Introduction

The coups in Mali and Guinea Bissau but in particular theformer which ended almost two decades of representativegovernment once again put on the political agenda the theoryand practice of security, democracy’s growth producingdeficit, response of the people, sub region and the largerworld. The ostensible excuse for the Malian coup was thegovernment’s inadequate support to soldiers fighting therebellion in northern Mali. This excuse not only weigh deepinto governance in Mali and the sub region and the potentialit holds for instability but also on the need to revisit theissue.

The implication for the region of the Malian coupincludes questioning the reception of armament versusdevelopment debate on security, growth producing potential ofdemocracy, proactive ECOWAS response and the seemingendorsement their stance garnered from the internationalcommunity. In the first place, most countries of the regioncame from a military/one party authoritarian background wherestate security or regime safety counted above all else. It wasa response to the international enabling environment of thecold war. Secondly, when the post cold war necessitated theshift to representative government it continues to foster theold state centric security mindset of the past. This isbecause the transitions that produced these governance typesbenefited the old power elite and political class created inthe course of the transitions. Thirdly, the democracy ideologybuilt unsustainable expectation in the minds of people. Comingfrom a background of colonial underdevelopment and theimmediate post colonial state crises producing growth deficitregimes of all types, it was hardly surprising that whendemocracy was introduced, people believed its local andinternational salesmen. However, expectations have been dashedas demonstrated in the coup in Mali and the not-too-dissimilarstate of apathy in other countries of the region. The regionalbody’s opposition to the coup sort to uphold and deepen theexisting principle of government. Fourthly, the ECOWAS abilityin fostering governance that generates growth seemed never tohave moved beyond the statement of its founding fathers in1975. As a regional body and in tandem with development

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elsewhere, the ECOWAS should be the driver of change throughsecuritising development which would enhance security inmember states. So far the body has been limited to respondingto external initiatives that has little in the way ofaddressing its members pressing problems. This includedintervening in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s tocontain governance related disaffection that threatenedregional security. It was at the instance of Nigeria which wasitself confronting similar crisis.

The need to securitize development as fundamental toaddressing other security challenges in the sub region and byextension others is paramount. The coup in Mali is metaphorfor the failure of representative regime type to address basicneed challenges such as unemployment, poverty and inequality,decaying and overstretched economic and socialinfrastructures. The dividend of democracy is not evident indaily lives of people to produce the inclusive securitybeneficial to individual and the state. It is this that pushesgovernment into relying on the armed forces to safeguard theregime against the growing dissatisfaction of their people. Itis not the threat from outside the country that imperils statesecurity. It is the threat from within in the form ofcorruption that threatens unemployment growth. Thus theattempts to engage in security cooperation within and beyondthe region only address issues of mutual interest to partners.Within the region, the mutual interest include safety ofregimes and for partners outside the region, it is to restrainmigrants, refugees and transnational criminal elements forcedout of their countries in search of economic opportunitymostly in Europe. It is evident that the welfare of the peopleof the region is secondary in the partnership.

This paper seeks to address the Nigerian challenge asrepresentative of the region. How can and why shoulddevelopment and security strategies converge to suit thepartners in view of their different needs? To what extent didregime types shape security theory and practice in the region?How has this orientation influence their response to externalsecurity cooperation proposals? Is their security practise intandem with their changing development needs? Has the ECOWASresponse addressed the degrading human conditions threatening

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partners’ security? To what extent can the Nigerian challengeexplain those of ECOWAS in view of her role as a medium powerin the region? In order to answer these questions, the workre-examine documents of engagements between external bodiesand ECOWAS and the Nigerian experience of dominant regime typeshaping the theory and practice of security.

