The first Multi-National Joint Task Force Commander in the North-East, General Jonathan Temlong, (Rtd.), has said that to curb insurgency in the country, those in position of authority must address the issues of bad governance.
Temlong stated this in an exclusive chat with DAILYPOST in Jos, the Plateau State Capital.
“The important thing is governance. There is a deficit of good governance in this country. Unless we are able to get it right, we will see such groups coming up.
“I operated in the North-East as the first Multi-National Joint Task Force Commander.
“I tell you, and have said it in many places that there is the absence of governance in most of those areas.
“If you have people with such tendencies, they will use those areas and create their fiefdoms or whatever you want to call it and raise their own armies or start imposing dues on the people”, he said.
“The people are under their control, and once there is no credible alternative, the people pledge their allegiance to them. If there was a credible alternative, some of them would not go into the Boko Haram thing.According to him, “They start gradually until they become a monster because there is nobody to check them, and there is no credible alternative to them. Sometimes they even offer protection to the people.
“If you have grown up in this country, immediately after independence, you would have known that at the local government level, there were certain things that were being done. There were no tarred roads, but at least there were what we called labourers; they used to call them labourer toro, toro, a day. Toro means three pence.
“They were paying them three pence a day. If you had no food in your house and other things, you were sure of going to the helmsman. We used to call them “helma” and get work for a day.”
“You go and dress a bump there and then they pay. In fact, if they are not ready to pay, they will tell you which day they are going to pay, and they will pay on that day. Those things are absent now.He maintained that, “Even in the villages we had what they used to call Baturen Gona (Agric Inspector). You could go to him, and he would give you this erosion control in our place, they used to call it bump.
“The only place you will get such things, is when you go and do godogo (work on someone’s farm) for someone who has some money. At the local level, there was governance.
“When the labourers were working, they provided some security for the children who used to pass that road and go to school. And being a commoners’ society, sometimes they shared their lunch with the children coming back from school. Sometimes they gave them water or kunu to drink. Today where are those things at the local government?” He asked.
“When you come to the state, it’s the same thing. Now population has gone up and there is no concrete evidence of planning to meet the requirement of the people.
The retired General, who insisted that government was about the people said: “If your projection is about the population, you must project the schools, hospitals they will go to, and
you must project the housing deficit that you will start bridging.
“And when students graduate from schools, how would their future be? You must create a condition for the private sector to thrive because government cannot provide work for everybody.
“Today, the Boko Haram got the ideology that western education is haram (forbidden), because it is the product of that education. When you go and read, you don’t get work, and those who did it are the ones doing the oppression”, he further lamented.
“Go to Maiduguri and see; I mean inside Maiduguri town, you’ll see the competition of houses, yet, you have over 90% of the population living in penury. Their existence in this country is as if nobody cares about them. There is no governance at all. There is no presence of governance.
“I was in the Lake Chad, the first time they heard about vaccination was when some of my troops gave them. I had to go to UNICEF to buy vaccines. We gave over 40,000 children. That was the first time they found out about it. The local government Chairman that I mentioned it to said he never heard of that place.
“So, you see the people were just staying on their own. It was survival of the fittest. There was no presence of government. You know within the hinterlands some of the local governments have no presence of governance. We must address the deficit of good governance, and once you address it, governors must be accountable to their people.
“Those in position of authority must be accountable to their people. I tell you, you will find out a situation where the troops will tell you they rescued 1,000 people, women and children. Was there any report about their abduction?” He asked.
“You only heard they were rescued, that means there is no accountability.
“If you cannot account for the people, who are you governing? Is it the Government House or your staff?
“If today an American gets missing, the whole of the U.S. stands still, until he is rescued. If one American is taken hostage, the U.S President knows, and they’ll start planning on ways to rescue him.
“You have thousands that the government doesn’t know about, the local government Chairman doesn’t know about. They are the closest. How do you expect the President to know? They are the channels through which information gets to the President.
“Lives have no value; people justify retaliation to kill people like flies. That means there is the absence of law and order.
“If today I kill your relation, and in five years time you come to retaliate, people justify it. What’s the meaning of that? That will lead to the state of anarchy.
“Those in positions of authority must watch their utterances. They must be accountable to the people; they should know they will be accountable to God”, he stressed
