ASCAB, CNG, NYDP, Others Hold Public Meeting On Insecurity, Made Resolutions, Offer Solutions

Civil society groups have agreed that Insecurity in Nigeria has
become routine and endemic, and in recent times have assumed
pandemic proportions, posing an existential threat to the country
and her people.

The groups, Alliance on Surviving Covid-19 and Beyond (ASCAB),
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) and The National Youth
Democratic Association (NYDP and a cross-section of academics,
intellectuals, and activists, made this remark on Wednesday, during
a Public meeting held via Zoom which was organized by ASCAB.

The theme of the Meeting which was on; “Insecurity and the
Failure of Governance in Nigeria; Exploring the causes and options
for Transformation,” has Comrade Jaye Gaskia present the proposed
policy paper on Insecurity. The presentation covered, Forms of
insecurity; The Character of the State and Policing; and
solutions.

The groups established that there is a direct nexus between the
calamitous collapse of the welfare and wellbeing of the people, and
the current pandemic scale of insecurity in the country.

“In this case, it is clear that the idle, hungry, and alienated
mind is the workshop of the devil. To be sure, it is clear from the
1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended
[1999 CFRN] in chapter two, section 14, subsection 2, b that the
security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of
government.

“On this measure alone, there can be no doubting the fact that
there is unfolding before our eyes, a catastrophic failure of
governance, itself the direct result of the cataclysmic failure of
the collective leadership of the ruling class. There is no easier
way to put it; the ruling class has failed collectively, in its
role of providing class leadership, and on such a scale as to
threaten the collective existence of the country and the
people.”

At the meeting they resolved as follows:
1. Policing must be decentralized and policing authorities devolved
to ensure that establishment of policing jurisdictions at national
and subnational levels. However, the criteria for recruitment into
these decentralized and devolved policing authorities must be
residency and citizenship, and not indigenship to avoid the
proliferation of legal ethnic policing formations, which are a
potential danger to the cohesiveness of the country.
2. Adoption and rigorous implementation by the policing authorities
of the strategic operational approach of community policing,
enabling the active and proactive participation of citizens and
communities in ensuring their own security and safety.
3. The police as an institution must be enabled and capacitated to
deliver on its mandate as lead agency in internal security. A
timeline for the withdrawal of the military from internal security
role should be drawn up, and a comprehensive program to ensure that
the police [various police jurisdictions] are able to fill the gap
must be put in place.
4. An implementation plan for the Police Act 2020 must be put in
place immediately, with the Nigeria Police Council inaugurated, and
its meeting convened immediately to discuss the internal security
and policing challenges facing the country, commission and consider
and take action on the report of nationwide insecurity risk and
threat assessment. The Nigeria Police Council must become
operational and functional. The appropriate place to discuss
insecurity and take action is the Nigeria police council, chaired
by the president and comprising all the governors of the 36 states
of the federation, and not the National Economic Council as it is
presently being done.
5. An institutional mechanism for ensuring coordination and synergy
amongst the police and various law enforcement agencies responsible
for internal security needs to be established and
operationalised.

“A similar coordination mechanism between internal security
agencies led by the police and defence agencies also needs to be
put in place,” they noted.

