President Tinubu and the Choice of NSA

Kabir Shittu    

It’s no longer news that security is an issue in Nigeria. There have been several disheartening news reports in both local and foreign media of kidnappings, killings, and various insecurity issues which have destroyed the socio-economic fortunes of the country.

To stay safe and secure in Nigeria, one must be very sensitive and security conscious in order not to be a victim of bad happenings.  This, of course, has been of growing interest in the understanding of the concept of national security and the role of the Office of the National Security Adviser in the Nigerian context.
This is why the new Sheriff in town, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, will have to make an informed choice on who gets to the very sensitive seat of NSA. Mr President will have to look into what constitutes National Security. What is the role of the NSA? What should be the appropriate background and credentials of a competent man or woman that would discharge the functions of that office creditably and in the most effective and patriotic manner?  What are the best examples we can draw from?

For example, the National Security Adviser (formally called Assistant to President on National Security Affairs) in the United States of America, whose presidential system the Nigerian presidential system is modelled after, coordinates defence, foreign affairs, international economic policy, and intelligence. This job description reflects the recognition that national security extends beyond military security and encompasses foreign affairs, international economic policy, diplomacy and increasingly technological policy. it also suggests that the occupier of that office is versed in a practical approach to creating, enhancing and sustaining peace in the land.

In the U.S. the appointment of persons with military background has been the exception rather than the rule: the military persons that have occupied the NSA position were General Collin Powell under President Ronald  Reagan, Brent Scowcroft under President Gerald Ford and later President  Bush’s senior, and James Jones, who served for a year in the first term of President Barack Obama.

But in recent times, appointees to the NSA position in the U.S. have been very distinguished academics and diplomats (George McBundy under President Kennedy, Walter Rostow under President Johnson, Kissinger under President Nixon, Brzezinski under President Carter, Condoleezza Rice under President Bush junior, and now Susan Rice in the second term of President Obama).  For a start, McGeorge Bundy, who had a very distinguished career as an American Foreign Policy academic and served as National Security Adviser under President John F. Kennedy, was a Professor of Government and the youngest Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1953 at Harvard University.  Also,  Rostow who served as National Security Adviser under  Lyndon  Johnsons had served as a professor and distinguished academics at  Cambridge University as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions and Economic History at the famous

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His earth-shaking book, “The Stages of Economic Growth” which he published in 1960, has been quite contentious. The same background goes for Henry Kissinger who was NSA under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. An American Diplomat and Political Scientist of note, he was a Professor of Government and Foreign Relations at Harvard, where he took his Ph.D., when he was appointed to Nixon’s administration as NSA.

Zbigniew  Brzezinski,  a  distinguished academic who was NSA under President Jimmy Carter, set a national standard and made a great impact on US National security policy direction.  Condoleezza Rice, who was NSA under Bush Junior, is a Professor of Political science and a Diplomat. After her service, she has since returned to Stanford University as a political science professor and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. Since 2010, she has been a faculty member at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a director of its Global Center for Business and the Economy.
 In Nigeria, the position of NSA has almost become the exclusive preserve of ex-military officers, with one former military officer having held the position three times. Appointing ex-military officers is thus the rule rather than the exception. Whereas experience is good, it is the mentality that goes with deploying that experience that matters. Experience can also be dormant.

 Various arguments have been adduced for continuing to appoint persons of military background as NSA; one is that they are better at forestalling insurgencies, they have a better sense of military, and they potentially offer better advice on national security. Conversely, this could as well be statements hosted on poles of fallacy.
 It is hard to say or know how impressive the record of the successive NSAs with a military background has been in forestalling threats to national security or insurgencies like Boko Haram. But if NSAs are appointed to forestall military restiveness, it would be a sign that the fate of Nigeria’s democracy is in the hands of soldiers and not the electorate. That is a scary thought and evidence that our democracy is not maturing.

 But on the central issue of maintaining national security, defined narrowly and incorrectly as military security, the performance of NSAs with military backgrounds has been less than spectacular at best and most dismal at worst. The National security Adviser must advise the president on the proper instrument(s) to address a given crisis or problem. Not all crises are amenable to the use of military force.  The militancy in Niger Delta was handled with brute force even though the agitation cried out for economic and environmental solutions. The Amnesty program implemented by a civilian president (late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua) without military background saved the reputation of the military. The insurgency of Boko Haram has hardly abated, even though one of the former NSAs with military background boasted that the Boko Haram insurgency will end within months of his appointment. That NSA has come and gone and Boko Haram atrocities and other violent crimes have intensified.

 The definition of national security promoted by our successive NSAs has been so military-centred that the international, economic, technological and foreign affairs dimensions have been lacking. It is hoped that the new president who is perceived to be better prepared for the job will move Nigeria closer to the U.S. model of a broader definition of national security and staff the position of NSA accordingly.

With no shred of doubt, no country that wants to succeed or be taken seriously persists in flawed experiments in nation-building especially on the issue of national security; therefore President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will have to decisively address the nation’s current insecurity woes by putting in place a rounded and patriotic individual without necessarily having a military background, but someone who is exposed, someone who possesses requisite expertise in statecraft, public policy, internal security, diplomacy and law enforcement.
After all, Nigeria’s political and economic survival will continue to be a mirage if the issue of national security is not properly handled

•Kabir, a security consultant, wrote from Kano City, Kano State