16th April, 2014
By Femi G. Oguntoyinbo
I was disheartened to read about the 17-year old boy who was beaten to death by officials of Enugu Waste Management Agency. I felt depressed, not only because of the murder of the poor, innocent boy, but because of the criminal negligence and insensitivity to the plight of the masses by the government and fellow citizens.
The injustice done to this young chap brought to memory similar cases like the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni men, assassination of Dele Giwa. Giwa, one of Nigeria’s most talented and admired journalists, was killed by a powerful and highly sophisticated letter bomb delivered to his home on Sunday, 19 October, 1986. Public suspicion pointed to the state security forces, who had detained him for questioning only two days before.
Despite public outcry and media condemnation, as well as protest by international human rights organizations, of Saro-Wiwa’s arrest, the military junta of General Sani Abacha defied all entreaties and executed the Ogoni men in 1995. Both incidents just cited defied acceptable civilised world opinion, and the latter led to Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth between 1995 and 1999.
After thinking about these cases and other perceived acts of injustice, I could not, but ask myself: When will these injustices end?
Stories like these: Police brutality, gross disrespect for human rights by law enforcement agents, criminal breach of trust by the government and its agencies, as well as negligence and exploitation of the masses by government agents, ministries and parastatals and some powerful, above-the-law individuals and groups in the society, constitute issues that affect justice delivery and administration in Nigeria.
Permit me to say that I am not an enemy of the state. But, as someone with little knowledge of security, human rights and ‘social contract’, I feel obliged to say something about this barbaric approach to governance.
Security is the centre of our social existence, an ignorant society in matters of security is an endangered society, to quote Igwilo Malachy.
Security is inalienable to human general well-being, and thus, the role of the society (government) could not be over-emphasized in this regard.
As a result of paradigm shift in security, we have come to understand concepts like: Human Security, State Security, Civil Security and other related concepts around which human survival, development and general well-being revolve. Such concepts include Human Rights, Peace and Conflict Resolution/Management.
As I stated in my previous article, Nigeria: A Steeper Descent Into the State of Nature, “social contract is the relationship between the elected government officials, saddled with the responsibility of conducting the affairs of the state and the people (citizens), who gave them their mandate through the ballot”.
If this is so, the government, as an institution of the state has, within its official jurisdiction, to protect the citizenry from external/internal aggressions and all forms of injustice. This brings into focus a statement credited to Lee Kuan Yew, a Singaporean former Prime Minister and Statesman:
“When leaders see power vested in them as personal prerogative, they tend to favour friends and family, thereby eroding the fundamental principles upon which the pillars of the state are built”.
Seeing state powers and authority as personal privilege is the beginning of structural injustice. The injustice becomes ‘structural’, when the structure put in place to ensure law and other, turn out to be the one heating up the polity through inactions, inappropriate policies, exploitation of the citizens (i.e. NIS recruitment saga), and criminal neglect of its duties to the citizenry.
The case cited above, the 17 year-old Chidiebere Edeh, is a typical example of structural injustice. This, however, is a tip of the iceberg, compared to numerous examples being seen and read in the news every day.
What are we going to say about the unending killings of fellow Nigerians by Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram insurgents with government’s seeming ineptitude towards quelling such an act of terrorism?
Structural injustice is also evident in Nigeria with reference to the following: decaying educational system, poor justice delivery, joblessness, poor infrastructure and other acts of neglect by the government.
The point being made here is that, structural injustice has, in many ways, contributed to the increasing spate of violence and insecurity in Nigeria. A critical analysis of the attitude of people to governance in Nigeria depicts the masses as being disoriented and disconcerted with government’s policies, programme and promises. And the criminal elements seem to see our judicial and law enforcement systems as toothless dogs, which could be fed by just anybody, hence, the increasing spate of violence, insecurity and structural injustice in Nigeria.
•Oguntoyinbo, is the author of A Log Of Wood: An X-Ray Of Security Network In Nigeria