Building Concepts and Framework of Analysis

At stake in this paper are the processes that came tolight following the end of the cold war. No longer was theworld viewed as a tripolar one represented by the defunctUSSR, USA and Non-aligned countries. Regional power blocs havesince emerged defined in what Huntington called thecivilisations paradigm. Of these identified civilisations,some of which are extinct, five still exist including Chinese,Japanese, Indian, Islamic and Western, competing forprominence. Accordingly, “to these five civilisations it isuseful in the contemporary world to add Orthodox LatinAmerican, and, possibly, African civilisations” (Huntington,2002, pp. 44-45). There was distinct hesitation to theinclusion of Africa because major scholars except Braudel, fornumerous reasons, do not recognise a distinct Africancivilisation (Huntington, 2002, p. 47). In the absence ofthis, regionalism with one dominant power with the human andmaterial resource to drive development within specific regionscould represent an attempt to overcome this lacuna. Nigeriaseemingly fulfils this role in the West African sub regionconsidering its involvement in the areas. However, Nigerialacked a focused and cohesive domestic base that would projectthis power and confront the many challenges bedevilling theregion.

The inability of Nigeria to exact her potential wasreflected in the many crises the region had confronted and isconfronting. Consequently, intervention from externalorganisations and governments is the result of the absence ofclear cut direction from the ECOWAS and Nigeria. Almost twodecades after the United Nations system pushed through theseminal paradigm shift from security to human security, theregion has yet to put this into practise to check the constant

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crisis of insecurity affecting the area. It is true that mostgovernments in the region are elected thus fulfilling theminimalist requirement of representation. This explains theirprincipled stance over the Malian and Guinean coups. It isequally true that the expectations of their people that shouldcome with representation which would guarantee their securityremained unfulfilled. Failing to enhance human security, theleadership continue to subscribe to the security tenets ofrealism founded on politics among nations (Morgenthau, 1969)as a safeguard against threats from their people.

Security of the realist type seeks to protect the state,conceived of threats as external and relies on the armedforces to contain it. Since justifying this security situationis difficult in the region, regimes subsumed state and nonstate actors as external threat and linked them to theinternationally branded ones such as Al-Qaeda and Al-Shahbab,in the emerging security governance (Krahmann, 2003). It madeno distinction between the circumstance that informed AngloSaxon view of security that put the defense-power securityemphasising the centrality of state at the heart of discourseand policy and those that affect the region. The primarydistinguishing criteria is the difference in what obtained inthe West particularly Europe and USA and in Sub SaharanAfrica. In this we argue that while the enabling environmentof the west prevail on them to make the state-anarchy-externalenvironment-nuclear issue central to the pursuit of security,in the region, security is internal owing to the prevalence ofabject poverty occasioned by perennial governance andcorruption crisis, driven by states’ focus on regime survivaland not because one country has its gun pointed on another.

The west, in spite of the Euro zone financial crisis, hasremained a model of economic prosperity to which other regionsof the world try to emulate. They have succeeded in attainingmaterial prosperity of the type that is a magnet to deprivedpeople of the third world. Indeed the cold war was fought todemonstrate the model that held the most promise of satisfyingmankind’s quest for material prosperity. One of theconsequences was instrumental in consolidating the statecentred security pursuit since Europe and America were assuredof stable domestic base as they confronted the defunct Soviet

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Union led Warsaw Pact. This reality does not apply to theregion. Although countries in the region were allied to eitherone of the superpowers in the cold war, the benefit to them inbeing proxies embedded in the leadership the same securitymentality prevalent with their benefactors.

The security architecture of the world was alreadystructured before countries of the region emerged. Thesecountries were the handiwork of British, French and Portuguesecolonialism. These powers broke most resistance put up byindigenous people and their territories were cobbled togetherregardless of differences to form colonial countries. The newstates embraced the ideals bequeathed them by their colonialpowers. With a heterogeneous population whose sense of onenesswas embryonic, with politics revolving around ethnicity andwith the people in dire need of improvement in living standardthat pre independence rhetoric promised to deliver, it was notsurprising that the contest for space pitched the differentgroups against each other making the control of the state thesole preoccupation.

