By EMMANUEL OGEBE, Esq

INSECURITY

In terms of its security performance, one will have to say that this administration has not met expectations for an administration that is the first not to have any Fulani in its composition of the first or second top tier since the return to democracy in 1999. It has failed woefully to contain the menace of the Fulani herdsmen attacks within the country.

They have continued to spiral out of control, as has been the case, even under the Fulani hegemony administration of Buhari that has exited. So it has clearly not performed. Just a couple of days ago, there was another massacre in Plateau State, and so that is indicative of the concerns that we have.

Now in terms of Boko Haram you know, the vice president is, Kanuri from Bornu State, and his influence there has also not contained the insurgency at all. So sadly, we cannot give them high marks for any significant improvement in insecurity. If anything, we have seen a rise in insecurity in even the capital city of Abuja. So that is very, very concerning.

REGIONAL SECURITY

On another level, we need to look at the situation in terms of their international engagement.

The fiasco with the Niger situation is something that of course, is well known to all of us. When you look at what happened in Ukraine, Russia invaded Ukraine, and even though Ukraine is not a NATO member country, the US and NATO came to their assistance. And what happened? That singular action of the US and NATO assisting Ukraine not only strengthened NATO, but it caused other non-NATO members to join NATO, thereby strengthening the NATO alliance.

However, in Africa, we saw exactly the opposite. When there was a coup in Niger, this administration came up with an ill-conceived notion that it was going to invade Niger. And because of that illogical and Ill-advised move, it caused dissension within the ranks.

And what did we see happen? We saw a schism in ECOWAS, and rather than strengthening ECOWAS, we saw ECOWAS nations break out of this sub-regional group.

This has never happened before. And so we now see that some countries have left ECOWAS and that was highly unfortunate. We saw a situation where our airspace or the airspace over Niger was closed to aircraft coming to Nigeria. Just some very, very bizarre things that have never happened to us.

And so that was deeply mishandled.

INFRASTRUCTURAL IRRESPONSIBILITY

So these are some of the concerns we’ve had, but one of the really very disturbing things for me that I must mention is the coastal highway from Lagos to Calabar, which is one of the most, in fact, is the most ill-conceived project that one could ever imagine that any Nigerian president would implement.

Why do I say so? Firstly, it is not one of the top 10 or top 20 priorities for Nigeria. The top priority infrastructure project for Nigeria today, number one is electricity. Number two is electricity. Number three is electricity. Any electricity project you do in Nigeria today will have a ripple effect on all Nigerians, every length and breadth of this country, all 200 million Nigerians, and it’ll have an exponential impact on the economy.

And so that’s where we need to invest that $13 billion. But you wake up and you decide to build a road that will not touch the majority of Nigerians, that nobody wakes up in the morning in Nigeria and is thinking about how to travel from Lagos to Calabar. Nobody wakes up thinking about that. And so they decided to build a white elephant project that is not in anybody’s interest, except the contractors who will make money off of that project.

Secondly, it actually endangers our national security. One of the reasons that Abuja was chosen as our federal capital was for national security reasons. They moved the capital from Lagos because Lagos was right there on the waterfront, which made it easy for a maritime attack. If you know what happened, you know, during the Second World War, the invasion of Normandy the American troops landed on the waterfront, and that was how they overran France and took over from the Germans. It was a seaborne attack.

So that was why strategically it was moved into Abuja so that you cannot by sea take over the capital of the country. Now, these people are building a road, a highway, all along the stretch of the coastline, which means that any attacker who is able to land, you know, by sea has a straight access all the way. So literally, if you’re able to make a seaborne attack onto a coastline, you have a direct route to move your tanks all the way down within a matter of hours, you will overrun the country with your tanks.

Once you land, this is an incredible breach of national security to build the road along that stretch. Meanwhile, if you really want to link the so-called six spots, you can already do that, via the ocean, all you need to do is get a trawler, an ocean vessel that you can use to sail along the coast from port to port.

Now, most of those ports are underutilized anyway. If you want to connect them, you can connect them by sea. You don’t need to build a highway to connect them. So it is the most pointless, ill-advised misuse of funds that you can ever imagine all to satisfy the biddings of “lootocrats”.

MISPLACED PRIORITY & POLICY INCONSISTENCY

So on any level and any assessment of this administration’s one year, is that they have been wandering in the wilderness, mindlessly in the wilderness. They remove subsidy and they’re still paying subsidy. Whether they admit it or not, they are still paying subsidy. So the policy, they said they courageously took, they have taken it back.

They floated the naira currency, and they beat their chest proudly. And now they have borrowed over $10 billion of future oil and gas earnings to defend naira. And they’ve been unsuccessful in defending naira. And that $10 billion has gone, and our children’s children will be paying that debt for decades to come.

Our foreign reserves are being depleted in defense of the naira. So clearly this administration has been an unmitigated disaster in the one year of his atrocious rule. There’s nothing to celebrate on any counts whatsoever.

I wish I could say different. And it’s nothing but, you know, woes upon woes and a fresh book of lamentations. APC has outdone itself. It was thought inconceivable that a worse than Buhari could come, but lo and behold, it has come.

•Emmanuel Ogebe is an International Human Rights Lawyer.

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