The importance of peace in the development of a nation needs not be over-emphasized. One can say without any fear of contradiction that any nation or state where peace does not exist relatively can hardly witness any progress to say the least. It follows that there exists an undeniable relationship between peace and development. The crave for democracy globally is hinged on providing leadership capable of engendering nation-building. While acknowledging that Nigeria is not the only country entangled in security challenges, her case is worrisome as the rising spate of insecurity serves as albatross to any meaningful development. Insecurity, especially internal is not a problem that is unique to Nigeria alone, other countries both developing and developed face this challenge. The difference between some of them and our country, Nigeria is how they manage the threat. In the last few years, heightened social insecurity in Nigeria has arguably fuelled the crime rate, leaving unpalatable consequences for the nation’s economy and its growth.
The socio-political and economic landscape in Nigeria has been blighted by the endemic twin evil of crime and violence. The abysmal failure of successive administration in Nigeria to address the challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequitable distribution of wealth among ethnic nationalities, ultimately resulted to anger, agitation and violent crimes against the Nigerian state by some individuals and groups. Such crimes include militancy, kidnapping, bombing, armed robbery, destruction of government properties, among others. Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gunpowder that can explode if things are not put right within the shortest time as asserted by former president OBJ some months ago. Dimensionally, “the pattern of Insecurity in Nigeria has been regionalized. Militia groups’ Insurgency in the north, kidnappers in the eastern and southern part of the country, ritual killing in the west, political and non-political calculated assassinations across the nation. The regionalized structure of Insecurity has also given rise to regionalized unlegislated security formation in the country in a bid to curtail the alarming rate of insecurity, this disturbing sense of insecurity poses a daunting challenge towards Nigeria’s effort at national economic development and consequently put to questioning the level of Nigeria’s preparedness to be ranked among the twenty (20) developed countries of the world by the year 2020.





Like any other terminology, security does not lend itself to easy definition, but it means safety or freedom from danger; and protection from external attack or infiltration. This is security defined from the military point of view, but even at that, security involves but does not just mean defence. Security is more than military security or security from external attacks. For many of the four billion inhabitants in the developing countries, security is conceived as the basic level of the struggle for survival. Therefore, in order to provide an integrated African security assessment, the non-military dimensions of security should be added. Henceforth, African security as concept should be applied in its broadest sense to include economic security, social security, environmental security, food security, the equality of life security and technological security. Concurring with the contemporary school of thought, any society that seeks to achieve adequate military security against the background of acute food shortage, population explosion, low level of production and per capita income, low technological development, inadequate and efficient public utilities, and chronic problem of unemployment, has a false sense of security. Absolute presence of poverty in a country is the harbinger of unrest, internal upheavals, violence, and escalation of extremism. For developing societies, political leaders must note that without development there cannot be national security.

In a modernizing society, security means development, security is not military hardware, though it may include it; security is not a military force, though it may involve it; security is not traditional military activity, though it may encompass it; security is development, and without development there can be no security. A developing nation that does not in fact develop simply cannot remain secure for the intractable reason that its own citizens cannot shed its human nature… that is what we do not always understand and what governments of modernizing nations do not always understand. Social movements occur when frustration leads to collective, often aggressive behaviour. Frustration has a variety of sources and can take two forms. First, it can be absolute, which happens when people do not have enough to survive, and second, it can be relative, which happens when people have enough to survive but have less than those around them. Insecurity as a result of criminal activities individually or corporately creates insecurity and breach of the peace that are likely to or indeed affect legitimate social and economic activities in the country. This problem has the damaging consequence of raising the signal to the rest of the international community that Nigeria is not a safe and secure place and as such not suitable for economic Investment and activities. No wonder, investors particularly foreign, are leaving the shore of Nigeria for other African countries with relative peace. This has the tendency of rubbishing the so-called transformation agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan and making the expected gains from Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) a mirage.