The state is attractive making insecurity and reliance onits resources inevitable because of the manner of itsevolution and transformation in the region. Three phases ofthe evolution of state can be discerned. The first was whenEuropean obstructed the process of state formation underway inmost of these societies. The implication of this todevelopment then and now is immense. The second was thecreation and imposition of the colonial state on theheterogeneous people. This created new super-ordination andsubordination while enhancing old ones among the people. Thethird was the negotiated transfer of power, amidst theunsettled climate of the two previous phases, to the new postcolonial state. The post colonial state became the theatrewhere the internecine struggle of the past were re- enacted.It undermined whatever unity created to facilitate theattainment of independence.

As proxies in the cold war and eager to contain thegrowing internal opposition to their rule, the leadershipsvalued the life enhancing military and political support thattheir benefactors offered them. This opposition were often

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label communist to chime with the prevailing threat. Theresult was the emergence of one party or military regimesintolerant of opposition and willing to use all means at theirdisposal. It was this enabling environment that deepened thegrowing gulf between peoples’ expectation for growth anddevelopment, leadership inability to fulfil this and theirreliance on force to ensure their security. It was a recipefor perpetual instability. Political instability is common inthe region.

Thus for the people and leadership, security was defineddifferently. For the leadership, security was the safety ofthe state personified by the regime, against the rising tideof opposition and threats. Their solution to this was to crackdown on the opposition using the resource at the disposal ofthe state. For the people, security mean putting theireconomic welfare emphasising the centrality of human being andbeing human at the heart of discourse and policy. What isgermane is the realisation that for most of sub SaharanAfrica, the pursuit of security has been off the localrealities in both theory and practice. The development andpropagation of human security by the UNDP in 1994 (UNDP, 1994;Booth, 2007, p. 2) and the subsequent adoption of theperspective in explaining the changes evident since 1989brought to concrete surface the abysmal condition in whichmost human being lived in the whole of the last century. Thestate of deprivation is most acute in sub Saharan Africa whichhas translated into unending conflicts often wrongly diagnosedas ethnic, religious and regional contest. To the extent thatthis explanation subsists, it is to drive an essentiallyeconomic conflict. The UNDP analysis, to borrow Chomsky’sword, painted the human condition in the region as “sharp,clear, and highly instructive” (Chomsky, 2006).

The state of human existence in the region calls for thesecuritisation (Waever, 1995, p, 57; Williams, 1998; Huysmans,1998; Abrahamsen, 2005, pp. 50-80) of development.Securitisation describes a process whereby urgent ‘securityissues’ or ‘threats’ are identified or ‘constructed’ in orderto mobilise opinion and constitute legitimacy and authorityfor means of dealing with that ‘threat’ (Huysmans, 1995).According to Huysmans, it is the ways in which areas of

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political life can be shaped by the framing of politicaldebate in terms of existential threat and survival (Huysmans,2006). The existential threat is the lack of development thatyields growth in countries of the region which producesperpetual instability spawning migration, transnational crimeand refugees. The latter constitutes issues of security tocountries and organisations in Europe and USA whoseintervention only strengthen the old state responsible forthis. It is about tackling corruption, unemployment, povertyand inequality through growing the economy; strengthening thefamily as the basis of security; tackling hunger and disease;enrolling children in school; improving economic and socialinfrastructure; creating housing for all classes; that theregion experienced fragile peace since decolonisation wasbecause people lacked security in their daily lives. Conflictswere internally generated before spilling into neighbouringcountries and not necessarily because countries had issues tosettle. Countries in the region possessed the human andnatural resources to satisfy the need of their people.However, they lacked the leadership and will to move in thisdirection.

