HIGH CHIEF SUNNIE CHUKUMELE, a Senior Citizen and Chief Executive of the Global Initiative for Leadership Success (GILS), in this encounter with AbujaCityJournal’s REMI ADEBAYO, opens up on what should be done to address insecurity and development challenges in Nigeria.
Excerpts…

Assessing the security situation in the country today

The security situation in the country is not gladdening despite the effort of the President. We have periscope it and also looked at it to see that it is the failure of the political class. The political class in Nigeria created what we are today crying for the military to clear up, and we can say of a truth that the situation has become so knotty that to untie it has become so complex and of course, it’s a human creation. We have also seen, taking for instance, in Nigerian North-east and North-west, the hydra-headedness of this issue of insecurity that is exhibiting is linked to so many factors.

Firstly, those areas that are called ungoverned spaces. You can see that because of the entrapment of the resources of this country by the central government, the federating units which we call states today do not have enough capacity, resource-wise to extend development in terms of infrastructures because you need to build roads, health care system to get to all the units and wards in this country. We need schools to be everywhere, and imagine it took only (former President Goodluck) Jonathan's administration to build Almajiri schools and since after that time, it appears that not even more Almajiri school have been built. This issue is something you can discuss in a whole week conference. The issue of inability of the government to expand or extend infrastructure to all the nooks and crannies of the country is a serious causal effect of insecurity.

Secondly, unemployment also is there and now insecurity has also created its own issue of unemployment where farmers cannot work because agriculture is a major contributor to the GDP of the country. Now today, we are witnesses that most farmers are afraid go to farm and if our sedentary farmers or subsistent farmers cannot go to farm, how do we feed, how many commercial farms do we have and because of a clash between herders interest that have to graze for their cattle, they have rights for their cattle to graze but their rights should stop somewhere and the other persons rights should continue from there.

The point here is that it is a whole complex thing and the political leadership must think of solution because our grundnorm which is the constitution that will bring power down to the states and then the local government, for instance, in the 1999 constitution completely ostracized the local governments, the local government are tied to the apron strings of the state government and the houses of assembly. As we are talking about security and insecurity, the local government chairmen or the local governments are not even mentioned because we all know that they have no powers.

At what specific time do you think the Federal Government has tried to intervene?

Since the advent of this current administration, when this government came in, the Boko Haram people had annexed 17 local governments in this country. I and you can see that there is a new political will to tackle the issue headlong but having done that, the Boko Haram terrorists changed tactics and what has caused all this whole problem is the issue of ungoverned spaces, poverty and all. There are a lot of poor and unemployed people which naturally become easy recruits into criminality even in the South where we should be building new industries, empowering the private sector and building of infrastructures. Power infrastructure alone will energize many people to set up new businesses.

Military might alone will not solve most of the security problems. What about other approaches?

All these in the Zamfara axis for instance, it was not Boko Haram. The struggle for control of resources space escalated the problems in Zamfara, banditry and cattle rustling. The issue of cattle rustling has caused many Fulani men to lose their sources of livelihood and now joined in the criminality and the society is now worse for it and this is the blank truth. Now during the elections, our politicians hire these boys and support them by various means to prosecute the elections and after election, they want to withdraw the arms and support they gave to them and they say no. If you release 10 and get 3 of it back, 7 of it mean 70 per cent. At the end of the day, the person does not have a job, the person now have this implement of coercion and of threat.

What should we be doing rightly?

We need peace, ranching is the way forward. About three or four years ago, we saw the Vice President (Prof Yemi Osinbajo) heading a National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), but how much did the governors embraces it? The other thing is to put it into reality is to demise hectares of land and get in cattle and if every state enclose cattle in various places, there is nobody that would be in another man's forest looking for the destruction of the eco-system so the governors have so much role to play. 

The NLTP you are talking about have not been launched?