The rates of terrorist bombings, kidnapping, armed robbery attacks on banks as well as other violent crimes in recent months, have led to a prevalent massive loss of the nation’s human resources. This ugly trend poses a threat to the future of the nation’s agricultural productivity level, private sector investment volume, petroleum sector growth rate, manpower and overall economic development. According to the Human Rights Watch, about 2800 lives were lost to terror-related violence between 2009 and 2012. Within the first nine months in 2012, 815 people were killed in 275 suspected attacks by the Boko Haram group and this represents more than the total number of deaths recorded between 2010 and 2011 combined. About 211 police officers were killed while over 60 police stations in at least 10 northern and central states were attacked by the terrorist group apart from the police headquarters that was bombed in Abuja. Similarly, social cohesion amongst the various component units is a desideratum in the process of national political development. This feeling of alienation and mutual distrust as a result of rabid competition for power and positions among federating units in Nigeria has been eliciting widespread discontent and loss of confidence in governments’ programme and policies with a dire consequence on political stability and by extension democratic consolidation which is a sine qua non for good governance and development. This is almost practically unattainable under the present security challenge in Nigeria. Even as Nigeria struggles with the teeming youth unemployment, companies in their numbers are closing down operations through the north to the south and relocating to other African countries for fear of loss of lives and properties. The few remaining companies operate on skeletal basis. Workers, both local and expatriates had fled these regions. This development has multiplied the number of unemployed youth roaming the street and they have become easy tools for violence. This scenario has not only deepened the existing unemployment rate but also paints a gloomy picture of poverty.

Ordinarily, money which is supposed to be channeled to human capital development now being deployed to the rehabilitation and renovation of human and properties destroyed. Since the inception of the Amnesty Programme by the Federal Government to quenching the Niger-Delta militia, billions of naira were spent and did not commensurate with the expected results, an indication of wastages occasioned by the menace of insurgency. Public commentators have turned the Federal Government into a laughing stock when they almost dangled Amnesty in the course of negotiating with Boko Haram leaders, this would have amounted to a colossal loss. While other countries are showing commitment in tackling insecurity, Nigeria was lackadaisical in this regard for so many reasons. Firstly, poverty being a global phenomenon; Africa is most hit because 40 of the 76 “chronically deprived countries” in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa, while in Nigeria, people living below poverty level increased from 87million to 112.5million between 2004 and 2010. The poverty-security nexus constitutes a ‘tangled web’ with overlapping threats of intervening variables and strands of reverse causality, as poverty and violence reinforce one another.



Poverty breeds insecurity by undermining the capacity of states to deliver basic physical security, legitimate governance, economic growth and social welfare.
Moreover, unemployment as well as lack of database of criminals also in no small measure, contributes to instability and insecurity in Nigeria. Therefore goes that, ‘a hungry man is an angry man’. We have a large number of unemployed youths in Nigeria and jobs are not forthcoming. Some of these unemployed people inadvertently go into crimes to survive while others have penchant for criminality. With youth unemployment, it is not unlikely that it will contribute significantly to security challenges confronting the country. A similar factor is the unprecedented level of corruption that has permeated the fabrics of our national life. Imagine an individual steals, embezzles billions or even trillions of naira without blinking an eye lid. It would seem there is a competition for winning the highest award for corruption. Corruption leads to the loss of revenue meant for infrastructural development, human capital development, enhancement of production capabilities and health care-all variables of development that should promote poverty eradication.
The perception of Nigerians, particularly, the disadvantaged is that, in spite of the institutional mechanisms to curbing corruption, the system is being encouraged by lack of political will as evidenced in the handling of corruption related cases. This encourages rather than discouraging corruption with money meant for development going into private pockets. This is now what is creating a war-like situation in a bid to survive. On illiteracy, it is believed as one of the major causes of insecurity and a very strong factor leading people against their own country. Illiterate northerners came up with the ideology that education is bad. In the end, we are faced with an existential threat to the nation; several major attacks in the country have been attributed to this group, which is nurtured mostly by illiteracy. The psyche of many young people have been destroyed through the collapse of government, we have created those criminals through the collapse of educational systems in the northern part of the country. The neglect of agriculture, population explosion; indigene-settler dichotomy; Incapability of government’s security apparatus at guaranteeing safety and security, limited opportunities for women empowerment and lack of political will and strategically sound and articulated policies. All these can be generalized as government ineptitude and complete lack of direction which can be adduced to the inexperienced of President Goodluck Jonathan.

Dare Olowolayemo
Lagos.

.

All insecurities in the country are APC's Handiwork! Since they threatened to make Governing impossible for GEJ and threw around Hooligans and Vandals calling meaninglessly for change of Government without just cause, they then laid the foundation for insecurity.