of the LP, Nasir El-Rufai of the SDP and a host of other smaller party voices have screamed out at the illegality and unconstitutionality of the entire process. It has been reported that the main opposition PDP has headed to court to challenge the emergency imposition.

Ordinarily, a security deterioration in any part of the nation that could warrant a State of Emergency ought to be self evident. The danger to national security ought to be so self-evident that the public mood would in fact demand that the president declare a state of emergency. None of that was evident in Rivers state in the last one week. But the president went ahead to make his curious declaration, giving the judgment of the Supreme Court or the democratic process no room to resolve the issues in question through dialogue. Instead, the President assumed the role of grand arbiter by declaring governor Fubara guilty on all counts. He accused the governor of willful damage to public property through the malicious demolition of the State House of Assembly. He equally accused the governor of single-handedly precipitating the political crisis in the state and rebuffing earlier peace overtures towards a resolution.

In its totality, the presidential broadcast making the emergency declaration was anything but statesmanlike. It was one-sided. It failed to balance the blames between Fubara and his traducers, especially the bullish FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike. It hardly mentioned Mr. Wike who is clearly the architect of the entire Rivers crisis. In assuming that Wike is innocent, the president was taking on a partisan stance that vilified the PDP and exonerated his own APC. The trouble though is that his man Wike is neither in PDP nor in APC. He is a political bat that can only happen in the Nigerian political landscape. It is a matter of serious concern that the president of the federal republic of Nigeria seemed too afraid to mention the name of Mr. Wike who is commonly known as the author of the crisis in Rivers State.

Not in one instance did the president mention the nefarious role of his Minister of the FCT and de facto Warrant Chief, Mr. Nyesom Wike, who has made the political destabilization of Rivers State an adjunct of his role as FCT Minister. It is road side knowledge that since he was appointed FCT Minister, Mr. Wike has spent more time fomenting political trouble in Rivers state than ensuring tolerable governance in the disorderly Federal Capital Territory which has recently become the crime headquarters of the nation.

On a political scale, the entire declaration of an unwarranted State of Emergency in Rivers State flies in the face of all sensible definitions of statesmanship or adherence to constitutional democracy. Its political undertone is implicit in Tinubu’s inclusions and exclusions in the text of the broadcast.

The move increasingly resonates with the President’s anxiety about his political future in 2027. It is common knowledge that in order to win a presidential election in Nigeria, a candidate needs to win the majority vote in a number of key population centres and states: Lagos, River/Port Harcourt, Kano and Abuja. In 2023, Tinubu nearly lost the presidential election because he was trounced in his Lagos home base, Abuja and Kano. He only ‘won’ in Rivers because Wike was on ground to allegedly manipulate the votes in his home Obio Akpor Local Government area of Port Harcourt to deliver Rivers to Tinubu. This feat and fiat by Wike added to what sold Wike to Tinubu as a political contractor of immense value coupled with his use value as a permanent destabilizer of the opposition PDP and neutralizer of the Atiku Abubakar threat.

As things stand today, Wike remains Tinubu’s most valuable political asset outside his South West home base where his stronghold has narrowed to the Lagos and Ogun areas from where the majority of his political appointees have been drawn. The other major vote catchment centres are all up for grabs by strong political opponents.

Beyond this nefarious investment in Wike as a dangerous geo political capital, Tinubu recognizes the strategic importance of the Niger Delta in the nation’s economics and politics. It is a zone of sleeping instability that can alter –for good or ill- the context of the nation’s economy and security architecture. The heavily armed miscreants in the Ijaw creeks can negate the billions of dollars annually budgeted on defence spending by the Nigerian state Those rough kids in dugout wooden boats can alter the calculations about the global energy outlook and even determine oil prices in far away Vienna. It is therefore quite possible that Mr. Tinubu may have erred on the side of political caution by this hasty declaration to avoid security embarrassment should the Rivers situation get out of hand.

Whatever may be his prompting on this disastrous State of Emergency declaration, Mr. Tinubu has walked into a political minefield of multiple bad possibilities. By failing to name Wike as a wrong egg in the pack, he has consecrated the man into a political Warrant Chief of sorts who can hardly be touched without grave harm coming to the political calculations of the president towards 2027. By single-handedly suspending or impeaching Fubara, Tinubu has made himself a partisan in the political fight in Rivers. And to the best of my knowledge, Rivers is a precarious place to declare your partisanship so early in a brewing political fight.

AS things now stand, it would be difficult to dissuade the common people of Rivers state from feeling a sense of victimhood. The Supreme Court had ruled against their entitlement to their constitutionally guaranteed federal revenue because of disagreements among politicians. Now the president has declared an emergency garrison rule over them thus placing them under an implicit military rule, thereby reducing further their freedoms and rights as Nigerian citizens. The ordinary Rivers person in Port Harcourt or Bonny is bound to ask: “What have we done to deserve this treatment?” Do the peoples of the South South region have a right to feel that Tinubu is treating them like a zone of conquered people? Such a feeling of alienation has political consequences which I am sure both Tinubu and his handlers fully understand.

Worse still, by taking unconstitutional steps to declare and sustain his State of Emergency, Tinubu may have walked in the direction of early steps towards unconstitutional and authoritarian rule. On that route, his highly informed opponents in the race for 2027 are waiting with a public that is already weaponized and angry against him for reasons of economic desperation and hardship. A largely unpopular president would be taking a big risk by taking actions that alienate significant populations.

A slide towards naked authoritarianism and unconstitutional rule cannot possibly enhance the re-election chances of an unpopular president who is merely surviving on a tenuous mandate.