Do you think President Jonathan should declare state of emergency and REMOVE governors of states currently engulfed in the Boko Haram crisis?

State of emergency should be declared in Borno State for sure; the carnage there is just too much.

I used to hold the opinion that as part of strategies to solving the Boko Haram menace in some states of the north, a STATE OF EMERGENCY should be declared in affected states and governors should be removed. Some analysts and many Nigerians have also proffered similar solution.

However, after some deep thinking recently I started having some doubts as to effectiveness of such strategy.

Ordinarily, declaration of state of emergency means that the security agencies would have express powers to do everything possible to bring the security situation under control. If you ask me, I think the security agencies already have such powers in those states. If stretched further, like was done under OBJ, state of emergency may mean removing the governor and other political leadership in states affected and replacing them with military chiefs or sole administrators. This is the type of state of emergency many Nigerians are asking for.

But the real question is, can removal of the political leadership in those states solve any problem? Can it make the security agencies better empowered to flush out Boko Haram?

Personally, I think removal of political leadership would only serve to punish the governors and other politicians for failure of leadership and starve them of funds. Besides that, I dont think it will enhance operations of the security agencies against Boko Haram. It may even be a DISTRACTION for security agencies because they'll now have the extra responsibility of providing political leadership in addition to waging war on Boko Haram. The military authorities may be distracted by extra roles like disbursement of funds, sharing of offices and political patronage. Can such distraction help in the war against Boko Haram? I dont think so.

Examples such as we saw in Mali recently does not support declaration of the type of state of emergency some Nigerians ask for. The military authorities in Mali thought the political leadership in the country was not providing enough leadership in the fight against insurgency and staged a military coup. What followed the military coup? The Islamic insurgents immediately swept through and took complete control of the north of Mali. Obviously, the military coup back fired.

Also, in attempt to control the intractable violence in Plateau state, the OBJ govt removed the political leadership in the state and appointed a sole administrator. OBJ also used the opportunity to settle political scores. But obviously, that didn't solve any problem.

In conclusion, declaration of the type of state emergency many Nigerians ask (removal of governors of affected states) maybe counterproductive. I'm not even sure its lawful for the president to remove elected governors. Even if its lawful, it may be an unnecessary distraction to security agencies if they now have to play extra roles of providing political leadership and waging war on Boko Haram