Buhari says oil price, pipeline vandalisation, GDP rates are connected

7 years ago

Buhari says oil price, pipeline vandalisation, GDP rates are connected

I am delighted to be here with you this morning on the occasion of the graduation ceremony of the Senior Executive Course 38 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, our nation’s foremost institution for policy, research and training. It is re-assuring to note that since the establishment of the institute 37 years ago, the national institute has provided a vibrant platform for policy intellectuals and thought leaders on critical issues of national development.

The institute is to be commended for the quality of research and policy output that has been generated over the years. The innovative ideas that have been proffered by this intellectual power-house have positively influenced national policy and development of our nation through the years.

It is also specially heartwarming to note that some of the current members have contributed significantly to improving the infrastructure here at the institute and that the entire Senior Executive Course 38 of 2016 have donated a block of two shelters to accommodate all of the participants. Your altruism and generosity is a mark of the leadership efforts that we are confident will define the new Nigeria.

Please accept my sincere condolence on the sudden passing of your course mate, Hajia Maimuna Abdullahi who incidentally was present at the presentation ceremony of your course to me at the Presidential Villa only two weeks ago.

As has become traditional, the Special Guest of Honour’s speech at NIPSS graduation usually seeks to address some crucial policy issue, this is as it should be, our foremost policy think tank ought to be a place where thoughts, ideas and evolving policies in government are la!d out and interrogated.

Today permit me to speak briefly on the law and order challenge in Nigeria.
(The law and order challenge in Nigeria, its scope, its implications and the critical pathways for resolving the issues that attempt this matter of law and order.)

It is clear that a stable, safe and prosperous society must be the desire of every group of policy makers and executors. It is probably true to say also that the chief function of government is the protection and assurance of the security of lives, livelihoods and the properties of the citizenry.

Indeed at the conceptual level, it explains the reason why individuals and communities give over their right of self-help and self-protection and even vengeance to the state; and the state cannot afford to compromise these responsibilities in anyway. Indeed many nation-states in exercising that duty of ensuring security find themselves unfortunately prioritizing the maintenance of law and order over individual and sometimes communal rights.

In recent years, Nigeria has had to deal with fairly significant and sustained breaches of the norms of law and order, these include the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast, several cases of herdsmen and farmer clashes, and also cattle rustling, facility and pipeline sabotage in the Niger Delta, kidnappings for ransom and the Shiite-Army and Police clashes with pro-Biafra agitators in the southeast among others.

But beginning with the Boko Haram insurgency, although in the past year, the capacity of the Boko Haram as a military force and to hold territory has, to a level, been degraded, much laws and instability has resulted, and it is essentially a rag-tag left-over that still carry out the itinerant ambushes and raids especially in border territories.