NEC Security Retreat

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CONCLUDING REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY THE ACTING PRESIDENT, PROF YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, AT THE NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL SECURITY RETREAT, AT THE BANQUET HALL OF THE STATE HOUSE, ABUJA, 17 AUGUST 2017.

Protocol.

I must thank your Excellencies for your patience and commitment to this whole process. That is not surprising at all because every State Government as you know must be primarily concerned with security.

I must also commend the Armed Forces, the Police and other uniformed forces for their extraordinary professionalism and dedication to the enforcement of law and order, despite the obvious challenges, you have shown exceptional patriotism.

I want to say that this country truly appreciates the enormous work that you do every day. I say so for the Army fighting in the Northeast and the Police and all the other uniformed forces that are doing exceptional work every day.

Your Excellencies, it is very clear that we cannot police this region and when I say police, I refer to law enforcement generally, without devolving policing and law enforcement out to the States. And I am sure that most of the Governors here share the frustrations of the Governor of Lagos State when he spoke of the paradox of the Chief Security Officer who has no control over the security officers over whom he is chief.

It is a paradox that arises from our Constitution, there is very little we can do about it without constitutional change. While the APC as you all know have advocated statements, and we are obviously trying to go through the legislative process to get that done, but before we get there, we must enforce the Community Policing Model.

We must enforce a model that at least democratizes security in such a way as to include everyone in the process of protecting themselves, securing their own lives and the lives of people in their community.

The simple advantage of the arrangement is that it allows the effective gathering of intelligence on the street level, it simply means that it would involve the ordinary citizen in ensuring his security and that of his community. It must involve all local leaders, all structures of civil society and on every street, the police ought to have one or two persons who can contact the police at short notice.

Community policing can work anywhere there is a commitment, and we will look at the details of it as we go on. But I want us to ensure that we try and see that it works in our various jurisdictions.

When I listen to the Governor of Lagos State saying that it won’t work, it reminded me of the EXCO of Lagos State. I was a member of that EXCO from 1999 to 2007. Two of us in that EXCO opposed the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), and the two of us who opposed it were myself and later to become Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola. At the time, he was Chief of Staff.

We opposed it because we felt that if we created a bus route on Ikorodu road, it would narrow the roads so badly that the traffic would become worse. We kept at it but we didn’t succeed and as it turns out, Governor Fashola completed the BRT. It was a tremendous achievement. So, of course, we were wrong and we are usually wrong when we take the view that something wouldn’t work. Of course, it would work, I am convinced and committed to this that it would work. I am convinced that His Excellency, the Governor of Lagos State will make it work and like me, he will be a repentant convert for Community Policing.

But quite seriously, I want to say that we’ve talked a lot about funding and I will give a brief summary of some of the key points; we’ve talked about funding and the equipment of the Armed Forces and the uniformed forces. There is no question at all that funding is absolutely important, and when we look at it, some of the problems we are facing, some of which the Chief of Staff has mentioned.

I want to say that our Defence budget and funding of uniformed forces is clearly one of the largest components of our budget. For example, Education is only 1/3 of Defence, so Defence is three times that of Education. The Defence budget, the recurrent budget is N230 billion and we spend a lot of money. Also if you compare it to Healthcare, we spend a lot of money on Defence. This is budgeted funds and there are also funds which may be unbudgeted.

The same for the uniformed forces, there is a lot of money being spent, no question at all. And I want to say, because I think it was the DG, SSS who said that we must hold our security chiefs to account. There must be accountability, it is not enough to say ‘we need more money”, we must hold our security chiefs to account.

If even our state security, NSA, all of the intelligent community must be held to account. A lot of money is being spent, and that money must be accounted for properly because there is no point in us saying we want more money.

This country spends something close to 15 billion in dollars in purchasing arms to fight Boko Haram. More money that has ever been spent on any single issue yet no trace of any of that in the previous government, not even some of the basics – boots, uniforms and those kinds of things.

So I want to say that, very frequently our problem is not “no money”, our problem is how we spend whatever there is. In one of the studies I was looking at, Boko Haram is said to have spent in total at that time, $10 million, it is one of the estimates research has shown. Yet there are complaints that they have better equipment, they have this and that. I think we need to hold ourselves accountable. I do not think that we should simply say this is about more money, I think accountability is crucial, I think ensuring prudence is crucial, looking at how this money that they have is spent is what we must pay attention to as well.

Having said this, I just want to mention a few of the critical issues that everyone seemed to agree on. The first is the coordination of the security and intelligence community. I think that it is a very crucial point, practically everyone has mentioned this point and there has to be coordination between the security agencies and the intelligence community.

These kinds of issues arise in many jurisdictions in the world. As a matter of fact, it was only in 2011 that the American government suddenly realised that because of the lack of synergy between the compliments of the intelligence and security community, the entire country was in danger.

I think that it is important that our security and intelligence agencies realise the importance of acting and working together rather than in silos. Of course, we were extremely glad to take all of those issues offline. Also, coordination of security issues between the Federal, State and Local Governments is important.

