The iconic William Shakespeare in the Hamlet, one of his political plays, vividly confronted one of life’s greatest dilemmas, which is “to be or not to be, that is the question”. This is also the puzzling question to answer with reference to the uncertainty of conducting the February scheduled elections, against the background of the prolonged Boko Haram brigandage in the North East frontier of Nigeria.
Evidently, the absence of peace and the obligation of conducting the general elections in the entire North East landscape have lately become the bone of contention among the political class in the count down to the forth coming general elections. Increasingly, political actors and gladiators are now polarized over the realism, competence and readiness of INEC, Nigeria’s electoral empire, to superintend violent free and credible polls that are staggered between 28 February, and April 11 2015.
Penultimate week Bala James Ngilari, who by an act of providence and constitutional leverage is now the Adamawa State Governor, fired the first salvo when he publicly expressed his pessimism over the conduct of the national elections in the North East, where the Boko Haram insurgency has continued to inflict terror and mayhem among the hopeless populace in the five states of Adamawa, Brono, Yobe, Gombe and Bauchi to some extent. Matter- of – fact, the increasing human tragedy that has characterized the entire North East corridor cannot even inspire patriotism and the right of universal suffrage among the already traumatized populace, presently displaced from their villages and who are now IDPs in Yola, Kano, Jos, Abuja and Lagos refugee camps.
Expressing his “personal views”, Ngilari had expressed deep concerns over the atmosphere of insecurity prevalent in 7 of the 21 local government areas of his state and therefore doubted the possibility of conducting violent free elections in the entire region, particularly where the Boko Haram pseudo-jihadists have since declared their Caliphate in some parts of Borno and Yobe states. Wrongly or rightly he was shouted down at the stakeholders’ forum organized by INEC in respect of the conduct of violent free general elections in the North East.
Notwithstanding that the Adamawa state helmsman was roundly jeered and lampooned, the recent escalation of Boko Haram orgy of massacres of residents of Baga, Monguno, Biu and Potiskum, Damaturu and lately in Gombe have increasingly lent credence to Ngilari’s pessimism, unfortunately.
Furthermore, the uncertainty over the conduct of the elections, which begins next week, is further compounded by the European Union Observer Team, who had already declared the North East zone a-no- go- area of sort. One can understand their apprehensions, but that should not dissuade INEC from going on with the polls in these flashpoints. After all, credible elections were successfully conducted in more troubled areas of Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia over the years.
Apparently, one should wonder why the federal government has failed woefully failed to protect its citizens for about four years now since the Boko Haram notoriety held sway in the entire North. The futile efforts of government all the while to effectively arrest the spate of terrorism in the five states of the North East really make the elections doubtful in the sub-region. It equally undermines the seriousness and sensitivity of the federal government to the sanctity of lives and property of its hapless citizenry.
Having expected the federal government to free the entire North East from the brutal grips of the Boko Haram terror group but to no avail, the victims are wont to believe that either the government is incompetent to protect them or it is remotely behind the insurgency that have disoriented their ways of lives forever. The victims have repeatedly asked why the Nigerian military whose exemplary exploits and heroic antecedents, since World War II through the Nigerian Civil War and at UN Peace Keeping Missions around the world, cannot now defend the territorial integrity of the Nigerian state? The people seek answers to why the weaponry of the Nigerian military is inadequate and less superior to the fire power of a ragtag militia? Why is the morale of the Nigerian military at its lowest ebb ever, against the rising confidence level of these rampaging insurgents?
Justifiably, the people really feel insulted why it has taken the Commander- In- Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria more than a year to visit these flash points, at least to empathize with them or even to inspire and assuage the fears and despair of victims of these ceaseless terror attacks? Why for heaven sake should the over 200 Chibok girls be still missing for close to one full year now, while their whereabouts are not even known to the same government who is desperately desirous of been reelected by the grieve stricken parents, their kith and kin as well as the concerned citizens of Nigeria, whose votes are critical to the victory at the polls? There are indeed more questions than answers to this conundrum confronting the vanquished and alienated victims of a typical failed state.
And fundamentally, what is the essence of government when the security and defense of its citizenry and the territorial integrity of the state become both compromised and breached? Political sociologist have historically underscored the principle of Social Contract to underpin the essence of government as espoused by renown philosophers such as Pluto, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. The social contract concept posits that “individuals either explicitly or tacitly consent to surrender some freedom and summit to the authority of the state in exchange for protection of their natural and legal rights”. By all means of governance, therefore sovereignty belongs to the people because by moral or political obligations, the subjects have voluntarily chosen to entrust their freedom and authority to the state in the great expectation that their security of lives and property are sacrosanct and therefore should not be breached or sacrificed on the altar of incompetence, poor leadership or lack of political will power, as it were.
The long and short of the social contract doctrine avails security to citizen in return for subjecting themselves to an organized system of rule or authority. Thus government primarily exists to secure the lives of its citizenry and therefore should guaranty peace, law and order within its territorial space. Arguably, the Nigerian state has so far performed dismally by breaching the spirit and letters of this implicit social contract principle. That is why the general insecurity now pervading the North East frontiers has terribly, overwhelmed both the Nigerian state and subjects.
Presently, due to the widespread frustrations, terrible hardships and hopelessness that have become the general fate of the victims of the Boko Haram brigandage, wicked rumors and insulations have persistently gained currency among the people. One of such is the conspiracy theory that the federal government has deliberately refused to defeat the militants as a grand design to disenfranchise the people in the North East and therefore significantly reduce the potential votes for the opposition, whose increasing popularity is allegedly overwhelming in the sub-region. Others believe that military intelligence are either deliberately flouted, or not used at all or even shared with the militants. All these probably explain why the international forces led by the US military experts allegedly backed out of the coalition that would have since routed these misguided extremists.
While these insinuations are puerile and rife, the situation should not have been allowed to fester, like cancer, in the public domain for too long. Thank God indeed, President Goodluck Jonathan during his reelection campaign visit to Adamawa state early this week had debunked rather belatedly, such seemingly wicked and irrational rumors.
Certainly the increasing disillusionment occasioned by the ceaseless attacks on our traumatized kith and kin, whose lives have been terribly fractured, have every reason to blame government for their abject woes and plights. They feel alienated and abandoned to their fate and nature. As victim of the orgies of rapes and abductions (ala the missing Chibok girls) and the brutal massacres that have daily characterized their lives in the last one year, no one should really blame them for such seeming blasphemies in the face of the cruelty, death and endless miseries inflicted on our defenseless people. The harrowing Hobbessian scenario where the state of nature makes the “human life solitary, poor and nasty, brutish and short” because of the absence of good political order, has embolden and given the militants the freedom to plunder, rape, murder and unleashed general lawlessness in the entire North East.
BUTROUS PEMBI, a media consultant, wrote from the recaptured town of Michika in Adamawa state
