Rotberg Lessons for Nigeria on Failed States, Collapsed States, and the Weak States: Causes and Indicators - Tayo Aduloju

One of the most influential books I have read in the last decade on state fragility is written by Robert I. Rotberg, Founding Director of the Intrastate Conflict Program, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and Fellow of the Wilson Centre. While there are arguments for our against, as to whether Nigeria is a failed state, no one will argue that the country sits of the spectrum of state fragility (beginning with weak states, evolving into collapsed states and ultimately the failed states). My debate today is not whether the county is a failed state, but whether we are confronting our brutal realities regarding evolving state fragility.

Rotberg argues that "Nation-states fail because they are convulsed by internal violence and can no longer deliver positive political goods to their inhabitants. Their governments lose legitimacy, and the very nature of the particular nation-state itself becomes illegitimate in the eyes and the hearts of a growing plurality of its citizens."

When we consider country's current threats: the resilence of the decade long war against the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East and its fragility diffusion across other Northern regions, the mutation of a new form of armed banditry and kidnapping in the North West, the perennial communal and social conflicts accentuated by herdsmen/settler clashes in the North Central that now has precipitated across the South West, South East and South-South – the scale of internal violence is unabated. Furthermore, this is coupled with a fragile Niger Delta Amnesty that has kept most militants and ex-militants inert, with a few sporadic attacks here and there. Still, with a persistent oil theft perpetuated and sustained sea piracy threats in the Gulf of Guinea. With entrenched kidnapping syndicates in every region in Nigeria, coupled with cultism and armed robbery in Southern areas, many Nigerians fear to travel to many parts of the country by road. If the severity of these threats and incidents continue to rise, the Nigerian state's very nature will become illegitimate in the eyes of the citizens.

With the recent appoint of new Service Chiefs, the country has an opportunity for a comprehensive review of its National Security Strategy and Policy as this is intrinsically linked our political, economic, social and strategic. Rotberg recommends that nation-states like Nigeria, radically innovate to refocus on their ability to influence emerging risks and capitalize on opportunities – a great place to start is to take a bottom-up, Risk-Based Approach to review terrain and geospatial threats. A chronology of the current threats shows that these threats we see today are likely to mutate and cascade into new vulnerabilities – building strategic security response capabilities (soft-power and hard-military) for the current and future vulnerabilities and consequences is non-negotiable. A few soft-power, non-military sociopolitical and economic interventions that reduce these threats include performance, cost and size of federal government reforms, regional competitiveness and sub-national financial diversification-are principal strategic options. Nigeria needs a comprehensive review of all its security institutions (military, para-military and police forces) on hard-power. By police I do not just mean the blue and blacks and community police, I mean all forms of policing the Civil Defense, NDLEA, Road Safety etc. We need to build a security architecture that is tailored to the specificity of the threat structure, nature and evolution.

Rotberg notes, "Wherever there has been state failure or collapse, human agency has engineered the slide from strength or weakness and willfully presided over profound and destabilizing resource shifts from the state to the ruling few. As those resource transfers accelerated and human rights abuses mounted, countervailing violence signified the extent to which states in question had broken fundamental social contracts and become hollow receptacles of personalist privilege, personalist rule, and national impoverishment. Inhabitants of failed states understand what it means for life to be brutish and short."

The time to act is now.