The Futility Of Emergency By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

The President, Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan, has just bought another
dummy called state of emergency
from his security chiefs.
He thinks it will work. I think it will
not.
Jonathan’s state of emergency is
different from that of Obasanjo.
Unlike under Obasanjo, this one
keeps the offices and privileges of
political office holders intact in the
states where it will operate. The
only difference is that the security of
the state will be vested in the hands
of the military and some
constitutional rights of citizens of
their citizens will be suspended.
This is the interpretation I just heard
from Yahaya Mahmud, SAN, on the
BBC.
If these are the only differences, it
will be difficult to see how they will
afford the military victory over Boko
Haram.
The military has enjoyed full access
and support of the governments in
the affected states, effectively
subordinating the governors at every
given point. Governors had no say
in anything, if I can remember very
well, except in standing straight to
be milked by the khaki boys for
logistics, providing relief to victims
and appealing to them to accept
violations of their rights in good
faith, a fate from God or a national
sacrifice.
The military also enjoyed the full
privileges of using force – many
times excessive – on any citizen
they without hindrance from the
state governments in the past two
years. No father has ever taken the
JTF to court, to my knowledge, over
the arrest of his son who was
detained without charge at Giwa
Barracks – the Nigerian version of
Guantanamo. The son that may not
have anything to do with Boko
Haram. Nobody has taken them to
the International Criminal Court in
spite of the war crimes that have
been documented by local and
international human rights groups:
the extrajudicial killings of
suspected members of Boko Haram
and civilians, the detentions without
trial, the tortures of detainees, the
burning of neighbourhoods and
sections of towns, the alleged rapes,
arson, the ransacking of homes, etc.
And I doubt very much if the police,
from the Inspector-General of Police
to his Commissioners in the states,
have constituted any obstacle to the
operation of the JTF. Instead, the
police have wisely remained pegged
in their paramilitary positions in the
JTF structure and operations.
Finally, a quarter of our budget goes
to security, the largest portion of it
obviously to JTF operations. Most
Nigerians believe that if any
government agency should complain
of underfunding, it must not be any
of the JTFs. They get money from
the federal government above, from
the state governments below and
from sideways when we citizens
make the mistake of falling, or are
forcefully dragged, into their net. An
idea even occurred to me that one of
the best outlets for my Country
Yoghurt would be military and
police barracks. I will soon be there
collecting my own share of the
booty before the politicians start
their campaigns in 2014 – if Boko
Haram will approve them permits!
So what exactly has hindered the
military so much that they needed
to compel Mr. President to give them
a state of emergency to operate
under?
The state of emergency is also futile
from the records so far. Two days
ago, a senator from Borno State
revealed that 23 to 24 of the 27
local governments in the state are
under the effective control of Boko
Haram. If despite the resources, the
personnel, the Giwas, Bagas,
Maiduguris and Damaturus,
government has lost 87% of the
territory in Borno to Boko Haram, I
wonder what additional powers to
the military would achieve.
A significant shift though would be
the mass deployment of soldiers to
the affected areas. With the
sophistication of Boko Haram, our
sons in the military will just be
turned into cheap targets. There will
be so many of them to aim at easily,
more to destroy in a spot.
I am at loss here – completely.
What has the state of emergency
achieved when it was declared
under this regime in some local
governments including those now
under Boko Haram occupation?
I would like to conclude this article
by stating a woeful statistics on the
incapacity of successive
governments to solve our national
problems: Government in Nigeria
has not been able to solve a single
problem in various areas of
governance and the economy, to my
knowledge, in the past 28 years. A
problem at the beginning of a
regime will remain there until it ends
– accompanied by many news ones.
And so our wahala continued to pile
up.
I need to be convinced how
declaration of the state of
emergency could make Boko Haram
an exception.