From Bode Durojaiye, Oyo.
A Professor of Criminology, Femi Odekunle, has said unless and until development challenges are seriously addressed via genuine people-oriented development ethos and strategy, enduring optimum security is likely to continue to be elusive in the country.
Odekunle stated this in his lecture entitled: Science Education And Contemporary Issues In National Security”, delivered at the 4th National Conference of the School of Science, Federal College of Education (Special), Oyo.
He noted that though the country is abundantly resourced and has progressively witnessed phenomenal growth over the years, it is incontrovertible that there has been a patent increase in the manifestation of the absence of real development, in terms of the quality of social existence and of social relations of majority of the populace or the so-called ‘average’ citizen.
“Crime and insecurity continue to be on the increase, both in terms of volume and seriousness. The amount and quality of protection of the Police offers the citizens as a whole and the degree of confidence and cooperation it enjoys from the average citizen continue to be far less than optimum. Courts still delay and, therefore, deny justice in the majority of cases, as the Police are usually ‘still investigating’ and the poorly-paid prosecuting state counsel or police officers are
usually asking for adjournments, and court sentences for convicts appear to have no corrective effect in most cases, as the prisons regularly receive back about one-third of those they had allegedly ‘corrected’ and released.
As a result, prisons are over-crowded by not less than a hundred per cent with those on remand awaiting trial’, while elite and economy\polity-damaging offenders roam the
corridors of power, allowed by legal “technicalities’’.
According to him, how many thefts or burglary cases do the average citizen care to report to the police nowadays? How many of the reported assassinations\kidnappings have been satisfactorily solved by the police\security agencies? How many of the revealed cases of corruption have been satisfactorily cleared by anti-graft agencies? What with government’s inaction\non-implementation of
recommendations of about eight pre-Lemu Committees\Panels on ethno-religious crises between 1999 and 2019? What about the current terrorist onslaught on the population?’’
Odekunle, former Director, United Nations African Institute
for the Prevention of Crime, Kampala, Uganda, asserted that in terms of economic relations and existence, there has been for a significant proportion of the population, especially the youth and their aged-parents by extension, patent, absolute, entrenched poverty, unemployment and meaningless employment, as well as relative and unaccepted poverty in a rich economy.
Said he: “On the political level, the concept of democracy has
become, in practice, ‘government of the greedy, by the greedy, for the greedy’; and governance has become oligarchy and corruption-ridden with contents of the National Anthem and pledge being turned into mere nominal mouthing while the election-process itself has become usually tainted with observable manipulations and in some cases heart-rending
violence with able-bodied youths employed as armed thugs’’.
He observed that for a substantial proportion of the populace, existence has become individualistic and there has emerged an alienated generation of youths, (except those who have sought refuge in religion), relative to desirable values and norms of conduct.
“Consequently, certain social vices have become more noticeable, namely, prostitution in urban centres, drug abuse and associated ailments, direct and indirect child abuse, child\female trafficking, sufferance of family and community values; general indiscipline and absence of law-abidingness; communal strife, violent disorders, and ethno-religious conflict. All these are symptoms of social disorganisation. It is not an error that our people are under the sufferance of the lack of meaningful development. It is not an error that the country suffers serious infrastructural deficits, it is also not an error that Nigeria is burdened with pervasive corruption as
well as experiencing a high level of insecurity. Why? It is because mere errors are randoms, but beyond a persistent and systematic error. There must be a cause other than error alone, which are fundamentally-genetic’’
Odekunle, however, posited that to achieve optimum security, two pre-requisities must obtain.
“The first pre-requisite is that the average citizen must have an assurance or at least near assurance, of justice, fairness, and equity in most of his or her relationships in the societ, be it in the economic, political or social realm. It is in this kind of situation that the average citizen has a ‘’stake’’ in the stability and progress of the society as a ‘’shareholder’’; and it is this kind of situation that generally disposes citizens towards law-abidingness and against lawlessness or criminal conduct’’
He added that “it is this kind of situation, where there is meaningful participation by overwhelming majority of the population, that implies good governance”.
