The member representation Bauchi federal Constituency, Hon. Aliyu Garbi has voiced out his anger over the abduction of the missing Chibok schoolgirls and asked Nigerians to hold the northern governors responsible for the insecurity in the region.
Garbi stated this while briefing the campaigners for the release of the abducted girls at Unity Fountain yesterday on Ecowas resolution on the matter.
The law maker, who was furious about the current situation of security in the North Eastern part of the country, blamed the insecurity on what he termed the complacency and wickedness of the Governors from the Northern region.
He warned against pushing the blame on the federal government, insisting that the Governors from the region, as chief security officers of the states, and the local government authorities and traditional rulers should take more of the blames, rather than redirecting the blame to the centre.
‘‘The complacency, wickedness and evil characters of Northern Governors are what brought us here. They are ineffective, if we must have change, it is not at the centre but from the state level. We can keep blaming the centre because we are also being distracted and misdirected by certain people. Change must come from state level, if we want to fight Boko Haram.
‘‘Our governors must be held accountable as chief security officers of our states. When it is election time, they know how to harass those of us in the opposition, they know how to get people to rig elections for them, but when it comes to security, they know how to blame President Goodluck Jonathan. He is not the only person that is culpable but all of us are responsible and accountable.’’
He regretted that similar incidence of abduction of girls’ abduction and slaughtering of boys had eelier taken place in the same part of the country without any tangible effort made to remedy the situation but assured that the federal government was doing everything possible to bring the crisis to an end in line with the international best practices.
‘‘Nobody is talking about the boys that were slaughtered, it was swept under the carpet, this is not the first set of girls Boko Haram took, they are substantially more and there were others killed just like that.
‘‘ I assure you that government is doing the best it can and government is in the process of recalibrating itself, in line with the international best practices, so that this crisis is brought to end. Federal government is trying to get these girls back, it is also trying to see that this kind of circumstances is never repeated, because nothing will be too much to be done to bring this girls back,’’ he stated.
Hon. Garbi further charged the campaigners to start pushing for a biometric registration of every student in Northern Nigeria, so that if a child gets missing, it will be easy to trace him.
‘‘That has to be done and it has to be done immediately, if you rely on government, nothing is going to be done, I think it looks distracted at the moment. I personally, do not feel that there is any price that is too high to be paid for the safety of these girls. The failure is not only at the top, it started from the grassroots, as a representative of my people, if I don’t know the feeling of my people, how do I expect the president to know the plight of my people,’’ he posited.
He however informed the gathering that the Economic Community of West Africa, Ecowas at the end of its meeting yesterday rose in condemnation of the dastardly act and decided to set up ad- hock committees to find ways of freeing the abducted girls.
‘‘Ecowas is no longer complacent; we are demanding that a committee of heads of states and government be convened to resolve this issue. We actually wanted an ad-hoc committee, so that we can draw up the membership from within our own ranks. We cannot allow somebody from EU or President Biya of Cameroon alone to take charge of matter that is regional,’’ he said.
Ecowas parliament has not been proactive as expected since this incidence began, while AU is also silence.
The beauty of federalism is its pluralist element that disperses responsibility in a multiplicity of governments. But its critical element is the unambiguous demarcation of sovereignties. The sovereignty of the center is, ideally, minimized, in order to forestall the emergence of an uncontrollable behemoth with powers so concentrated that state governments are swallowed up in its humungous bosom. It is the perfect recipe for impunity and arrogance. Unfortunately, Nigeria’s reality is just that – a distorted federalism so twisted it is nauseating just to contemplate it. Because of the disfigurement in the country’s supposedly federalist structure, the only really visible government of consequence is the federal one, that insatiable colossus sequestered on the mountaintop in Abuja. Its power is so enormous, and its appetite for more of it so voracious, it is constantly experiencing bouts of constipation but no defecation. Because it is unable, or unwilling, to excrete the faeces of excess power, it suffers the inevitable repercussions of a stomach protruding and bubbling with rivers of fecal matter.
ReplyDeleteOne such consequence is the sordid Boko Haram tragedy. The erosion of state governments as recognizable participants in the federalist contract has, naturally, shifted responsibility for social iniquities from them. Since they are short-footed, clipped of sovereignty and, therefore, of the instruments of consequence that come with sovereignty, the federal government must take primary responsibility for the dislocations in social relations. It alone controls the preventive and punitive instruments of social control, including law enforcement agencies that are directly answerable not to a state governor but to the president. It is only convenient – but disquietingly bizarre – to refer to a governor as “chief security officer of his state.” That is just a verbal decoration that is flashed around whenever apologists of the federal government want to shield it from blame for the noxious outcomes of its numerous iniquities – consequences of its hideous hugeness.
So, when Aliyu Garbi, a legislator with obvious sympathies for the federal government, blames “the complacency, wickedness and evil characters of northern governors” for Boko Haram’s destructive proclivities, he is merely patronizing the gullible. It is one of the classic examples of a self-seeking northern politician trying to appear disconnected from the hegemonic propensities of Northern Nigerian politics. Perhaps, Garbi should have substituted complacency for indifference, which arises when you are rendered inconsequential in prevailing contractual arrangements. Agreed, northern governors may retain surreptitious sympathies for Boko Haram and its depravities; they may even secretly bankroll it from the taxpayers’ coffers, which would be utterly condemnable. However, even if they had the presence of mind to abolish the medievalists’ nuisance, their absence of power means they could only watch from the sidelines. The quasi-Unitarian arrangement – passed up as a “federal structure” – keeps the police, the “security apparatuses,” not to talk of the military, squarely under the control of the federal government. Even worse, the country’s treasury, including its primary source of revenue, which, ideally, each state should control within its domain, is hostage to the federal government’s imperious dictates. You can’t fight Boko Haram with sticks and spears and wishful thinking, can you?