Nigeria’s potential is far more immense than those ofothers countries in the region. It has demonstrated itsability to pull the region out of crisis. But it sufferedfrom the same malaise of lacking the domestic base for thisregional endeavour. Nigeria is a middle power (Yamasaki, 2009)in the region which could mean intermediate countries in termsof national power. Pratt characterised middle power as “thosewhich by reason of their size, their material resources, theirwillingness and ability to accept responsibility, theirinfluence and stability are close to being great powers”(Pratt, 1990, p. 72). With the exception of stability, theseattributes are in abundance in Nigeria. This should propel thecountry into leading the way in the search for standard in themanagement of regional and Africa affair in the seemingabsence of compelling defining characteristics in Huntington’scivilisations paradigm.

Geographically and culturally, the area does have somehomogeneity in tandem with the civilisations argument. Thepeople of West Africa maintain cultural homogeneity across

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state boundaries: the Fulani are to be found in the Sahelianarea stretching from Senegal to Chad; Hausa language is spokenin Niger, Chad, Ghana, Cote-d’Ivoire, Nigeria and a number ofother countries in the region while Yoruba is spoken inNigeria, Benin and Togo just as Igbo language is spoken inboth Nigeria and Cameroun. Geographically, they belong to theWestern part of the African continent and are referred toethnographically as the Sudan (Olowu et al, 1999, p.1).Nigeria is the largest Black Country in the world and sharedsimilar cultural, social and political characteristics withothers of her kind within the continent. It is potentially thebiggest economy and democracy in the making and should leadthe banner in addressing regional problems including growingits economy to address poverty that spawns regional andinternational insecurity.

Regime Types and Security Profile in the Region

Insecurity has never been far from the surface ofcountries in the region. It is embedded in the way countriesof the region were created during the colonial period; in thepolicies put in place and subsequently pursued during andafter colonial rule; in the compromises forged by thedisparate communities to achieve independence; in the failureof the leadership to adhere to the compromises arrived atprior to independence; in not fulfilling the expectation ofthe people for development yielding governance afterindependence; in the consolidation of personal/regime securitythrough the emasculation of the opposition; and in theperpetual state of instability that characterized governancetill date.

In the late 50s through the early 60s, all states in theregion achieved independence through some form of election. Bythe end of the first decade of independence, the post colonialcrisis of state had compelled most of these countries totransmute into outright military or one party form ofgovernment. It was borne of the reality of local andinternational politics. Locally, the forces baying at the newadministration was enormous as much as the ability andresources to satisfy this was meager. Internationally, thecold war politics enabled the leadership to resolve this

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problem by curtailing dissent of all kind. This was the casein Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Liberia, Sierra Leone, IvoryCoast, Guinea and Senegal. These states were overrun bymilitary rulers while others such as Ivory Coast, Guinea,Senegal, Sierra Leone and Liberia became de facto one partystate. Indeed Ghana and Nigeria had succeeded in completelyrouting their opposition before they were overthrown by theirarmed forces.

The most pressing rationale behind the transformation ofgovernments into security regimes was their inability to meetthe growing expectation of their people for growth anddevelopment that would yield roads, schools, health carefacilities, and employment, improve agriculture as well asstimulate the sense of belonging considering the manner oftheir inclusion into the colonial state. While blamingcolonial legacy, social pluralism and its centrifugaltendencies, the corruption of leaders, poor labour discipline,the lack of entrepreneurial skills, poor planning andincompetent management, inappropriate policies, the stiflingof market mechanisms, low levels of technical assistance, thelimited inflow of foreign capital, falling commodity pricesand unfavourable terms of trade, and low levels of saving andinvestment as partly responsible for the state of developmentin Africa, Ake (1996) believed that political conditions arethe greatest impediment (pp, 1-8).