The second issue is the prompt action of the arrest and prosecution of perpetrators of the terrorist act, kidnapping and purveyors of hate speeches.

The designation of special courts; everyone has been talking about special courts and I had a very quick conversation with the honourable Chief Justice of Nigeria on this issue and we are definitely going to be working with States on this question of designating special courts in every State for the prosecution of terrorist act, kidnapping in this special court.

And I would also want to urge the Governors because just conversations with the State Chief Judges will help a great deal for States to achieve their goals in ways where obviously every State needs to have this special courts, what we can do to help is to provide a template for how we think the special courts can run.

Most States have adopted the Administration of Justice Act which is a very important legislature for the quick prosecution of offences and we think if we can work together on this, we can achieve a great deal.

Funding and equipping of Armed Forces, Police and other uniformed forces is also something we have agreed to do. With respect to the herdsmen and farmers conflict, I think that the primary thing is recognition that here we have a problem of land use described once as an ethological problem but it is being ethicised, some are reading religious meanings into it and we need to be able to check by ensuring the ethnic groups are less the problem, otherwise it can blow to serious ethnic conflict, serious religious conflict.

There are many mischief makers who would want to make this into a major issue for another ethnic frontline or another religious frontline so it is important that we take a quick look at this, look at all the options, designation of reasons, designation of branches and all of the other possible options that are being recommended but I think that it is also important and I think this was a suggestion made by His Excellency, Governor of Jigawa State about herdsmen and farmers. But where two groups are able to meet and discuss, at least work out some of the issues that concern them. We think that it is also an important point and that it can be done.

National unity, I think with respect to the ethno-religious crisis and agitations, is what we all seem to be agreed on, and while people, of course, have the right to express their views, those views must not compromise democracy and must not compromise the integrity of our nation.

However a person chooses to express his views, we cannot compromise, the constitution cannot compromise the integrity of the State and that is why I have made a point about hate and divisive speech and national unity is important, it is crucial. Without national unity and territorial integrity of our nation, we won’t even be here much more talking about it.

Finally, I think there have been talks about a new vision for our society and I think Prof. Oluwasakin also made the point about a national conversation, I don’t want to be quoted by saying a National Conference but I think that there must be an on-going engagement amongst the people, to try and envision the society where you want to live in, I think that the process of engagement is crucial.

When I visited the Niger Delta, there were many people who were suggesting even before we went, there were those who were saying that the only way to resolve the Niger Delta crisis is giving money to community leaders, but we decided that would demean the struggle and it would demean the people.

So I went there and engaged the people, from Gbaramatu, we went practically everywhere and of course, it was the reverse that we found.  I made a joke that the President and I shared, when we got to Gbaramatu, rather than being asked for money, I was actually given money by the people before we left they gave us N250,000.00 and they offered me a wife as well.

So I think that our people are very noble people, I think that what people want is to be engaged properly, to be treated with respect and dignity. I think that if we treat people with respect and dignity and we take their views seriously and we engage them, we can build the kind of society we want to see.

I think is entirely possible, I don’t think that we can assume that just as Prof. Oluwasakin said that this is a military problem or a police problem. Yes, these are important components of ensuring that the States runs properly but most importantly is engagement, the people in the society live together and they agree to live together in peace and we must encourage that, we must encourage all the conversations that make it possible for us to live together.

I was speaking to a group of religious leaders and saying that sometimes when we are looking for solutions for ourselves we say let just ask for religious leaders to preach in churches and mosques out of unity and of course that’s important but we also need to convince the religious leader, we need to speak to our religious leaders themselves and convince them that they are not necessarily right about the other religion.

It is important once and for all to speak to our religious leaders so that they can understand that the other people are not necessarily demons waiting to come and kill or vice versa.

It is important to persuade them also because we must not assume that religious leaders are also persons who necessarily understand that their utterances can bring about peace or war.

Many times we find religious leaders stoking up these divisions by themselves, so it is important that we engage our religious leaders, so that everybody understands what the issues are and why these issues are important because many times you find that it has become today, one of the easiest ways of becoming popular within your own faith is by declaring that the other faith or any other faith is doing something that can harm your own faith.

We must deal with these sorts of views, we must bring in our religious leaders for full conversations on the security implications of what they are doing in the country and one of the most important things is that we don’t assume that they know that their utterances can either cause war or can bring about peace.

If you look at all the countries where there have been serious crises such as Rwanda, the roles of religious leaders, community leaders have always been prominent.

I think we really have to work with our religious leaders in all of the States to ensure that they understand the importance of saying the right things, the importance of speaking peace and communal living together in harmony.

I will again thank you all very much for the time you devoted to this security seminar. Of course your Excellencies, this is just the beginning of these conversations, for us we still have a very long way to go on the various things we need to do but I think we started well and I hope we will be able to work together on all of the issues that I have outlined.

Thank you very much.