When in April, the United States Institute of Peace invited 10 northern governors to Washington, for a symposium on insecurity in their states, reactions to the trip were mixed. Some thought it was another jamboree. They suggested that there were enough think-tank and policy documents to draft homegrown solution.

The insurgency in the North has become protracted and malignant, spreading from the North-east to North-west, and from North-central to all over the country. Citizens’ business and social interactions are hampered; travels around the country are done at great caution. Farmers are chased out of farmlands and that has resulted in accumulated years of low production and diminished harvest. Food inflation is at all-time high, at 40 per cent.

Insecurity has damaged the reputation of the country in the international community. Global threat index for the country is high and rated not conducive to attract the foreign investment urgently needed. Embassies have issued repeated warnings to citizens not to visit certain hotbeds. Schools have become unsafe due to unrelenting activities of bandits and kidnappers. Some citizens have abandoned their homes in less policed outskirts, for bandits and terrorists to roam and breed.

In the urgency to find solution, a peace symposium anywhere is considered relevant, especially for governors who preside over the most affected states – Plateau, Kaduna, Zamfara, Benue, Sokoto, Niger, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina and Kano.

The Africa Centre at the United States Institute for Peace says it is dedicated to propagating peace, security and stability in Africa. This is done through research and policy development on conflict prevention and resolution. The Centre also focuses on counter-terrorism and violent extremism, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction, reforms and governance.

Explaining the background, the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Dikko Rada of Katsina State, Ibrahim Kaula, said the peace meeting was in recognition of the crucial role of state governors in mitigating security threats and fostering peace.

He said: “The Africa Centre seeks to empower governors to address the underlying causes of instability and strengthen peacebuilding initiatives at local and state levels.” Participants were to engage in panel discussions focusing on the drivers of insecurity and opportunities for stabilisation. They were expected to identify strategies to address insecurity in the region as well as explore peace and development opportunities. Collaborative opportunities to attract investments, generate employment and foster development were part of the brief, he added.

But the former Governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, is not impressed. He considered the trip a waste of time. First, he said it was unconstitutional for governors to dabble into areas reserved for the Federal Government in the Exclusive Legislative list – Defence. Many will not agree with him, especially with calls to devolve more powers and responsibilities to states, just the way it was envisaged in the First Republic.

Today, state governors are said to be the chief security officers of their states. They are instructed by the Constitution to provide security for citizens and their properties. In practice, however, state governors cannot give orders to the Commissioner of Police. It is the Inspector General in Abuja, who directs police commissioners on what they are to do. If poorly managed in a multi-party system, this arrangement could result in security misalignments and chaos.

As events in Rivers State have shown, for instance, Governor Siminalayi Fubara, has no troops to summon when Federal forces decide to act funny, unless he resorts to the black market. This is not to say that state governors do not inherently have powers of their own.

Some are already too powerful and are very reckless with the resources at their disposal. What the Constitution does not empower them to do they procure forcefully with money.

In that case, a reasonable and intelligent balancing is what advocates of state police recommend. Certainly, governors have roles to play in securing life and property, with or without the exclusive legislative list. That’s the point.

Lamido also lamented that governors have abandoned a lot of things they should be doing, which invariably promote insecurity. He said: “Most urban towns in their states lack potable drinking water; refuse dumps have taken over some streets, all these have precipitous security and health hazards. Our children attend primary schools under trees and where there are built classes, they take their lessons siting on the floor, yet, security implications of this cannot be discerned by the excellencies. Deliberate and harshly induced poverty by unplanned government policies have made citizens to lose their esteem, honour and self-worth by lining up, scrambling to collect palliatives from patronising and condescending leaders….”

On this, the former Jigawa governor is on point. The democratic space and its resources have been captured by the political class since 1999. Politicians who had no bank savings prior to 1999 have today become billionaires, with choice investment in properties at home and abroad, far more than they deserve or have earned legitimately.