It is essentially the political legacy of colonialismwhich engendered the post colonial situation that necessitatedthe emergence of security regimes. The colonial experience wasstatist. The state was involved in almost all aspect of livesof the people making it absolute and arbitrary. According toAke (1996), the two features of state power-its absolutism andits arbitrariness-framed colonial politics. Since the colonialstate was for its subjects an arbitrary power, it could notengender any legitimacy even though it made rules and lawsprofusely and propagated its values. Accordingly, instruggling to advance their interests, the colonial subjectsdid not worry about conforming to legality or legitimacynorms. Colonial politics was thus reduced to the crudemechanics of opposing forces driven by the calculus of power.For everyone in this political arena, security lay only in the

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accumulation of power (Ake, 1996, p. 3). This was thetradition inherited at independence. The character of thestate remained much as it was in the colonial era. Itcontinued to be totalistic in scope, constituting a statisteconomy. It presented itself as an apparatus of violence, hada narrow social base, and relied for compliance on coercionrather than authority (p, 3).

Most of the leaders of the early post colonial period-indeed right to this moment- operated in a state of siege.According to Ake (2000), “besieged by the multitude of hostileforces which their betrayal of popular aspirations,exploitative practices and political repression had bred, theybecame completely absorbed in the very difficult task ofsurviving in a hostile political environment”. All aspects ofsocial life were suffused with politics and the premium onpower grew exceedingly high (p. 36).

It was this environment that bred internal conflictsamongst the warring factions in the countries of the regionwhether in ethnic, political or economic terms. The conflictwas over the control of the state as instrument forappropriating resources. The contest was intense enough tocreate problem for these countries as well as others of theregion. The confrontation embraced ethnicity (Nnoli, 1998) asits driver. Ethnic conflicts are a fact of life in the region.It was rife in Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, Senegal and IvoryCoast. The Nigerian civil war was one of such conflict (Adejo,2008). It was described as the region’s bloodiest war. It wasbetween the Igbo ethnic group on the one hand and the Hausa,Yoruba and other groups on the other. Nigeria has over fourhundred ethnic nationalities. The causes of the war lay deepin the colonial engineering that produced the post colonialsituation. Its immediate cause was the coup that elevated theIgbo leaders into prominence in the government aftereliminating Hausa political and military leaders. Although thecoup was inspired by nationalist fervor, it was sooninterpreted in ethnic term in tandem with the politics of theperiod.

Thus all governments in the region were far moreconcerned with the survival of their regime than with the

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welfare of their people. This condition shaped their receptionof the theory and practice of security. Security was definedas increasing the capacity of the state to meet the challengesemanating from disgruntled opposition from other ethnicgroups. It was conducting security operation to flush outthese elements which resulted in exclusion therebyexacerbating the situation. Security was not defined asaddressing the grievances of the people whether in politicalor development terms. In equipping the state to meet thischallenge, conceived in the realist paradigm, peoples’ questfor development took the place of the enemy threatening thestate. It is not surprising that the region, at the height ofinternational economic crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, became ahub of tendencies threatening regional as well asinternational security. Such tendencies include refugees,displaced persons, economic migrants, criminals etc. It wasthe period that also gave birth to numerous securitycooperation aimed at addressing these problems.

West Africa and External Security Cooperation

The insistence by the ECOWAS that Malian and GuineaBissau coup plotters return to the barracks in preference fordemocratic governance type demonstrate how far along the roadthe region has travelled. This is the third time that it wouldtraverse this path. The first two were in Sierra Leone and SaoTome and Principe. Nigeria led the way in both instances torestore the elected leaders. In the course of the SierraLeonean intervention Nigeria suffered a variant of democraticdeficit as it was ruled by the military. Each decade sinceindependence represented a transition from one form of crisisto another for the region. In the late 50s and early 60s, theywere all democratic; by the late 1970s, they were eithermilitary dictatorships or one party authoritarian regimes asmechanism for containing the mounting internal opposition; inthe 1980s and 1990s, international economic crisis hadconsolidated the grip of these regime types providing thebasis to further their repression of all internal dissent;when in the 1980s, structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) wasadopted on a massive scale into the economic crisis managementstrategies, it added new dimension of opposition includingsocial movements, nongovernmental organizations, anti

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military/pro democracy groups, low intensity conflict and insome instance outright civil wars; from the late 1990s onward,the call was for the enthronement of representative governmentwhich renewed the age old struggle for the control of thestate in the region. All these development had the backing ofexternal patrons of sort.

