Security and Federalism

I was at the 7th Town Hall Meeting of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund (LSSTF) last Thursday November 28, 2013 at the Civic Centre, Victoria-Island in Lagos. For those who may not know, LSSTF was created by Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) through a Law passed by the State Assembly, in 2007 when he was first elected. Indeed it was the first law passed under the Fashola Administration. It was envisaged as a public-private partnership arrangement to intervene in the chronic funding gap for the police and other security agencies in the state. As I have heard Fashola say on several occasions (and as those of us who live in Lagos can easily corroborate!), when he came into office in May 2007, Lagos was besieged by armed robbers and other sundry criminals. Bank robberies, home invasions and traffic attacks were a regular daily occurrence and near anarchy was virtually loosed upon the land. I can testify to all these from personal experience! In August 2007, five or more armed robbers broke into my home on the island in the dead of night and carted away laptops, projectors, phones, jewellery, cash and any portable stuff they could lay their hands on. It was, I believe, only the restraining hand of the Almighty that ensured no one came to any harm, and nothing of subsisting value was lost. Some years earlier, I had gone to visit a junior bank colleague who had just had a child in the Ikeja area, along with my wife, and armed men broke into the flat while we were there! This was around 8.00pm on a Sunday evening!!! In 2000, armed robbers blocked me down Opebi Road, Ikeja around 9.30pm, drove me (with a gun to my head all through) to Ijoko Road, Otta, before dropping me off in the middle of nowhere around 11.30pm. Of course they went off with the brand new Honda Accord I was driving as well as most of my personal belongings!!! Fashola notes that he spent his first weeks in office visiting hospitals, mortuaries and homes of residents to console victims of the then rampant robberies in the state and quickly decided the deteriorating security situation required an emergency response. LSSTF was the outcome of the work of a committee headed by former Inspector-General of Police, Musiliu Smith, which recommended the state find a means of redressing the almost criminal neglect of police funding by the federal government. At the Town Hall Meeting, one of the mechanisms institutionalized by LSSTF to ensure transparency and accountability (others include publication of an annual report; auditing of its accounts by global accounting firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers; an independent board, comprised of a majority of private sector representatives; non-receipt of any direct appropriation or subvention from the state government; etc), Fashola and the Fund’s Executive Secretary, Fola Arthur-Worrey illustrated the shocking scale of police funding deficit-in 2013, Abuja provided only 3 vehicles to the Lagos State Police Command, which includes command headquarters, OPS Attack, Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), Special Investigation Board (SIB), State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), 106 police divisions with Divisional Police Officers (DPOs), and numerous police stations and posts, as well as Marine Police, 5 Mobile Police Divisions and a Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU). All these exclude the “federal” commands based in Lagos-Airport, Ports, and Railway Commands, Federal SARS and FCID! The FGN reportedly budgeted N475million for vehicles for the entire Nigeria Police Force!!! The total police budget for the whole country was N311billion of which N293billion was for personnel costs, leaving only N8billion for overheads and N10billion for capital expenditure! Yet this same Federal Government, which abandons the police, other security agencies and many other federal agencies in the states resolutely opposes state police and devolution of power! It is very much like an irresponsible husband and father, who lavishes his money on a wasteful lifestyle while refusing to provide for his wives and children, and yet insists the wives must not work!!! It is absurdities and dysfunctions such as this that convince me of the necessity, indeed the imperative of a national conference to discuss such and similar fundamental issues! In the face of this gross federal neglect, Lagos State Government, its Local Governments and Local Council Development Areas, and citizens and organisations have through the LSSTF provided in excess of N12billion in resources and provided the police and other security agencies in the state more than 800 vehicles since 2007. LSSTF has also become a mechanism to ensure recurrent costs such as fuelling, servicing and maintenance of vehicles, equipment and other operational resources are provided in an accountable and verifiable manner. The relative peace and security which Lagos State enjoys is thus not a co-incidence, but the result of the vision of Fashola in setting up LSSTF and it illustrates the effectiveness of “local responses to rising national security challenges” (the theme of this year’s town hall meeting) and the value of federalism in a society with diverse peoples and challenges. Federalism we must re-state is the system best-suited to nations with multi-ethnic, multi-religious and other multi-component diversities allowing sub-national entities respond to differing challenges in manners best calibrated to their local conditions. It is this effectiveness of local strategies and responses that Nigeria denies itself through its current pseudo-federal or defacto unitary constitution. The virtual breakdown of law and order across Nigeria is just one additional symptom of the failure of the current approach!