By Ade Jacobs
The Financial Times (FT) of London has described the recent kidnapping of students in Kankara, Katsina state, as a pointer that the country is fast drifting into a failed state.
Over 300 hundred students were penultimate week, kidnapped by suspected bandits and later released.
The paper, in its recent editorial, said kidnapping, banditry and terrorism have aggravated the adverse political and economic situations in the country as the government appears helpless.
Read also: From Chibok Girls to Kankara Boys
Citing the recent event as a yardstick, FT said “More than 300 Nigerian schoolboys were reunited with their families last weekend, days after they had been abducted by kidnappers from their dormitory in the country’s North west. The kidnapping revived memories of the 276 Chibok schoolgirls abducted in Borno state in 2014. Just as then, Boko Haram, the militant Islamist group, claimed responsibility.
“The government insists no ransom was paid. Scepticism is warranted. In a country going backwards economically, carjacking, kidnapping and banditry are among Nigeria’s rare growth industries. Just as the boys were going home, Nigerian pirates abducted six Ukrainian sailors off the coast. The definition of a failed state is one where the government is no longer in control.”
It further warned against the spread of Boko Haram and other criminal groups, to other parts of the country despite government’s claim that the terror group has been “technically defeated”, adding for instance, that militancy in the Niger Delta remains a potent threat to the corporate existence of the country, as the country struggles with extreme poverty, disease among its citizen and a dwindling oil revenue.
“In the oil-rich, but impoverished, Niger Delta region,” FT said “extortion through the sabotage of pipelines is legendary. Extortion is a potent symbol for a state whose modus operandi is the extraction of oil revenue from central coffers to pay for a bloated, ruinously inefficient, political elite. Security is not the only area where the state is failing. Nigeria has more poor people, defined as those living on less than $1.90 a day, than any other country, including India.
“In non-Covid-19 years, one of every five children in the world out of school lives in Nigeria, many of them girls. The population, already above 200m, is growing at a breakneck 3.2 per cent a year. The economy has stalled since 2015 and real living standards are declining.
“This year, the economy will shrink 4 per cent after Covid-19 dealt a further blow to oil prices. In any case, as the world turns greener, the elite’s scramble for oil revenue will become a game of diminishing returns. The country desperately needs to put its finances, propped up by foreign borrowing, on a sounder footing. In its three remaining years, the government of Mr Buhari must seek to draw a line in the sand. It must redouble efforts to get a grip on security.
The FT said there’s need to quickly restore confidence in major public institutions ahead of the 2023 general election, noting that the recent EndSARS protest was a sign that Nigerians are not happy with the situation in the country.
“More than that, Nigeria needs a generational shift. The broad coalition that found political expression this year in the EndSARS movement against police brutality, provides a shard of optimism. At least Nigeria has a relatively stable democracy. Now Nigeria’s youth — creative, entrepreneurial and less tainted by the politics of extraction — should use that system to reset the country’s narrative,” FT said.