While foreign assistance has been a feature ofdevelopment in the region, the implementation of structuraladjustment consolidated this. Bangura identified three sets ofcrises confronting states. The first was a legitimation crisisin which the states’ dwindling fiscal base undermines theability of leaders to satisfy post colonial expectations of agrowth in the formal sector to provide jobs, social servicesand welfare, as well as maintain patron-client networks. Thesecond was a regulatory crisis in which retrenched states findit difficult to manage the economy and influence the waysocial groups and individuals behave since a substantialproportion of economic and social transactions are uncapturedby state institutions and rules. The third was a territorialcrisis in which state officials not only surrender major areasof policy making to foreign donors and the internationalfinancial institutions, but they also encounter difficultiesin maintaining the states’ presence in large sections of therural areas (Bangura, 1995, pp. 93-94). External interventionsor assistance channeled to countries in the region mask thesedonors anxiety over the likely implication on their interests(Nivet, 2006).

All the states in region confronted and are confrontingthis legitimation crisis. This has hampered their ability tosatisfy post colonial expectation for growth that would yieldjobs and social service for their people. It is the source ofthe instability that the region has grappled with sinceindependence. West Africa, unlike North, East, Southern andCentral Africa, has cut a reputation as an unstable region onthe continent. Central Africa matched West Africa as anotherunstable region except that the source of this emanates fromand outside region (www.economist.com ). Almost all thecountries in the region have experienced one type ofinstability or another. Nigeria topped the list of endemicallyunstable countries. Others that have made the headlines are

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Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Niger, Togo, IvoryCoast and Senegal. These countries fall into the categories ofsmall states (www.unohrlls.org; Yamasaki, 2009, p. 13). Someof these countries are resource rich and slightly better offpotentially than others in the small powers category(Yamasaki, 2009). However, they all have weak leadershipwithout the ability to put these resources to use to bettertheir poverty stricken population.

Most of these countries’ state barely controls all theindividuals and social groups within its confine prior toreform. The way in which the state evolved made thisdifficult. Increasingly inclusion after independence reducedeither through lack of delivery of services and/or asopposition politics developed. The imposition of structuraladjustment exacerbated the situation which further limited thereach of the state. Deregulation confined the state to limitedrange of area making the once powerful state compete withforeign and foreign funded nongovernmental organization,community based organization and international financialinstitutions. The dwindling reach of the state created porousareas which serve as haven exploited by disgruntled groups. Itwas the case in the Nigeria’s Niger Delta, Sierra Leone,Liberia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali and Niger.

As a result of the foregoing, three types ofintervention/assistance can be identified. The first was basedon erstwhile colonial relation. Here Britain, United Statesand France intervened in their former colonial territories.Britain intervened in Sierra Leone; America reluctantly paidfor the resolution of the Liberian crisis and France was inIvory Coast. The second is from European Union(Malmstrom,2010; Defense and Security, 2009); and US African High Commandto curtail fallouts from the crisis incapacitating countriesof the region from affecting their interest(Ploch, 2011; House2012;Raphael and Stokes, 2011, pp. 903-921). Economic migrants(Engelbrecht, 2010) and hard drugs (Vandystadt, 2008) areissues of interest to Europe. The region is a source of theseproblems to the EU. The prospect of Al-Qaeda exploiting weakstates, porous borders and the possibility of failing states

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which could threaten energy supply from West Africa worry theUnited States (Raphael and Stokes, 2011). The third is the UNsystem (Security Council, 2011) including the UNHCR, UNDP andThe Hague Court. The latter has been instrumental in checkingdelinquent leaders such as Laurent Gbagbo and Charles Taylor.Political miscreants from the region have been test runningthe court’s experiment. They include those from Sierra Leone,Liberia and Ivory Coast. Security and stability support in theform security sector reform is a significant component oftheir intervention.

