Osinbajo storms UNIZIK for NALT conference, recommends robust welfare system as the solution to the many agitations threatening to tear the country apart
By Lilian Chidinma Iloabanafor
Academic and administrative activities at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK), were last week Monday, June 12, grounded as the university played host to Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the Acting President, legal luminaries as well as law teachers nationwide.
The Anambra State Governor, Chief Willie Obiano, led the Acting President to UNIZIK for the 50th Anniversary Conference of Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT) held in the university auditorium. The theme was: “Law, Security and National Development.”
Declaring the conference open, Osinbajo asserted that Nigerians are bedeviled with serious challenges which include Boko Haram, tensions in the Niger Delta, herdsmen-farmers clashes, threats of secession, poverty, unemployment and corruption. He faulted the inability of the state to create an inclusive society under existing constitutional arrangements, to guarantee security of lives, liberties by the agencies charged with maintaining law and order and to build trust around the rule of law and the system of administration of justice, as the premise of the persistent agitations.
The daily struggles of many, for healthcare, a means of livelihood and the absence of a socially just means of ensuring that many, especially young people, have access to education and jobs, he said, provides a constantly replenished pool of young malcontents, ready to be recruited into any sort of Army, “whether it be of kidnappers, terrorists, or violent or antisocial agitation for one cause or the other.
“Besides, the constant agitation for share of national resources is a product of individual-elite-deprivation, taken up by ethnic nationalities and socio-cultural groups. Each group views the other with suspicion when it comes to matters of resources, and government appointments.
“Unfortunately, in order to give our campaigns greater acceptability and resonance, we often characterize them as ethnic or religious agitations. The right to a decent existence, to education, healthcare or jobs must not depend on how loudly my ethnic or religious group agitates; no, these are my rights as a citizen of Nigeria.”
It is the failure of the state to deliver on these essentials of life and livelihood “that compels our people”, he noted, to run to their tribal and religious camps to seek succour by way of agitation for basic rights and services.
“Unfortunately, it is the same elite especially the political elite, who fail the people by the wastage and embezzlement of their funds who are at the forefront of pretending that their deprivations are caused by other ethnic nationalities.
“Having gone round this nation to its villages and settlements, everywhere in the course of the campaigns, and after, there is no doubt in my mind that poverty has the same character in Bodinga Local Government in Sokoto State as in Ayanmelum Local Government here in Anambra state; poverty on an Ibo man is not more dignified than on a Hausa Fulani man. Hunger is neither a tribal or religious issue.
“So, the question for us is how to resolve these issues. First is to place responsibility where it rightly belongs. It is the business of government, by that I mean the executive, legislature and judiciary, to provide the enabling environment for the quality of life that people expect.
“Indeed the constitutional obligation to do so is clear. Section 14(2) (a) says that sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through the constitution derives all its powers and authority; and assures that (b) the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. This is crucial.
“Whereas the classic overriding obligation of the state is security, our constitution places security and welfare on the same pedestal as the primary purposes of government. Coming from this perspective, the fundamental objective must become the founding principle for legislation, executive action and the observance and enforcement of the rule of law.
“However, in the current Federal Government, the argument is being won by those who believe that government has a central role to play in the provision of social welfare, that extreme poverty is not only immoral, it should be illegal.”
After reeling out figures that the Federal government has invested in social welfare especially in the 2017 budget, he added that “it is important that our budgets are crafted in such a way that we take into account the aspect of social welfare. Like I said, it is an ideological battle. It is a battle that must be contended for and must be contended by all of us especially law teachers. I was speaking to a group of law teachers and I was telling them that we have not engaged government, we have to engage government.”
Iloabanafor is a 400 level student of Marketing, Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK), Awka, Anambra State.