UNPRECEDENTED INSECURITY AND CENTRIFUGAL FORCES IN NIGERIA: CONTENDING FORCES WITHIN AND ENEMIES WITHOUT?

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                           BY

 

                                  Patrick Olufemi Adelusi PhD

                    John & James Associates (Bilingual Policy Scientists) Ltd.

                                          London. United Kingdom

                                                     patrickadelusi@jjassociates.org.uk

 http://www.olufemiadelusi.blogspot.co.uk/

                                    www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-Olufemi-adelusi-a2139a76

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I-               ABSTRACT

Every Federation always has the twin tendencies of centrifugal and centripetal forces at work. There are always additional efforts to encourage more of the forces centrifugal than those of centripetal. Centripetal force is the force that points inward. The force in the opposite direction, pointing outward is the centrifugal force. These two terms are applied to the Federal States in Political Science studies because of the inward strengthening attributes of centripetal force and the outward separationist attributes of centrifugal force.

There seem to be unprecedented insecurity challenges in Nigeria. The remote causes relate to economic problems of unemployment for youths, low-income revenues to the federation account, and tight control of circulation money, what used to be loose corrupt money. The immediate causes now are traceable to the Covid-19 pandemic attack on the citizens with its Lockdown imperatives, and the 2023 General Elections.

Some questions keep coming up. The first question is why is there a flurry of herdsmen attacks and killing of farmers and kidnapping of non-farmers across the length and breadth of the country, the President’s own home state inclusive? A second question is if the ruling political party is seen carrying out programmes like roads rehabilitation, railway reconstruction, completion of abandoned buildings, upgrading of seaport facilities across the maritime coast of the country, and more, even with the dwindling resources of the country and recovered looted or corruption money, whose interests are best served by the ungovernable and restless social and political environment created by bandits and kidnappers? For ease of our analysis, this study will be looked at in 4 sections, namely Section I- Abstract, Section II-Introduction, Section III- Contending forces within and enemies without? Section IV-Conclusion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II-            INTRODUCTION

 

The 2019 Presidential Elections came and went with a winner who was the re-elected incumbent All Progressives Congress party candidate President Muhammad Buhari and a loser representing the People Democratic Party in the person of Atiku Abubakar. He disputed the results. He claimed that he won the election based on an imaginary cloud-based INEC election storage drive. He pursued his grievances to the Supreme Court where he eventually lost. There are reports that some foreign-owned and based companies supported him in anticipation that his economic policies will Nigeria more to their own penetration. Can youth’s unemployment be a great source of banditry and kidnapping that attempts to render Nigeria ungovernable? Who stands to gain from the social and political fear being created by herdsmen attacking farmers, kidnapping, and killing non-farmers, kidnapping children from schools for ransom, and ethnic groups agitating for self-declaration of their independence? In our preliminary study, these issues are arranged for purposeful analysis in the following sections. Section I- Abstract, Section II- Introduction, Section III- Unprecedented Insecurity and Centrifugal -Forces in Nigeria- Contending Forces within and enemies without? Section IV- Conclusion

 

 

 

 

 

III-          CONTENDING FORCES WITHIN AND ENEMIES WITHOUT?

 

 

The contending forces within can be described as the Cattle rustlers and herders from the North across the States picking quarrels with farmers and inhabitants on farmlands. As the conflicts were going on, there was also the kidnapping of human targets for financial ransom by armed persons that were a combination of herders and Boko Haram operatives. The brazen killings of innocent people including farmers and the seizing of farmlands across the Southwest zone triggered nationalistic demands for an OODUDUWA independent country.

 

The enemies without concept came in the wake of certain concerns about the suggestive collusion between the defeated PDP Presidential candidate in the 2019 Elections and some French companies fronting for other foreign businesses. French companies were reportedly seen to have aided the campaign of Atiku Abubakar in exchange for their privileged control over some sectors of the Nigerian economy in a free fall policy environment if he became elected.

