Gov. Amaechi’s Interpretation of Security – By Odimgwu Onwumere

Posted by admin Articles, Columnists, NNP Columnists, Odimegwu Onwumere, Rivers, State News Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

By Odimgwu Onwumere / NNP / Jan. 23, 2013 – The optimum security that a people should contend first to acquire is knowledge, which will in turn provide them with every other security they may so desire and need. One Henry Ford corroborates this statement when he was quoted as saying that many people think that by hoarding money they are gaining safety for themselves. If money is your ONLY hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a person can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Without these qualities, money is practically useless.

The Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Amaechi deserves encomium for apparently saying that it is an impeachable offence if elected leaders cannot provide the citizenry with adequate security. So they say, Amaechi said this in Houston, United States, at a town hall conference with the indigenes of the state resident in the US. Let’s read it in Amaechi’s own word: “The first offence governors commit is when they are unable to provide adequate security for the people. This is because the first oath taken by elected leaders is to protect life and property. It is the responsibility of the government to provide security for the people.”

The so called elected politicians in Nigeria have failed to provide security to life and property which they take as oath, because they did not first equip themselves with knowledge. Someone might say, but they went to higher schools. The irony is that being schooled does not imply being knowledgeable. Such is half-baked knowledge. Education is the knowledge, because it is an unending process, and many of these elected politicians drop the idea of pursuing education for the pursuit of money, and use the money to build “high fences” in the name of security. This is the bane with Nigerian politicians.

The Nigerian authorities forgot that when security becomes irrational the belief that with the high fences and retinue of security personnel would provide security become superstition that those politicians are hatching without them knowing it. Did Amaechi equip himself knowledge-wise before becoming a governor? It is better we also read it in his own words: “It is as a result of this position that the Rivers State Government has achieved remarkable milestones in providing and maintaining law and order by working hard to ensure security for the people. We achieved the modest successes recorded by adopting a zero-tolerance attitude towards social vices right from the grassroots through education and elimination of poverty by empowerment and skills acquisition.’’

On the other hand, providing security is not only about providing armed forces in the streets to protect lives and property; any elected politician that cannot provide the necessary infrastructural amenities to his constituency is worse than that man who cannot fend for his family. What is taking oath of office after which able-bodied youths will be roaming the street without job, and when they protest, the same government that failed to provide them with job-security will use the armed forces to hound them? Government fail to realise that poverty is worse than any forms of human-insurgency. If there is a peaceful environment which is maintained by the help of force, but the individuals are not at peace due to lack, such society is invariably not at peace.

In Nigeria, such forcefully maintained peace exists, but at the detriment of the suppressed. Amaechi was right by submitting that any government that fails to provide security to its citizenry does not worth the salt. But in the other hand, does a government not just exist in name if the expectations of the people are not met? Every reasonable government wants the future of its citizenry and seek to make it secure. Nigerians should look forward to this theory by Amaechi which was founded upon truth and not arrogate it to non-essential argument of witch-hunting anybody or government. We should commend Amaechi to push for more that some people are not secure in Nigeria with the constitution shrouding them into two belief-systems and sundry.

In Rivers State, Amaechi should make sure before his tenure expires that majority of the people are freed from the insecurity of want. The citizens are always not tolerated by the Nigerian government, but the government wants the citizens to tolerate every of its action whether good or bad. This is also insecurity on the part of the citizens. While that have been said, Amaechi should also provide economic understandings in Rivers State, which will secure every Local Government Areas in the state a healthy life for their people. He should also save the residents with some comments known of the military that always infuse fears in the lives of some residents. It is better to have a permanent peace than security with arms. Now that he is suing for security in the citizenry, let the opportunity come, and work with the statement that says the desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

Odimegwu Onwumere, Poet/Author, Media/Writing Consultant and Motivator, is the Coordinator, Concerned Non-Indigenes In Rivers State (CONIRIV); and Founder, Poet Against Child Abuse (PACA), Rivers State, Nigeria wp_posts