State Fragility, State Formation, and Human Security in Nigeria

M. Okome

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137006776
• eBook ISBN: 9781137006783
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Business
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the 1990s, attempts at democratic transition have generated hopes for 'civil society' as well as ambivalence about the state. The interdisciplinary studies gathered here explore this dynamic through the complex interactions of state fragility, self-help, and self-organization in Nigeria. Nigeria stands as a particularly interesting case, as its multifaceted associational life extends far beyond civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs): as this volume reveals, there is a 'third sector' of Nigerian society encompassing everything from community self-help programs to ethno-religious affiliations to militias. Some of these formations have narrow, pragmatic aims, while others have an explicit socio-cultural or political agenda; most can be understood as compensating for the state's failure to deliver services and maintain regulatory frameworks. By examining the emergence of broader forms of civil society, this volume considers their successes while also assessing their costs and contradictions.

CHAPTER 1

STATE FRAGILITY, STATE FORMATION, AND HUMAN SECURITY IN NIGERIA: INTRODUCTION, CONCEPTS, AND QUESTIONS^*

Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome

This book is an outcome of the conference “ ‘(Un)civil Society’? State Failure and the Contradictions of Self-Organisation in Nigeria,” May 14–17, 2005, sponsored by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and organized by Axel Harneit-Sievers. The conference focused on the conceptual and practical meanings of “uncivil society,” and many of the papers presented considered the extent to which Nigeria was a failed state. But this book presents the argument that while those conceptual explorations remain valid for scholars of Nigerian and African politics, it is also important to more deliberately interrogate and contextualize “uncivil society” and state failure, rather than accept them at face value.

The failed state concept was driven by a view that emerged from, and was refined by, the neoliberal perspective of the Washington Consensus—the coalition led by the United States under President Reagan, Britain under Prime Minister Thatcher, and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which took charge of leading the response to the vagaries of the world economy after the debt crisis that followed the 1970s oil shock. It continues to be salient as a tool used by donor governments and institutions both to classify foreign-aid-receiving countries and rationalize the levels and types of aid given. The concept of foreign aid is problematic, since it is at least as much deployed to meet the geopolitical needs of the donor as to assist the recipient in solving problems, but this is not the place to comprehensively deconstruct it.

The failed state concept was a bleak, jaundiced, and dystopic post–Cold War perspective expressed most clearly by Robert Kaplan in his article “The Coming Anarchy.”¹ The recommended corrective is tantamount to putting the state in receivership—as evidenced by the more sober, but still patronizing validation of a world order dominated by the West and its other allies by Gerald Helman and Steven Ratner, who identify the following markers of state failure: inability to function as independent state(s) after the explosion in the number of independent states, “especially in Africa and Asia” where the challenge of discredited regimes by powerful insurgent forces sets in motion rampant “civil strife . . . disrupting essential governmental services . . . destroying food supplies and distribution networks . . . bringing economies to a virtual standstill.”² Given the widespread acceptance and use of the concept, it is appropriate to ask whether or not Nigeria should be considered a failed state that lines up with Helman and Ratner’s description.

The concept of uncivil society succinctly expresses the anxieties about group action by some who critique pluralist analysis, and its presumed unqualified endorsement of the virtues of voluntary associations with the capacity to “diffuse moral and social authority,” promote “variety and diversity,” and work against “the uniformity of outlook” à la de Tocqueville.³ Following Locke’s theory and similarly disposed early social contract theories, they endorse pluralism while also fearing unvarnished mass forms of democracy. For them, uncivil society raises the specter of the threat of unchosen or coercive groups trampling on the rights of individuals. It expresses anxieties about uncontrolled/uncontrollable group conflict or the perils of pluralism. Given the individualist bias expressed in these variants of liberal democratic thought, and the validity of the group as the basis of social interaction in Africa, as with the failed state concept, interrogating the conceptual relevance of “uncivil society” seems more relevant.

Mindful of these conceptual challenges, in his chapter, Adekson engages the debate and critiques the post–Cold War tendency of armchair intellectuals in the Western academy who pontificate about the inadequacies of civil society in Africa, and their penchant for normative analysis that compares African civil society to the Western variants and find them wanting, leading to the conclusion that civil society is either nonexistent in Africa or in the early stages of development.

Adekson also draws attention to the tendency to engage Africa from an ethnocentric perspective that lacks rigor and specificity in analyses of civil society. He argues for a broad definition of civil society that includes armed ethnic militias and uses case studies of three such groups in Southern Nigeria—the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), and Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), and to a lesser extent, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and a related entity, the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF)—in his interrogation of the limits and possibilities of the concept as an analytical tool. Adekson points out the contradictions inherent in the tendency to emphasize the incivility of armed groups and assume the civility of civic associations and suggests that we are better served by thinking of civil society as a spectrum that extends from more benign to more radical and even violent manifestations. For him, to exclude violent expressions of civil society from the fold would be tantamount to willfully choosing to engage the world as it ought to be, instead of how it is in reality.