Raphael and Stokes (2011, pp. 903-911) provided acomprehensive rationale for United States intervention in WestAfrica culminating in the creation of AFRICOM in 2007. Theenhanced US strategic presence in the region has led toaccelerated levels of assistance to important West Africanstates. Substantial levels of both economic and securityassistance now flow into the region, and these areincreasingly defined in terms of the energy resources thatWest Africa holds. Wider economic stability, povertyreduction, conflict resolution, counterterrorism andcounternarcotics and infrastructure building are all elementsof Washington’s objectives in the region. However, the factremains that oil forms the primary interest, and significantlydetermines the nature and direction of US strategy towardsWest Africa (Raphael and Stokes, 2011, p. 910).

Nigeria was recipient of millions of dollars’ worth ofmilitary equipment sold or granted through key securityassistance programmes such as Foreign Military Financing (FMF)and Foreign Military Sales (FMS), as well as through thelicensing of direct sales from US defence companies, emergencylegislative mechanisms to authorize the drawdown of millionsof dollars worth of military hardware from the Pentagon’sstock and accelerated military training programmes. Nigeriabecame the second largest African recipient of funds from theInternational Military Education and Training (IMET)programme. In 2006, almost US$800 million was allocated to thecountry. All these assistance, apart from increasing Nigeria’smilitary capacity (Raphael and Stokes, 2011, p. 911),addresses concern over political instability in US militaryplanning by the provision of security assistance to local

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elites in order to bolster their capability to respond tochallenges ‘from below’.

These interventions did not address the fundamentalsource of the instability of countries in the region. Itaddresses the national security interests of the powerswithout challenging the governance decay that created theseconditions. Since the intervention is in the form ofstrengthening the state, it leaves the impression in the mindof the leadership that the consolidation of traditionalsecurity rather than securitizing development is the answer tothe crisis of the state. Nigeria manifests this challenge.

The Nigerian Challenge

A BBC documentary series while arguing that Nigeria hasthe potential of becoming Africa’s largest economy anddemocracy drew attention to the many obstacles that impedethis possibility. Most of these obstacles are internal withcorruption inducing poverty as the linchpin (Doyle, 2012).Nigeria’s inability to tackle the basic need problem of itspopulation in spite of its resources meant that the state hasbeen at war with its people since independence. Consequently,it has had to invert the realist view of state and externalenemy to state and internal enemy and thus rely on thesecurity forces to contain manifestation of resistance to theexercise of its authority. This remain the foremost challengewhich need to be overcome if Nigeria is to assume her place asthe most important power in the region driving development inother countries in order to ensure its continuous growth.

The challenge is shake off the security cultureentrenched by military rule which has permeated all facets ofthe national life. Military rule was dominant as evident in 29out of the 39 years of independence as at 1999. Theirimprimatur was everywhere. The first civil government hadinherited a strong state from the colonial authority,confronted daunting challenges from numerous oppositions anddemonstrated its inability to meet the expectation of the

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people thus creating room for its reliance state resources.When the military took over, it was faced with what Buzan(1991, pp. 272-273) described as defence dilemma. This is thecontradictions between military defence and national security.As military rule became endemic, the distinction between theirdefence and security roles blurred. With time nationalsecurity developed into the symbolic ambiguity type. In theircase, defence and security began to work against each other.Their focus on defence (regime survival) compromised othersecurity objectives including the welfare of the people.

Prolonged military rule robbed Nigerians of independentunderstanding of security. Security discourse enjoyedprominence among professionals because of their so calledexperience, academics for their studies and lay people fromwhat the glimpsed from these two. Both the discourse andpractise’s currency is hidden in the ideological language ofthe occupying power-the Nigerian military. This state ofaffair was created first by colonial rule where the state wasnot only pervasive in its extraction of surplus value; it wasfused together from diverse people who were yet to come toterm with their forced cohabitation. These centrifugal forceswere inherited by the post colonial government. Secondly,because the society was fractured, opposition politics wasviolent necessitating the consolidation of the state. Regimesurvival became the goal of the government and in this itfenced itself away from the reality of daily lives.

