STOP THE SECURITY
VOTE AND START POVERTY VOTE
In Nigeria, our leaders have
penchant for travesty. They do what should not be done, and leave to be done
what should be done. One of this is the agenda of the SECURITY VOTE! Security Vote refers to the appropriation made for
security. I do not presume that there should be no reason for security vote.
What I aspire is the solution for the cause of insecurity, which is POVERTY, so
that the problem of insecurity will be permanently solved.
On monthly basis, the Federal
Government of Nigeria and other federating components; the 36 States of the
Federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja vote out large chunk
of money for security. At times for the State Governors that may know what
transparent leadership is about, would buy few security and surveillance
apparatuses for the security structure, such as operational vehicles,
information tech toys which are only brandished without any functional value.
For other Governors who show their backs to accountability, such security votes
are expropriated to fund personal and immediate domestic security by acquiring hybrid
exotic and high-end bullet proof cars to ensure that they are safer than the
citizens whom they swore to secure their lives and property, and keep back the
remainder as slush fund, and war chest for the next round of general elections
with which to acquire our votes illegally (Read Section 14 of the 1999
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria where we find that security of
lives and property is the primary responsibility of the government). We have
had a lot voted to security, yet our lives are hacked down and our property
destroyed on daily basis by merchants and entrepreneurs of violence. More AK
47s threaten us more than anything.
But why do we fight insecurity
fruitlessly while we fail to fight poverty which is at the root of the security
debacle? That is clearly wrong prioritization! Common sense tells us that we
don’t place the cart before the horse. Let me refer us to a kindred thought on
the same issue, which I adopt as representing my inclination:
Today
in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and
inequality in society and between peoples are reversed, it will be impossible
to eliminate violence. The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence,
yet without equal opportunities the different forms of aggression and conflict
will find a fertile terrain for growth and eventually explode. When a society –
whether local, national or global – is willing to leave a part of itself on the
fringes, no political programmes or resources spent on law enforcement or
surveillance systems can indefinitely guarantee tranquility. This is not the
case simply because inequality provokes a violent reaction from those excluded
from the system, but because the socio-economic system is unjust at its roots –
Evangelii Gaudium, no 59 of Pope
Francis.
Politics of exclusion is at the root of the insecurity problems we have.
Today, our politics has skewed democracy to favour a tiny elite group, instead
of allowing democracy to be for the people. Our neoliberal economic system that
thrives on the logic of market fundamentalism does not allow the many who are
poor to participate in the market forum. The structural adjustments that are
fanned into economic policies only adjust the market fundamentals to make the
rich, richer, and the poor, poorer. In all the policies of deregulation and
privatization, only the rich are favoured, while the poor are schemed out. The
triumphalism of the neoliberal economic system could be found in the statement
accredited to Warren Buffet when he boasted: “There has been a class warfare
going on for the last 20 years and my class (that is the rich people) has won”.
Yes, they have won the wealth, but they have not won the peace. Pope Paul IV in his “Message for the celebration of the Day of Peace, 1 January, 1972” told
the whole world: “If you want peace; work
for justice.”
In Nigeria, we are
interested in wheeling more wealth to the political elite, leaving the poor
people worse off. In the pyramid of social structure in Nigeria, we have a tiny
percentile of the rich at the zenith tip of the pyramid, while we have a
mammoth crowd of multi-dimensionally poor people that sprawl the very base of
the pyramid. When the rich get more security vote, they cordon
themselves off from the horde of the poor people within the safe chambers of
their bullet-proof cars, while the very poor stay far off within the calamitous
insecure zone cheering them with somnolent praise songs. In the words of Fela
Kuti, the poor have permanent engagement with “suffering and smiling” while the
elite politicians arm us to kill one another in order to keep them safe. That
is the travesty. But this cannot continue for too long. One day, they will also
be roasted in the fire of insecurity they stoke, for without POVERTY VOTE,
security vote is wasteful.
Ray Olusesan Aina’s
“Christian Response to Insecurity and Intractable Conflicts in Nigeria: A
Challenge to the Youth” in Nigerian Journal
of Religion and Society, 3 (June, 2013): 34-32, at 39 sums what we should
do in raising POVERTY VOTE instead of security vote: “There is a casual link between
uneven distribution of national resources and increasing wave of violence.
Hence, this is the rationale for ideological, pathological violence and even
criminal violence”. When we end poverty, we also end insecurity.
My advice for the
Nigerian politicians is for them to think beyond the economics of GDP and think
in the same line with Christian Felber in his people-oriented economics of ECG,
that is, The Economy for the Common Good,
in which all policies of the government at the monetary and fiscal levels must
opt for the poor, in order to also save the rich. To achieve this, we must STOP
SECURITY VOTE and START POVERTY VOTE for sustainable development in Nigeria,
and of course the whole world.
Written by Herbert Chimezie Nnadi
(IgedenwaAfrika)
Lecturer at Imo State Polytechnic and
Social/Political Affairs Analyst
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