Recent events in Nigeria are laced with the influx of miscreants probably engaged and monetized by the French connection with the loser of the 2019 Presidential elections in Nigeria with one sole aim of making Nigeria ungovernable and at best render the development projects and efforts made by the incumbent President useless and unappreciated and of no meaningful addition to the development of the country.

 

Recent geopolitical turbulence in the surrounding francophone countries until now, very attached to the political influence of ex-colonial power France rattled France. A long-standing ally of France in Burkina Faso and Chad was mutated. One was shot dead while on war to defend his territory against her internal uprising and the second lost his presidential elections. The successor governments in these two countries are now turned to Nigerian political influence of their volition to the chagrin of France. The people of these countries seem to be in tandem with their political leaders.

Another very important recorded event took place in Nigeria with regards to the French connection to the destabilization of the Nigerian State. A helicopter was grounded with a captured white French man as its main passenger and the helicopter was loaded with weapons. He confessed his mission and the source of the Helicopter. While the owner did not hide his identity. He said he did rental business with the machine. The mission was to monitor the positions of the personnel distributed across Nigeria to foment trouble.

 

 

Nigeria’s current government headed by an austere President embarked on policies of food production in the areas of rice and wheat as well as that mopping up of otherwise usual lose money from circulation did not go down with American farmers and Euro-American Big Agriculture-Business companies; The last factor is the China-Nigeria monetary exchange MOU. Where Nigeria no longer needs dollars to buy and sell its goods to China.

 

There are two additional sources of enemies from without; recently there are reports that Fulani bandits are now attacking Meity-Allah herdsmen. The importance of this intra Fulani conflict lies in the fact, that at the onset of the terrorizing herdsmen attack, kidnap, and brutal raping and killing of farmers while seizing their farmlands, all the attention was focused on Nigerian home-based Fulani cattle grazing and rearing men. There was no distinction between home-based and foreign infiltrated Kalashnikov wielding Fulani bandits.

 

 

We recognize that each of these contending forces can become a research subject on its own. Suffice to say that the complex interrelated centrifugal forces unleashed on Nigeria at this point in her social, economic, and political existence have heightened to acute separationist tendencies. The narcist-inspired call for the Biafra Republic by a jobless and frustrated politically marginalized youth in the person one Nnamdi Kanu had galvanized the youths in the South East of Nigeria towards self-determination for the region or zone.

 

IV-         CONCLUSION

 

There seem to be unprecedented insecurity challenges in Nigeria. The remote causes relate to economic problems of unemployment for youths, low-income revenues to the federation account, and tight control of circulation money, what used to be loose corrupt money. The immediate causes now are traceable to the Covid-19 pandemic attack on the citizens with its Lockdown imperatives, and the 2023 General Elections.

 

Some questions keep coming up. The first question is why is there a flurry of herdsmen attacks and killing of farmers and kidnapping of non-farmers across the length and breadth of the country, the President’s own home state inclusive? A second question is if the ruling political party is seen carrying out programmes like roads rehabilitation, railway reconstruction, completion of abandoned buildings, upgrading of seaport facilities across the maritime coast of the country, and more, even with the dwindling resources of the country and recovered looted or corruption money, whose interests are best served by the ungovernable and restless social and political environment created by bandits and kidnappers?

 

This preliminary study has pointed out some of the sources of these insecurity challenges. Every federation has its contending forces and they are the main reasons why the country is a federation in the first place. These internal forces were exacerbated by foreign interlopers lining behind a disgruntled defeated opposition Presidential candidate seeking to make the Party in power to lose popularity and support to remain in the minds of the people.

Nigeria and France could formally discuss to their relationship in the context of the West African geopolitical environment as well as bilateral relations with the Africa -France conference that was taking place in France. This face-to-face diplomacy will render useless the middlemen interlopers hoping to continue to disorganize Nigerian State.