Naanen and Nyiayaana’s chapter focuses on the Niger Delta and considers it better to describe the ethnic militia movements in the region as “antiestablishmentarian, antistate ideology” radical social movements. They also observe that the problems of insecurity in the region as well as African continent are complicated by the crisis of the postcolonial state and their “profoundly dysfunctional effects.” They agree with the distinguished historian Basil Davidson that Africans’ maintenance of the European-type modern nation-state imposed through colonization is by its nature responsible for the failure of the African state. Drawing on Zartman et al, they contend that some African states have experienced structural and functional deterioration, and have consequently failed, but they can also be resuscitated. They also concur with Ayoob that state failure is neither unusual nor limited to Africa, since examples of the phenomenon were also to be found in Europe “during the initial attempts at state formation.”⁴

Naanen and Nyiayaana further argue that in the absence of “a catastrophic political accident,” Nigeria is unlikely to succumb to the kind of structural collapse that has occurred in “formerly failed states” like Liberia and Somalia, anytime soon. They also doubt the likelihood that Nigeria will experience “the sort of territorial reconfiguration that has taken place in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War.” For them, it is more likely that the Nigerian state will endure albeit as a tumultuous entity lacking capability for meaningful “national development and continental influence.” Optimistically, they consider visionary leadership sufficient to reverse this trend, and argue that although Nigeria’s oil has spawned “destructive conflicts in the Niger Delta, and has fueled corruption and intensified underdevelopment in Nigeria,” it could also be its most important asset, because the sheer dependence on petroleum exports by local, state, and federal governments means that the Nigerian elite could not possibly consider doing without it.

Many of the subsequent chapters rightfully engage the combined impact of Nigeria’s transition from authoritarianism and the economic crises that it faced. Some of the chapters that follow also remain, in the spirit of the 2005 conference, focused on the failed state phenomenon—a phenomenon that this book will interrogate rather than accept as given.

The term “state failure” is used to describe states as varied as Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Liberia during their civil wars, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Colombia. Does Nigeria belong in this fold? What would one have to measure and verify to make an affirmative response? State fragility and state failure are terms also formulated by donor countries and agencies to categorize the states that they engage so that they can better tailor their interventions.

To use the term state failure, which evokes the specter of state collapse, to refer to the situation in Nigeria seems problematic for reasons that will be engaged later on. Is state fragility more appropriate then? The term “state fragility” is used to capture many of the characteristics used to describe state failure, and sometimes the terms are used interchangeably,⁵ but state fragility could be seen as a process that proceeds along a continuum, rather than as a categorical event. Also, it does not express the kind of finality that state failure does. It allows that when the aspiration to do better is combined with the right institutional framework, the skilled manpower with the will and determination to improve, and a beneficent relationship between a given country and external actors (where there is little to no meddling), a stronger state is possible. However, given the nature of Nigeria’s politics since the most recent engagement with democratization, using the parameters established by donor countries, multilaterals, and development agencies (the actors most responsible for imposing the concept on the politics of development), and more importantly, the expectations of the Nigerian people, it is also valid to consider whether or not Nigeria manifests such aspiration and determination.

There is no homogenous definition of the term, but fragility in the state is considered

a fundamental failure of the state to perform functions necessary to meet citizens’ basic needs and expectations. Fragile states are commonly described as incapable of assuring basic security, maintaining rule of law and justice, or providing basic services and economic opportunities for their citizens. Accordingly, the OECD DAC recently characterised fragile states as: “unable to meet [their] population’s expectations or manage changes in expectations and capacity through the political process.”⁶

UK Department for International Development (DFID) similarly defines fragile states as “those where the government cannot or will not deliver core functions to the majority of its people, including the poor.”⁷

Increasingly, weak state legitimacy is understood to be a key defining characteristic of fragility. States that fail to meet basic needs and to keep societal expectations and state capacity in equilibrium can also fail to establish reciprocal state-society relations or create a binding social contract. The Centre for Research on Inequality and Social Exclusion, for example, defines fragile states as “failing, or at risk of failing, with respect to authority, comprehensive service entitlements or legitimacy.”⁸

Max Weber in the essay “Politics as Vocation” said: “Sociologically, the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends.”⁹ Essentially, he was saying that the means through which the state accomplishes the ends that one observes matter. This can be taken to be an endorsement of institutionalism as well as a validation of due process; and, in relation to democracy, it can be used as one of the yardsticks for measuring the extent to which democratic openness obtains. The directives coming from globalized constructions of democracy to Africa endorse both institutionalism and due process, but not in a “Catholic” way that is open to all kinds of influences. They privilege liberal democracy and the kinds of institutions that emanate from it. In the contemporary era of globalization, they also favor NGOs as the prime expression of civil society activism.

Most people are more familiar with Weber’s popular statement: “A compulsory political organization with continuous operations will be called a ‘state’ insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.” Being currently challenged by a radical Islamic militia, Jama’atul Ahlus Sunnah Lidda’awati Wal Jihad (Brethren United in the Pursuit of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• 1  State Fragility, State Formation, and Human Security in Nigeria: Introduction, Concepts, and Questions
• 2  State and Civil Society in Nigeria in the Era of Structural Adjustment Program, 1986–199
• 3  “Civil” or “Uncivil” Society? Revisiting the Proliferation of Ethnic Organizations in Southern Nigeria
• 4  From “Area-Boyism” to “Junctions and Bases”: Youth Social Formation and the Micro Structures of Violence in Lagos Island
• 5  State Failure and Niger Delta Conflict
• 6  Anatomy of Conflicts in Northern Nigeria
• 7  Social Obligations of the Church in a Failed Nigerian State
• 8  The Role of the Christian Church in Building Civil Society in Nigeria
• 9  An Assessment of Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding Capabilities in Nigeria: Reflections of a Practitioner
• Notes on Contributors
• Index