Red card for dubious squad

President Muhammadu Buhari was last week reported to have rebuffed a bill proposing to remake the Nigerian Peace Corps from a voluntary civil outfit into a government paramilitary agency. Both chambers of the National Assembly (NASS) had forwarded the bill for his assent in 2017.

The President’s veto was contained in a 25^th January 2018 letter read Tuesday on the floor of the House of Representatives by Speaker Yakubu Dogara. In that communication, he cited as reasons for withholding his assent security concerns over enabling the corps to perform regular functions of existing security and law enforcement agencies, and as well the financial implications of the agency’s operations for government.

Considering the NASS’s enthusiasm for the proposed makeover of the peace corps, however, the last may not have been heard of the presidential veto. But I hasten to say Buhari did great service and deserves applause for rejecting the Nigerian Peace Corps (Establishment) Bill, 2017. I have always held that Nigeria does not need a martial peace corps, and on the heels of the Legislature’s passage of the enabling bill last year I published a piece, from which the following is excerpted:

Martial mania

How many regimental formations does a country need to kit up for peace and security? This question rankles, as Nigeria seems hooked on the jackboot syndrome.

The Senate (in July 2017) gave final nod to a bill enacting the Nigerian Peace Corps into a government martial agency. The corps had operated as a voluntary civil outfit since 1998, having been registered as a non-governmental organisation in 2005, according to its promoters. But now it is seeking statutory muscle to function as a paramilitary squad.

The July 2017 affirmation by the Senate wasn’t its first flirtation with the peace corps enabling bill. The chamber had in November 2016 passed a bill to that effect sponsored by former Senate Leader Ali Ndume (APC, Borno). But it eased up in May 2017 on account of members’ exception to the version that emerged from harmonisation with the House of Representatives, which had passed the bill since June 2016.

Going by the enabling bill, the agency professes intention to facilitate peace volunteerism, community service, neighbourhood watch and nation building among other things. It also seeks to train the youth to promote peace, and as well conflict mediation and resolution among warring groups. A 2016 report by the Senate Committee on Interior indicated that the head of the corps would be known by the martial title of Commandant-General, assisted by six Deputy Commandants appointed from the six geopolitical zones of the country.

Ahead of its anticipated mutation, the corps had adopted for its personnel beige khaki gear and beret to show up its martial disposition.

In giving legislative approval to the peace corps bill (in July 2017), the Senate touted the agency’s potential to empower the youth and provide them with gainful employment. Such potential, of course, ordinarily recommends the corps for statutory backing, just as any other agency similarly potentiated. The catch is that all legislative exertions over the peace corps’ enabling law have been quiet on how the bills of its operations would be picked. Besides, the NASSists have failed to explain why the agency’s employment potential could be maximised only through paramilitary orientation.

And if there was any outfit with quantum controversy in its trail, this particular corps was it. Ignore now the curious legislative tack whereby the Senate plenary, in passing the bill, shunned an advice by one of its committees that the new legislation’s aim to provide youths with employment could well be achieved by strengthening existing agencies. To say the operations of the peace corps over the years have been highly controversial would be understating obvious facts rather severely.

Recall that the Police on repeated occasions faced off with the corps over its operations. In February 2017, for instance, the Police shut down a training camp run by the corps in Offa council area of Kwara State that it dubbed illegal. The camp was being used to conduct paramilitary training for some 5,000 recruits, of which the Police claimed it had no prior notification. Even though the corps insisted it duly notified the Police of the training, you could ask what the paramilitary rigour was all for when the law yet deems the agency a civilian outfit.

The Police also made quite clear it had issues with the corps’ procedure for recruiting members to its ranks. Speaking at a training event for senior police personnel in March 2017, Police Inspector-General Ibrahim Idris red flagged this procedure, saying: “Nigeria is not a lawless country. You can’t just wake up overnight and establish a security organisation, there are processes…We have so many challenges in this country and we don’t want people of questionable character to enter our security services…You don’t just go on the streets and be picking people by the virtue of the fact that they gave you money!”

Also in March 2017, the Police detained the peace corps’ National Commandant Dickson Akoh, along with 48 members of his group, on charges of fleecing youths seeking enlistment with the squad. And following that arrest, the Federal Attorney-General and the Department of State Security (DSS) pitched in with the Police to argue in court that though the corps was legally registered, it was engaging in illicit operations.

Akoh, for his part, filed a counter-suit seeking compensation from the Police and some other government organs for alleged illegal detention.

It is doubtful that those litigations had run their full course when the National Assembly finalised the peace corps bill in 2017. But if you wanted some justification for the legislative cheerleading, you would hear the NASSists argue (in line with Akoh) that existing security agencies were merely envious of the peace corps’ emerging profile.

While it remains to be seen if President Muhammadu Buhari would give assent to the peace corps bill, legislative support for the agency’s paramilitary mutation has been so strong that House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara once hinted that NASS could override presidential veto of the enabling bill. Meanwhile there’s been no clear indication that the Legislature did due diligence on stated concerns about the integrity of the peace corps personnel and its funding modality.

Worse is that there is no convincing explanation why the corps must be paramilitary, with the martial implications of that for the polity. Other than the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) that is tenured for one year and is constantly replenished, there is no paramilitary agency in Nigeria today that is not bearing arms or seeking to do so, even when they started out as non-arms-bearing formations.

With its brazen martial zeal ahead of the proposed law enabling its mutation, the peace corps is a sheer enforcer squad waiting to be unleashed.

‘Other than reasons the President cited for withholding his assent, a major peril of the proposed mutation is how dubious politicians could deploy (the peace corps) personnel as private armies’

That was my take then, and it remains so even now. Other than the reasons the President cited for withholding his assent, and with the transactional reputation of the corps, a major peril of the proposed mutation is that dubious politicians could deploy its personnel as private armies in the desperation to win elections. Even as a voluntary outfit, the peace corps did not pass the test of insularity from that tendency. Its members have shown up during past elections in places like polling units, where their relevance to the course of events was highly questionable.

President Buhari did well rejecting the proposed bill, and the National Assembly should just perish the thought of overriding that veto.