Security: Bread not bullets please!

[MrVan]

By BISHOP MATTHEW HASSAN KUKAH

THE 2012 Budget will continue to stir controversy especially on some of the familiar contradictions budgets throw up every year.

Bishop Kukah The questions surrounding the rituals will persist: For us the ignorant, most of the grammar is the sorcerer's language but even then, we know there will still remain the chasm between the letter and the spirit. It is at best a hollow ritual that we all look forward to.

Again, we ask, will the distortions between capital and recurrent expenditure persist as symptom or will they become the malaise? Will we be able to lower recurrent in favour of capital expenditure for a polity whose sybaritic political elite continue to nurse delusions of self-importance and grandeur?

What of the projected benchmarks regarding projected oil sales vis-à-vis the exchange rate mechanisms that are beyond our control? When will the budget be finally passed? What will the physical image of the budget look like after it has come out of the fattening room of the National Assembly?

Even when it is finally passed, what percentage of it is ever going to be implemented? And, finally, how will it have impacted on the lives of ordinary citizens? These are larger issues and I am a complete illiterate in these matters. My concern over the budget is in the area of security and the implications of the presence of this new elephant in our sitting room.

Clearly, the government is walking into a trap that is gradually turning security into the next haven for slush and sleaze funds.

Along with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC and its ancillary organisations, other bodies such as the Niger Delta Development Corporation, NDDC, the Ministry for the Niger Delta or the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, Security is now going to join these cash cows and drainages pipes of patronage as the next bus stop and cesspool of corruption.

Rather than fighting corruption, we are likely to witness a rise in the army of the merchants of death. Clearly, tens of other Boko Harams are likely to emerge with more and more young men and women dropping out of tertiary institutions in pursuit of a greater life in the new and lucrative trade in the merchandise of violence such as armed robbery or vigilante groups.

Prolonged looting of treasury

Already, the Minister for Education has announced that over 70 per cent of our children are unable to pass their examinations and we know things will get progressively worse. According to the new budget, the President proposes to spend a whopping N961 billion on security alone. Persistent and prolonged looting of a treasury with an inexhaustible underbelly by a predatory elite with a gargantuan, immoral, inhuman and devilish appetite for theft has finally dulled the imagination of Nigerians to figures and their meanings.

Public officers and civil servants, alone or in connivance, are stealing sums of money that are the equivalent of budgets of smaller states and countries outside Nigeria. Just a year or two ago, this figure was the budget of our entire nation. And now, it is merely a subhead. My concern in this piece is to argue that the President's decision to allocate this stupendous sum of money to security will have a negative effect on security and is a misplacement of priorities and a misconception of what real security should be at present.

First, whatever way and manner these incredible sums of money will be expended, the truth is that we will never know and they will not necessarily make us secure. And this is the danger. Let us not deceive ourselves. Those in power are nursing the baby called security vote because it has become the favourite child and a Trojan horse through which all slush funds are being channeled.

For the President to elevate this leviathan to a pole position by feeding it a chunk of the budget that surpasses that of 10 key Ministries is to say the least an oxymoron.

The fight against corruption is still an understated pursuit because the fight pitches a David and a Goliath. In a situation where resources stolen by individuals are over ten times the size of the budgets of the anti corruption agencies, how can this asymmetrical war be fought and won? The frustrations of the anti corruption tsars are similar to those fighting other forms of organized crimes.

There is serious concern over the fact that the anti corruption fight is an asymmetrical fight largely because so far, convictions of the high profile cases has proved almost impossible. A seriously compromised judiciary seems to be in sync with a battery of high flying lawyers who, like synchronised swimmers are dancing the same music of frustration for the anti corruption agencies.

The calls for special courts to try these cases has never really picked up steam, although if the stories of special courts and tribunals is anything to go by, the outcomes will not be different from what we have had with Armed Robbery, Drug, Election and other Tribunals where the same drama continues to play itself out.

Secondly, the veil of secrecy that is characteristic of security funds is a throwback of the military era where regime security, personalized in the dictator was considered a substitute for the security of the nation and the citizens. It has become a notorious bottomless pit which continues to swallow billions of dollars and it is the excuse for the gross inefficiency in the system. Over time, superintending this honey pot has become the province of the trusted few.

The hemorrhage of funds has become more disheartening and embarrassing because while these stupendous sums are being committed to our security, we have become even far more insecure now than we ever were at any time in the history of our nation. The increasing belligerence of the enemies of society, the mass slaughter of human beings that occurs almost on a weekly basis has all collectively dulled our minds to thoughts about the sacredness of our human lives. A helpless state looks on while a traumatized citizenry remains in a state of collective stupor.

More painful than all this perhaps is the sense of numbness and frustration that arises from the fact that the same security agencies have become totally powerless or uninterested in dealing with these high flying criminals who are now above the law.

Quite simply, since corruption has been officially written into the DNA of governance in Nigeria, this circle will remain unbroken. Thus, in the civil service, in the regime of contracts and other forms of patronage, we have come to expect corruption to drive the system. For example, by some egregious twist of fate, Nigerians going into public service are not expected to return to their old residential or professional addresses.

Migration after tenure

If you lived in Shomolu, Ilupeju or even Ikeja before your appointment to high office, you would be expected to migrate to the choice parts of Victoria Island, Ikoyi or Victoria Garden City after your tenure. If you came from any of the state capitals you should be expected to relocate to Asokoro after your tenure. Even after your term is over, you are expected to get a new address in Abuja and remain there hoping that something comes up again.

Shall we go on like this? Will Nigeria survive all this? Shall we survive as a community or shall we continue to fragment? How long will it take before we all drown into this ocean of filth and rut? Will Nigeria find its moral voice? What is the future of our democracy? Will Nigerians become despondent, fatalistic and simply resign themselves to their fate?

Vanguard Nigeria

[MrVan]