It does not need to be launched you don’t launch a business. I will blame the governors because if there is crisis in this country today, no governor will sit in the government house. We have a problem to solve here; you can also engineer a new trade because generally most people from the Middle Belt down wards see cattle rearing as exclusively preserved for a certain people. If you mention the Fulani, it’s as if the Fulani people are demons but they are not demons, they are people that are shy, peaceful and friendly people but all of a sudden, this situation that has overwhelmed their trade has become a threat to national unity. What I am talking about is proffering solutions, what does it take; there is no governor that cannot muster 5 billion Naira.

Governors are saying now that they are ready for ranching and placing ban on Open Grazing

It is a practical thing, assuming I become a governor; I don’t need to say I am banning open grazing. If you come to my state for instance, I am from Rivers State, all I am going to do is, I have 23 local governments apart from Port-Harcourt and Obiakpo other local governments have land. If you invest 200 million naira in 21 local government, you have 21 ranches and this will now draw the value chain in cattle business which is huge; even the excreta is manure and organic, the milk and when cattle now cross-breed which creates a new industry, this is an industry where Nigeria is supposed to have so much advantage. Look at Niger state for instance; Niger state is bigger than the entire South East which means the state can house 10 million cattle.

Don’t you think there is limitation of resources to this government?

The issue is that the governors are a little slow in transforming this country because they are even more powerful than the president. The governor determines who comes to Senate, who comes to House of Reps, House of Assembly and the constitution said, for any law to be enacted today, there has to be a concurrence with the state houses of assembly. For instance, Buhari said get the local government money directly to them but the governors said no. He said the State Houses of Assembly should be independent, the governors came to him and said please don’t try it. 

This is the same president the rest of us are abusing but he has shown areas where he means well. We need to rejig our constitution particularly Second Schedule that has to do with Exclusive Legislative List. We have over 60 items. Why can’t Rivers state build railway? Under this 1999 Constitution, states cannot build railway that is why the governor is building bridges; the money they use to do flyovers can also do railways from one end of Rivers state to the other end that will connect Delta and from there to Bayelsa.

Most of these resources cannot be explored by those states so they cannot have money.

That is why I am saying if we rejig the constitution, we must revert back to that particular constitution that Nigeria had before the advent of this military constitution that we are using because this is just an extension of military decree. 

The Kaduna State governor once asked for states to control their resources

The governor of Kaduna state is a bright star, as a governor of ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), he was given the mandate of the restructuring committee of APC; and we know that he is a stubborn man if he didn’t like it he will not put it there, but because he is convinced, he has mentioned that he still stands by it as a chairman of that committee. Now where is the will of the APC as a party?

When you have control of the majority at the National Assembly and you cannot fix through a policy of your own party. It is now left for this people to do their own so the amendment of constitution, the governors must be pragmatic and proactive. For instance, I praised Governor Umar Ganduje who has started his RUGA program. The states that can accommodate RUGA should start and the Federal Government should help them so that this issue will be solved.

There is ethnic tension in the country how do we douse this? 

I have told you, the governors’ forum should be pragmatic and proactive. They all have security apparatus in their various states, they hold security meetings, there is a DSS in the state and they even also have their own intelligence. They control all the rural villages and everything. The governors are a powerful group that should not be divided, 36 persons make up one conference room, they should discuss and move this country forward and that is the reason also I advocate that this constitution must be amended. For instance, what is the Federal Government doing with Unity School, why do we have the Federal Ministry of Agriculture? It is just because the constitution makes it look as if the Federal Government has to do everything. 

Nigeria is the second largest deposit of bitumen and it is what is used for mechanized roads. We have the problem of the military not being able to get to conflict points early, meanwhile the insurgents in the desert move around with bikes. It could take our military jumping bad terrains and taking hours to get there and by the time they get there, the bandits have done what they wanted to do and go. So we must rejig this country through the constitution.

Your organization, the Global Imitative for Leadership Success (GILS) was supposed convene a conference on security, why the delay?

The sudden global disruption caused by the COVID-19 actually set that programme back but I can assure you that, with some recent by-ins we have received from the Defense leadership, we are getting there soon. We’re making efforts and right now, I do believe that with the changes in the security architecture recently, they will also key in because they all want solution for the insecurity in one way or the other.