The pathway of power is full of Twists and Turns. There is time to drive forward despite the turnpike.

There is time to look back despite the smooth highway. Most importantly, there is time to apply brakes and reflect on where the journey will end; a desired destination or an unintended ditch! Drive carefully, and never forget that the terminus ahead is a platform where judgment begins!

In a time when life has become absolutely difficult for people and living in Nigeria has become frighteningly scary, it is important to prevent a complete descent into anarchy.

There is no doubt that we have swerved into unacceptable social and economic quagmires. Like nimbostratus clouds, there is up wells of rising anger and it seems that as a nation we are swimming against highly erratic and potentially combustible tides that could be a lose-lose for the government and the people if nothing is urgently done to arrest the manifestly out of control cost of economic policies of this administration that have led to unintended unpalatable consequences.

Despite endless appeals to the people by the President, it has become frighteningly obvious that fear and anxiety, lacks and wants, poverty and insecurity are the result of the government’s converging policies. It is either that these policies are neither adoptable to their expected objectives nor adaptable to the current environment in Nigeria.

What is certain is that they have come with indescribably dire implications with attendant risks of violent conflicts, crime, criminality and anarchy.

Tinubu’s obnoxious policy of oil subsidy removal exponentially increased poverty, caused inflation to rage out of control, dehumanized people, bestialized criminals to be crueler, created an atmosphere for mindless violent insecurity and exposed the t he poor and vulnerable to harrowing suffering.

That specific policy is lacking in a systematic framework that connects with thorough knowledge of action and consequence. It lacks large scale synthesis of far sighted implications because it was lazily rooted in the brain waves of unintelligible self-cancelling egocentric politics without striking evidence of potential benefits. The unveiling social cost outweighs the illusionary vision of El Dorado that pushed it.

President Tinubu should declare state of emergency on the economy and security to urgently address the wide spread poverty, violent crime and anger. During this period, he should do the followings:

Now that the oil production has improved and Nigeria currently produces almost 1.7 million barrels of oil per day, 300,000 barrels per day should be dedicated to local consumption per day. This dedicated quantity should be measured in Naira at final cost to the consumers not exceeding 250 Naira per lite

Agreement should urgently be reached with Dangote Refinery to urgently commence production. This can easily be tracked as one(1) barrel of oil contains 159 liters. One metric ton of oil corresponds to around 7.5 barrels on average, depending on the density of the petroleum. With this, the Government would have dedicated forty seven million, seven hundred thousand liters of premium motor spirit (47,700,000) to local consumption per day.

This will invariably and almost immediately translate to reduction in cost of transportation, reduction in prices of basic needs, enhance disposable income, improve standard of living and address the running cum galloping inflation that we are currently grappling with.

There is need for the President to rethink actions that will not increase agony and anguish of already traumatized people and communities who simply want to live in peaceful and secure communities devoid of constant fear and violation of rights, including rights to life and human dignity.

There is need to bring relief to at risk population who have been rendered extremely vulnerable and stripped of every scintilla of human dignity and hope. Policies must be thoroughly interrogated and clear and unambiguous consequence management plans must accompany every policy.

This implies working out a way of supporting the weak. It is imperative to adopt a reflective approach that does not violate values of peace building nor contradict process of dialogue and conflict resolutions. We must not wait further before we take actions that halt hostilities, human carnage and monumental destruction to lives and livelihoods. All actions relating to mass demolition of people houses and abodes should be put in abeyance during this period of emergency.

Also, resolving Nigeria’s raging extreme violence, including criminal violence like abduction and kidnap is notoriously difficult but urgently compelling. There is need for reflection on whether to continue to meet fire for fire, force for force or adopt soft approach in the light of heightening violence coupled with inability of the state to protect people and secure communities?

Security in Nigeria is a huge challenge. On daily basis, people, particularly the poor and the vulnerable are not protected from avoidable calamities. There is preponderance of mass murder, kidnapping, rape, abduction, hunger, starvation and ineffective security architecture to defend and protect.

The President should urgently open a broader conversation on creating new security architecture that is sufficiently equipped to discharge the State’s responsibility to protect and secure. While the combination of hard and soft approaches might be necessary, focusing on putting in place inclusive, participatory transparent and accountable security governance is important in risk reduction and in ending the violence.

In the overall, local community security structure should be supported, trained and integrated into the wider security architecture or effectiveness. In the interim, while waiting for the establishment of State Police, the president should meet with the state government/Governors to urgently work out protection and security measures.

This should include establishment of government backed vigilante groups. He should equally involve experts to develop effective strategy for implementation and operation. This come on board with accountability frameworks. The Frameworks will empower population at risk and stakeholders to begin to raise questions about the efficiency of formal and informal security operatives and impact of their operations on people and communities.

It is a sort of performance assessment of security agencies by those they are deployed to protect and secure. This is bound to open a new vista for inclusive, transparent and accountable security architecture in the sense that people and communities will become active agents of risk reduction.

There is need for the Federal Government to constitute consortium of experts and stakeholders to Conduct Comprehensive Participatory Analyses of Hazards, Vulnerability, Risks, Impacts and actions. The needs to assess interaction of hazards and vulnerabilities to determine the risks faced by people and communities cannot be overemphasized.

This will enable government and stakeholder to understand the wider geographical and social contexts that will be helpful in addressing the fluid nature of the violence we are dealing with and its virulent mobile non- state actors.

These experts should be saddled with the responsibilities of coming up with developing framework for integrating local security structure into the wider national security architecture to annex the advantages of lateral and vertical integration, benefiting from both local intelligence gathering and strategic operational capacity of the formal structure.

This is also necessary in promotion of accountable security operations and good community-security relations. The state government should call for security dialogue with the security agencies and community leaders to see how local security vigilante groups can be integrated to becoming early warning mechanism.

Giving the magnitude of increasing poverty and the complexity of violent crimes and insecurity in the country, there is need for President Bola Tinubu to urgently take responsibility and lead actions that appreciate local initiatives that are effective in responding to internal threats and addressing protection and security needs.

President Tinubu must understand what is at stake when live becomes, in Hobbe;s words, ‘short, nasty and brutish’. He should listen to the people; not the cowardly among his cabinet members and Aides. Most importantly, at this very time, recognize, in the words of Adrienne Rich that ‘lying is done by words and by silence’!

Gbenro Olajuyigbe is the Executive Director of Emergency & Risk Alert Initiative