They further agreed that options needed for
socio-economic police are
a. Crime must be punished, and criminals must be apprehended,
investigated and prosecuted.
b. Victims of violent crimes must be compensated. Crime and
criminality should not be rewarded in anyway, including through the
misguided and often ill conceived hurriedly contrived amnesty
programs. Giving material resources away to organised criminal
gangs, while ignoring their victims, and ignoring the horrendous
nature of their crimes, and with no intention to append culprits,
much less prosecute and punish them, mere complicates the crisis.
It sends a clear message to criminals that crime is rewarding and
can force inclusion into the power dynamics; while also sending the
clear message to hopeless and alienated citizens, impoverished and
victimized by the criminal gangs, that the only language the state
understands is violence, and that violent crime is rewarding and
ennobling. Furthermore, it establishes back channels for official
corruption by state officials involved in the negotiation and
reward disbursement chain.
c. Eschew ethnicisation of crime, and avoid wholesale labeling and
stigmatization of entire groups as criminals.
d. Mechanisms to seek and obtain redress for abuse perpetrated by
policing personnel, other law enforcement personnel and military
personnel must be established, and operationalised, with access
guaranteed by victims of abuse, and protection ensured for
complainants. And while indicted personnel must be prosecuted and
punished, victims of abuse must also be compensated.
Independent citizens oversight bodies, such as ombudsmen, should be
established and enabled to carry out oversight of policing and law
enforcement and also investigate abuse and wrongdoing [of citizens
as well as of personnel].
e. Essentially though governance must be reoriented to ensure the
prioritization of human security, ensuring that the primary purpose
of governance is the welfare and security of the people.
f. Towards this end, the state must be retooled and overhauled to
become a provider and enabler of basic social services, ensuring
universal access to all citizens and residents.
g. The bulk of public investment must be directed at ensuring human
capital development; enabling universal and user cost free access
to education, healthcare, portable safe drinking water, and toilet
and personal hygiene, and provisioning social housing.
h. The state must put in place mechanisms to enhance access to
business, livelihoods and job opportunities for citizens and
residents; enabling their capacity to access these opportunities,
and ensuring the implementation of a regime of living [minimum]
wage for workers across the country.
i. Governance and the governance process must become socially
inclusive and enhance social justice, enabling equitable access to
levels of political processes, as well as to societal wealth. Such
a policy in our current conditions of extreme poverty and intense
exclusion will necessarily have to include wealth redistributive
measures, as well as measures enabling greater active and proactive
participation of citizens without discrimination in the processes
of their governance. The state and the polity will have to become
thoroughly democratized, catalyzing popular democratic
participation of the people.
j. Comprehensive reform of governance that devolves more powers and
authority to subnational levels of government, including in
particular strengthening local government, and establishing a
functional system of democratic community self-government.
k. A framework for the registration of residents and keeping,
updating and managing the residents register must be urgently put
in place. It should be managed by the states and local governments
and should be integrated into the National Identity Number managed
at the federal level by NIMC. The NIMC process should be speeded up
and the various personal data collection management systems across
the country including BVN, SIM card registration data, Birth
registration process, driver’s licensing data, etc should be
integrated.
l. In the specific case of the herders – farmers crisis, a
comprehensive plan to enable assisted transition from open grazing
method of cattle rearing to enclosed forms of cattle rearing
through ranches and cooperative ranching will have to be put in
place and faithfully implemented.
m. The meeting agreed to Launch a nationwide campaign to demand
that government ensures the security and welfare of the people as
the primary purpose of government, including the justiceability of
the provisions of chapter two of the 1999CFRN.

Civil society groups have agreed that Insecurity in Nigeria has
become routine and endemic, and in recent times have assumed
pandemic proportions, posing an existential threat to the country
and her people.

The groups, Alliance on Surviving Covid-19 and Beyond (ASCAB),
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) and The National Youth
Democratic Association (NYDP and a cross-section of academics,
intellectuals, and activists, made this remark on Wednesday, during
a Public meeting held via Zoom which was organized by ASCAB.

The theme of the Meeting which was on; “Insecurity and the
Failure of Governance in Nigeria; Exploring the causes and options
for Transformation,” has Comrade Jaye Gaskia present the proposed
policy paper on Insecurity. The presentation covered, Forms of
insecurity; The Character of the State and Policing; and
solutions.

The groups established that there is a direct nexus between the
calamitous collapse of the welfare and wellbeing of the people, and
the current pandemic scale of insecurity in the country.

“In this case, it is clear that the idle, hungry, and alienated
mind is the workshop of the devil. To be sure, it is clear from the
1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended
[1999 CFRN] in chapter two, section 14, subsection 2, b that the
security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of
government.

“On this measure alone, there can be no doubting the fact that
there is unfolding before our eyes, a catastrophic failure of
governance, itself the direct result of the cataclysmic failure of
the collective leadership of the ruling class. There is no easier
way to put it; the ruling class has failed collectively, in its
role of providing class leadership, and on such a scale as to
threaten the collective existence of the country and the
people.”

