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| Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi |
• Exonerates Jonathan from NGF crisis
By Olawale Olaleye
The Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, at the weekend,
suggested that some interests in the country may have deliberately instigated
and sustained the level of national insecurity in order to stall the 2015
elections in some parts of the North.
Fayemi, however, warned that if the security challenges were
not adequately and scientifically addressed, the general election of 2015 may
not hold after all.
Also speaking on the crisis rocking the Nigeria Governors’
Forum (NGF), Fayemi urged all those involved in the controversy that trailed
the forum’s election to keep President
Goodluck Jonathan’s name out of the mess as such would further diminish the
presidency.
Fayemi, in an interaction with the media, queried why the
leadership of the country could not come up with a lasting solution to the
lingering security challenges in the country, wondering whether “we are the
first country in the world afflicted with such crisis or why it appears as if
we don’t have a reprieve from it.”
According to him, the crisis lingered “because we have not
paid attention to intelligence as much as we should,” regretting that, “up till
now, police intelligence unit is still virtually zero while the military
intelligence is not as impressive as it should be.
“We are just left with the State Security Service (SSS) that
seems to have a semblance of it. This has given us enormous challenges that we
are almost coming to the prediction of the National Intelligence Agency (of
America) as we go near 2015.”
The governor suspected that, “There might be things the
Americans see that we don’t see or that we have resigned to fate? We need to
make a clarion call to the leadership and to all of us to begin to respond to
the situation. It is marshal plan that we need even if it will mean that we
should put half of our resources that we have in the country at the disposal of
the afflicted states. We cannot have 10.5 million children out of school and
not see the correlation between violence and poverty. Poverty and violence are
related. And we must do certain things
to break them.
“But right now, the bulk of what is happening is that, the
state of emergency is being paid for by those affected states. And you cannot
have development without security just as we cannot have security without
development. I think we need human security response to the situation rather
than the law and order response. We have to do or work a little bit more in
dealing with irrational human beings,” he said.
He lamented that despite the avalanche of terrorist attacks
nobody had been convicted for Boko Haram-related offence, adding: “You begin to
have the impression that some people are encouraging them by subterfuge.”
He advocated a multi-level police system which he said is
always community-driven. “The only way to be your brother’s keeper is to know
him because you have to know him before you can keep him. If I am removed from
Ekiti State and dumped in Talata Mafara in Zamfara State, and give me a gun,
who am I going to protect in an environment where I don’t hear their language
and where there is no connection between us?” he said.
According to him, that was almost consistent in all federal
states across the world, saying there was multi level policing in the
universities, local governments, states and others, adding that there would
then be a unit that would connect all of them in terms of training and
sanctions.
On the NGF crisis, Fayemi maintained that “occupiers of that
office should not be diminished or their names drag in the mud. No good Nigerian
should do anything that can tarnish or diminish the image of the occupier that
office.”
According to him, the embarrassing nature of the crisis “has
made some of us to be vociferous in our own meeting with the Mr. President,”
adding: “Mr. President is not a candidate of the NGF and as such has no special
interest in its matter.”
Fayemi further expressed displeasure at the outcome of the
group’s election, noting that it was a
very dangerous omen for 2015.
“It is worrisome. And what is more worrisome is their
impression that they are the president’s men. We are all president’s men. We
are president’s governors. He was once a governor and he would not do anything
that would tarnish the image of the forum.
“The President must find a way to exercise his moral
authority on this issue. We must also find a way to meet the President in
supporting him to exercise his moral authority on the matter because it doesn’t
augur well for some people to hide somewhere to create an impression that they
are the president’s men,” Fayemi added.
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