The political horizon for the country is state failure. The Nigerian state has not failed completely but the risk is high. The task before the nation is therefore state building. The challenge however is that precisely because of the high level of insecur

North East recorded 188 fatalities and 22 abductions within the period in review, while the South East recorded 117 killings and 26 abductions. The breakdown also shows that the South West had 74 fatalities and 27 abductions, while the South-South recorded 18 fatalities and 11 abductions. In the North West, Zamfara, where activities of bandits pauperised most rural dwellers, there were no abductions recorded, despite the loss of 275 persons in attacks. Neighbouring Kebbi State had 93 fatalities with 119 abductions. Similarly, Kaduna State recorded 26 deaths with 157 abductions. While Katsina State recorded six deaths with three abductions, Sokoto State had 15 fatalities with zero abduction. Kano and Jigawa states recorded one death each with no abductions and so on.

As students of political science in the 1970s, our lecturers, I believed, were obsessed with the question of political order. The key text was the book by Samuel P. Huntington: Political Order in Changing Societies, in which he argued that societal changes and transformations are resultant outcomes of socio-political tensions within the system. His objective was to forge an enduring understanding of modernisation theory that could point out pathways to political stability, then, and maybe now also, considered as a good in itself. At the beginning of the Nigerian experiment, Lord Lugard had justified Pax Britannica as a necessity for ending political disorder and mass insecurity tied to the slave trade, inter-tribal wars, rural banditry and the requirement for building walls around cities to provide safety for the people. His offer was rural peace which he produced within twenty years. Today, Nigeria is back to the beginning. We urgently need rural peace.

The Nigerian State no longer has a monopoly of the instruments of violence. According to the Chairman of the National Peace Committee and former Head of State, General Abdulsalam Abubakar, there are at least six million small arms and light weapons circulating within the civilian population in the country. The language of expression of youth agency is increasingly being articulated by armed interventions. In the North East is the Islamist insurgency, in the Niger Delta, militancy around petroleum resources and in the North West, cattle rustling. All of the above are today being dwarfed by the transformation of herderfarmer conflicts into rural banditry and mass kidnapping all over the country. No one is safe in today’s Nigeria and the police have narrowed their role to VIP protection for those who can pay. Meanwhile, the military, which is deployed in active operations in virtually every state in the country is overstretched and cannot defend the people.

The political horizon for the country is state failure. The Nigerian state has not failed completely but the risk is high. The task before the nation is therefore state building. The challenge however is that precisely because of the high level of insecurity, the belief in Nigeria’s nationhood has declined dramatically and many component parts of the country want to take the exit option to build the Caliphate, Biafra or Oduduwa Republics. The Nigerian State is paying the price of its failure to maintain a minimal level of political order. The welfare and security responsibility that the constitution gave the state is no longer being performed. In response, many Nigerians are demanding restructuring as panacea. This is a dilemma as the state might already be too weak to successfully negotiate a new and successful process of restructuring. The weakness of the state is linked to its failure to maintain Nigeria’s elite consensus forged while creating the basis for independence – THAT NIGERIA SHALL BE TRULY FEDERAL AND DEMOCRATIC OR IT SHALL NOT BE. Dear Nigerian State, don’t panic, simply give us true federalism and true democracy.