At the meeting they resolved as follows:
1. Policing must be decentralized and policing authorities devolved
to ensure that establishment of policing jurisdictions at national
and subnational levels. However, the criteria for recruitment into
these decentralized and devolved policing authorities must be
residency and citizenship, and not indigenship to avoid the
proliferation of legal ethnic policing formations, which are a
potential danger to the cohesiveness of the country.
2. Adoption and rigorous implementation by the policing authorities
of the strategic operational approach of community policing,
enabling the active and proactive participation of citizens and
communities in ensuring their own security and safety.
3. The police as an institution must be enabled and capacitated to
deliver on its mandate as lead agency in internal security. A
timeline for the withdrawal of the military from internal security
role should be drawn up, and a comprehensive program to ensure that
the police [various police jurisdictions] are able to fill the gap
must be put in place.
4. An implementation plan for the Police Act 2020 must be put in
place immediately, with the Nigeria Police Council inaugurated, and
its meeting convened immediately to discuss the internal security
and policing challenges facing the country, commission and consider
and take action on the report of nationwide insecurity risk and
threat assessment. The Nigeria Police Council must become
operational and functional. The appropriate place to discuss
insecurity and take action is the Nigeria police council, chaired
by the president and comprising all the governors of the 36 states
of the federation, and not the National Economic Council as it is
presently being done.
5. An institutional mechanism for ensuring coordination and synergy
amongst the police and various law enforcement agencies responsible
for internal security needs to be established and
operationalised.

“A similar coordination mechanism between internal security
agencies led by the police and defence agencies also needs to be
put in place,” they noted.

They further agreed that options needed for
socio-economic police are
a. Crime must be punished, and criminals must be apprehended,
investigated and prosecuted.
b. Victims of violent crimes must be compensated. Crime and
criminality should not be rewarded in anyway, including through the
misguided and often ill conceived hurriedly contrived amnesty
programs. Giving material resources away to organised criminal
gangs, while ignoring their victims, and ignoring the horrendous
nature of their crimes, and with no intention to append culprits,
much less prosecute and punish them, mere complicates the crisis.
It sends a clear message to criminals that crime is rewarding and
can force inclusion into the power dynamics; while also sending the
clear message to hopeless and alienated citizens, impoverished and
victimized by the criminal gangs, that the only language the state
understands is violence, and that violent crime is rewarding and
ennobling. Furthermore, it establishes back channels for official
corruption by state officials involved in the negotiation and
reward disbursement chain.
c. Eschew ethnicisation of crime, and avoid wholesale labeling and
stigmatization of entire groups as criminals.
d. Mechanisms to seek and obtain redress for abuse perpetrated by
policing personnel, other law enforcement personnel and military
personnel must be established, and operationalised, with access
guaranteed by victims of abuse, and protection ensured for
complainants. And while indicted personnel must be prosecuted and
punished, victims of abuse must also be compensated.
Independent citizens oversight bodies, such as ombudsmen, should be
established and enabled to carry out oversight of policing and law
enforcement and also investigate abuse and wrongdoing [of citizens
as well as of personnel].
e. Essentially though governance must be reoriented to ensure the
prioritization of human security, ensuring that the primary purpose
of governance is the welfare and security of the people.
f. Towards this end, the state must be retooled and overhauled to
become a provider and enabler of basic social services, ensuring
universal access to all citizens and residents.
g. The bulk of public investment must be directed at ensuring human
capital development; enabling universal and user cost free access
to education, healthcare, portable safe drinking water, and toilet
and personal hygiene, and provisioning social housing.
h. The state must put in place mechanisms to enhance access to
business, livelihoods and job opportunities for citizens and
residents; enabling their capacity to access these opportunities,
and ensuring the implementation of a regime of living [minimum]
wage for workers across the country.
i. Governance and the governance process must become socially
inclusive and enhance social justice, enabling equitable access to
levels of political processes, as well as to societal wealth. Such
a policy in our current conditions of extreme poverty and intense
exclusion will necessarily have to include wealth redistributive
measures, as well as measures enabling greater active and proactive
participation of citizens without discrimination in the processes
of their governance. The state and the polity will have to become
thoroughly democratized, catalyzing popular democratic
participation of the people.
j. Comprehensive reform of governance that devolves more powers and
authority to subnational levels of government, including in
particular strengthening local government, and establishing a
functional system of democratic community self-government.
k. A framework for the registration of residents and keeping,
updating and managing the residents register must be urgently put
in place. It should be managed by the states and local governments
and should be integrated into the National Identity Number managed
at the federal level by NIMC. The NIMC process should be speeded up
and the various personal data collection management systems across
the country including BVN, SIM card registration data, Birth
registration process, driver’s licensing data, etc should be
integrated.
l. In the specific case of the herders – farmers crisis, a
comprehensive plan to enable assisted transition from open grazing
method of cattle rearing to enclosed forms of cattle rearing
through ranches and cooperative ranching will have to be put in
place and faithfully implemented.
m. The meeting agreed to Launch a nationwide campaign to demand
that government ensures the security and welfare of the people as
the primary purpose of government, including the justiceability of
the provisions of chapter two of the 1999CFRN.