Thirdly, this scenario was bolstered by the cold warenvironment. The superpower turned a blind eye to developmentwithin as long as it does not threaten their securityinterest. It was in this climate that military regime emergedand complicated the security atmosphere in its favour.Fourthly, the onset of reforms in the 1980s and 1990sfollowing international economic crisis not only consolidatedmilitary misrule, their security culture which favoured theunpalatable phases of reforms restrained social crisis that

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resulted but also the popularisation of the now growingperception of security amongst Nigerians.

As the forces of opposition to military regimes grew,backed by donors in the emerging post cold war order, and asthe attempt to re-engineer the political and economiclandscape floundered because of insincerity, repressionheightened and spread to all strata of society including themilitary itself. The regime security mindset was inculcatedinto and imbibed by the political class created by themilitary. Fifthly, the war against terror did offer anotherchance to enhance this security type as it enjoyedinternational legitimacy from the major powers. Nigeriaenlisted in that crusade and squandered the chance itstransition of 1999 to 2007 offered to address the internaldissatisfaction threatening its security. The Boko Harammenace has not lessened the emphasis on state security by thepolitical class (Awom, 2012).

Conclusion: Securitizing Development

The focus on regime security all these years affecteddevelopment which did not reduce unemployment, poverty andinequality. The defence measure adopted by the government wasinappropriate and irrelevant to the security need of thecountry. The government was oblivious of the armament versusdevelopment debate in national security. The debate, a productof stocktaking prior to and after the cold war, coincided witha difficult of phase of Nigerian history. On one hand was theeffect of military rule and on the other the consequences ofthe SAP reform on the former and the people. Perhaps it wasthe post SAP debasement of being human and the post cold warparadigm shift that necessitated the re-evaluation of pastfocus on security. In arguing for a change so that mankind cansurvive, the UNDP Human Development Index was of the view thatthe world needs another profound transition in thinking fromnuclear security to human security.

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People are central to this type of security because“security has for too long been interpreted narrowly assecurity of territory from external aggression, or asprotection of national interests in foreign policy or asglobal security from the threat of a nuclear holocaust. It hasbeen related more to nation-states than to people” (UNDP,1994). In the case of Nigeria, security has been focused onthe survival of regimes. Realism’s security premise has beenfound to contain multiple and overlapping flaws (Booth, 2005,pp. 5-10).

Nigeria need a sustainable security model to address thegrowing challenge of human security by adopting “a newdevelopment paradigm that puts people at the centre ofdevelopment, regards economic growth as a means and not anend, protects the life opportunities of future generations aswell as the present generations and respects the naturalsystems on which all life depends” (UNDP, 1994). This can bedone through the securitisation of development instead of thestate which is the practise today. Human security means safetyfrom such chronic threats as hunger, disease, unemployment,inequality and lack of economic and social infrastructures; itis the implementation of short, medium and long term economicand social planning; it is the curtailment of corruption ofall type which has stunted the potential of people andcountry; it is good governance at all levels; it is thereduction of destitution, deprivation and dissatisfaction; itis addressing Niger Delta militancy and Boko Haramcriminality. The inability to address these is the source ofinstability that drives regimes into consolidating state poweragainst their people. All these are prevalent in Nigeria.

If Nigeria is to assume its role as middle power and leadthe region out of state to people centred security culturewhich reduces unemployment, poverty, inequality andinstability; as its most endowed country with unparallel humanand material resource that could drive region-wisedevelopment; with the potential to hold the banner of theblack race as its core civilisation; tackling its domestic

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problem is fundamental to imbuing in it the legitimacy tosecuritize development in the region and to insist thatexternal patrons do the same.

References

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