If Nigerians will just take time to do checks on former governors and lawmakers, where they were prior to 1999 and where they are now, that could give the true definition of democracy in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.

According to history, in the 1960s, democracy was used to enhance and spread development to majority of citizens, through provision, education and health services. They did not concentrate resources in the hands of a few, as is done today.

And nowhere is this abuse of democracy more ruthless than in northern Nigeria. Social scientists have used data to disaggregate development indices across the country. There are more out-of-school children in the North. Poverty and deprivation are more prevalent in the North.

The inclination to survive outside government is less in the North, compared with other places where entrepreneurship is encouraged as a way of life. It is hoped that tips on how to reverse these negative numbers were discussed at the peace meeting. The organisers can only do their bit to expose the governors to new ideas. It is up to them to reinvent old mindset to govern well and benefit ordinary people.

Justifying the trip, the Katsina State Governor, Radda, who’s like the focal person, said it afforded participants new insights into the security challenges in the states and he was damn sure that the challenges have no political undertone. He said the hypothesis that political motives were responsible for banditry is not true. He prefers to isolate injustice and poverty as the root causes of insecurity in the north.

That’s fine. Injustice and poverty mean denying children opportunities for quality education and quality upbringing. It is injustice to allow male children to roam from state to state, ending up at unkempt, unsafe and poorly regulated homes of religious teachers. Here, there is no emotional care. It’s a hard and ruthless existence with boys ending up brainwashed. They become susceptible to manipulation and recruitment for thuggery and banditry.

It is also not a derivative of poverty for armed mercenaries to invade rural communities in Southern Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, Zamfara and elsewhere, with the sole aim to plunder and kill women and children.

Lamido just wouldn’t let go. He quipped that there are enough materials at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) among others, to dig up solution to insecurity malaise that afflict the country.

Lest we forget, when the Vice President, Kashim Shettima was Governor of Borno State and Boko Haram was created but had gone out of their hands, to put Nigeria on the map of terrorised countries, a similar trip was organised in the United States for 10 northern governors.

Shettima was the chairman of Northern governors at the time and he led his colleagues to the same United States Institute of Peace. They were also there in 2014. Each time, security actually worsens and that says a lot about the difference between theory and practice.

Is there an uncanny coincidence between the visit of northern governors to the United States and the sudden advocacy against the establishment of military bases by the United States and France in the country? Or, is it President Tinubu’s love for France that instigated it?

Curiously, this mission is championed from the North. Though this advocacy enjoys the support of elite and academics in the South, there is a lopsidedness in its content and character.

In an open letter addressed to President Tinubu and the leadership of the National Assembly, on the “Dangers of the Relocation of American and French Military Bases from the Sahel to Nigeria”, signed by Attahiru Jega, of Bayero University, Kano; Jibrin Ibrahim, of Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Abuja; Abubakar Siddique Mohammed, of the Centre for Democratic Development, Research and Training (CEDDERT), Zaria; Kabiru Sulaiman Chafe, of Arewa Research and Development Project (ARDP), Kaduna; Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, representing Civil Society Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Abuja and Y.Z. Ya’u of the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), Kano, the coalition said nothing good can come out of a military pact for the purpose of hosting military bases in the country. The letter is very convincing.

Apart from ideological and safety consequences of military pacts to Nigeria’s sovereignty, signatories also canvassed that it is not morally proper for Nigeria to accept military bases that were expelled from a neighbouring Francophone country, one with whom Nigeria has historical, cultural and economic ties. True.

Similar sentiments frustrated the bid by ECOWAS to use force on the military junta in Niger, when it forcefully took over government. The pressure was mainly from the North. It is crucial that Nigeria rallies a nationalist fervour to win back its foreign policy mojo. It’s at a low ebb.

That sector has been weak and tentative since 1999, and is getting worse under this government. Private and sectional interests seem at work to weaken and diminish Nigeria’s potentials. Where’s the renewed hope!