By Vincent Nwanma
One of the greatest wrongs done to the Nigerian masses by the leadership of the country, not just now, but over the years, has been the privatisation of things that ordinarily should be provided for all. When such goods are cornered by a few powerful interest groups or individuals, the consequences are dire.
This explains the significance of the announcement that President Bola Tinubu has ordered the withdrawal of `Very Important Persons’ police escorts to help boost national security for the benefit of all. It is a clear reminder of one of the factors that got our country into the unfortunate state we are in now. We have, over the years, privatised security to the point that most Nigerians have become security orphans in a country they call their own.
The privatisation of public goods in Nigeria is one of the defects in our policy space that we have taken for granted, until it began to interfere with the nation’s development. The provision of such goods and services is such that once they are made available for one person, they automatically become accessible to all.
The privastisation of public goods creates a “we-them,” poor-rich dichotomies in society, with the beneficiaries being elevated to the echelon of those who matter and the rest feeling like outsiders in what otherwise should be the same society.
It is a paradox that Nigeria chose to protect a tiny fraction of the population rather than the whole. We prefer to keep a few places safe (or safer) instead of making the entire country uniformly safe, so that the places considered important would not come into danger in the first place.
This security or police capture prepared the ground for the rapid collapse of the nation’s security, which we are currently witnessing. The capture of the police by a few powerful individuals- politicians, the politically connected, the top echelon of the business community, among others- made possible the exploitation of the unprotected places or individuals by the smart guys who did not fail to notice such loopholes.
In our sometimes-negative exceptionalism, Nigeria often defies some universal laws, and in the provision of public goods, we have excelled in this. Public goods are such services or goods that cannot be provided with exclusivity. In other words, they are those things that once provided for one person, they are automatically provided for all. Security is usually classified in this group of things.
However, in Nigeria, our system has striven hard to ensure that such a “law” does not operate in the country. Constitutionally, the police are charged with the responsibility to maintain internal security within the country. But how can this apply in a country where some VIPs have more police escorts than the whole local government? You can travel several kilometres in Nigeria without seeing a single police officer, yet the residents of those areas are living within the land called Nigeria and are supposed to be protected by the nation’s police force. We can segregate between who gets protection and who does not. We determine those who deserve protection and those who do not.
This is why the issue of retrieving police escorts from their VIP assignments so they can strengthen the national police team for everyone has been a hard nut to crack. This is symptomatic of a defective social value, where a country believes or has accepted the notion that some classes of citizens deserve better protection than others.
Most of the ills that plague Nigeria, as in many other countries, arise from the perversion of the rule that critical infrastructure, which includes protection or safety, is the responsibility of the state and must be provided with the utmost determination to serve everyone’s interests. Where poverty reigns, as it does in Nigeria, it is traceable partly to the neglect of public goods. Citizens cannot be at their best when they must work, walk and sleep under the shadow of danger looming over them. Entrepreneurs, farmers, and traders cannot perform optimally when they are looking over their shoulders to ensure nobody is trailing them for harm.
Concentrating protection or security around just a few citizens is counterproductive. With many citizens denied basic freedoms, especially security, productivity fails, no matter the power of the few who enjoy the exclusive protection. This fact is quite evident in Nigeria, as the ongoing systematic breakdown of the country’s security structures has shown.
Those who enjoy the exclusive services of security ultimately still depend on the services of those starved of such privileges. If it were not so, Nigeria would not be experiencing food challenges because of rising insecurity in the land.
It has been over 20 years since the release of VIP escorts became an issue in Nigeria. Political, group or personal interests, and not national interest, have made it impossible for this to be done. Today, the nation faces a litmus test: whose interest will prevail this time?