Buhari has misled Nigeria into a failed state – Mike Ozekhome

A renowned legal practitioner and human rights advocate, Dr. Mike Ozekhome SAN, has berated President Muhammadu Buhari over leadership failure in the country. Ozekhome decried that the President Buhari has misled Nigeria into a failed state not only in policy flaws but to the point that non-state actors now have the capacity for violence to confront the state.

Ozekhome during a human rights lecture organised by the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), on the theme: “Nigerian School Children; Insecurity and Human Rights,” in Abuja, declared that President Buhari has failed deliver on the three cardinal policies – economy, security, and anti-corruption – he promised Nigerians during his campaign, and which gave him the support to win the 2015 election.

Ozekhome lamented that thousands of children no longer go to school, and that over 70 per cent school children in Nigeria are out of school.

The renowned lawyer disclosed that from Jangebe to Chibok; from Dapchi to Kaduna, between December 2020 to date, bandits and Boko Haram have kidnapped over 700 school children, some being killed or forced into unwanted marriages. He decried that the children were kidnapped from their schools, not the forest.

He advocated that Nigerians should come together to take back the state. He stated that the northeast was so violent but President Buhari went there to win the election.

According to Ozekhome, “The students were not kidnapped in the forests but from their schools.

“It got so messy in Kaduna that the kidnappers demanded bags of rice, vegetable oil, salt, beans and other condiments to be cooking for their children pending when they will get enough money to get them released on ransom.”

Ozekhome bemoaned that Nigeria is now a failed state, adding that it cannot even be called a country anymore. He stated that non-state actors – Boko Haram terrorists, bandits, kidnappers – now possess the capacity to confront the country’s military under the watch of President Buhari.

He lamented that President Buhari has destroyed Nigeria.

Ozekhome decried: “Is that a country? Do any of you who have children living in hostels and dormitories sleep with your two eyes closed? Not knowing when next they’ll strike.

“When President Muhammadu Buhari was campaigning for this office…I liked my President, but I do not like his governance style and policies.

“Policies that have impoverished Nigeria. Policies that have made Nigeria the poverty capital of the world, overtaking India. Policies that have made Nigeria that was until 2015 the biggest economy in Africa, overtaking South Africa and one of the seven fastest growing economies in the world.

“His tripodal policies were on economy, security and anti-corruption. The bad news is that he has dismally failed in all of them. Security is worse right now…

“Boko Haram we used to have at that time at least people were able to vote for him in 2015 and he won in the Northeast, showing that though Boko Haram existed, they were not so rampant to prevent people from voting.”

Ozekhome maintained: “Boko Haram has since graduated, strutting around like a proud peacock. Armed banditry has escalated, kidnapping is the order of the day. In security, he has failed.

“In economy, I have already told you, we’re now the poverty capital of the world. What of anti-corruption? Go and check, we’re 168 out of 180 covered by Transparency International.

“In West Africa, we’re the 3rd most corrupt country. So, where has the President and the government helped Nigeria?

“I had on television and in my write-up, challenged Nigerians that anyone who can carry the Holy Quran or take up the Holy Bible or if you’re an atheist, pick up a piece of Sango Iron and say your life is better off today than you were in 2015.

“I challenge the person for a national debate but until now no one has taken up the challenge because everybody knows things are not right. The deaf can hear it; the dumb can speak it; the blind can see it and even the numb can feel it.

“So, it’s not a question of whether you are in APC, PDP, APGA, Labour, Zenith or PPA. Hunger knows no strike, religion, or nationality.

“The fact is that things are bad for everyone whether Muslims or Christian, atheists, old men, women, youth and children.

” Things are bad, and it could be worse except Nigerians come together and go back to the drawing board.

“Some people are saying that Nigeria is a failing state and I say no. I don’t agree.

“If you asked me, with all due respect, I’ll say Nigeria is a failed state. Do you know why? “It is because one of the greatest indices of a failed state is when non-state actors like Boko Haram, kidnappers, armed bandits have efficient and commensurate powers to match state actors like security forces. “That’s a failed state.

“When Boko Haram, bandits and kidnappers begin to tell the government, ‘This is what we want.’ Taking over lands and planting their flags, as Governor Zulum of Borno State and Bello of Niger State have cried out that in some lands in their States, they have planted flags; they’re demanding for taxation; they issue identity cards and give passes to people to pass.

“We don’t need any other evidence of a failed state. It’s not about liking or not liking a government; it’s about saying the reality on the ground.

“Please Nigerians, let’s go back to the drawing board. If you like, bring all the helicopters and fighter jets you can, the truth is that the problem is more endemic than you can see.

“Because on the surface, it looks insecure but beneath it is what we call social injustice and lack of egalitarianism…

Nigeria is wobbly, gobbling and fumbling because it was not neatly packaged on the 1st of January 1848 by Lord Lugard.

“It started with Lady Flora Louise Shaw on the 8th of January 1897 in an article she wrote in Economic Times where she gave Nigeria her name “Niger Area”. And we agreed to live together. And if we agreed, let us live together in peace and unity. Let’s not always say ‘Nigeria is indivisible; it’s indestructible.’

“We don’t say that by words of the mouth, we nurture it. Pakistan and India used to be one country; Eritrea and Ethiopia used to be one country as well as Sudan and Southern Sudan. So, it’s not by merely saying it, you have to nurture it.

“We must have peace and social justice… We are talking about the kind of peace and social justice Chief M.K.O Abiola preached…Let us reformat and reengineer Nigeria. Let’s make a new constitution for ourselves. A constitution that will be… Indigenous, owned by the people and respected by all and legitimate.

“Not a constitution that was imposed by the General Abdusalam Abubakar government when they were going back to the barracks. How many of you know that Nigeria actually contested the 1999 elections without a constitution? Nigerians never made the constitution by themselves but even if we’re to manage it, Section 14 of that constitution said that the primary purpose of the government is to provide welfare and security for the people, are we having it?”