Quote from AZUBUIKE NWENEWO on May 29, 2020, 1:26 PM

When governance is said to be effective, it must be measured by the quality of security it is able to provide. Governance and security are topical subjects with broad scope. The existential element of humanity rests on these subjects as substructure according to Abraham Maslow.

Based on social contract the primary responsibility of any serious governance is total security. Contemporary security therefore goes beyond flooding communities with armed personnel and having defense budget of 900 billion dollars; these are oriented towards negative peace which is completely inadequate for sustainable development. In fact security should be the driving factor in decisions of governance. When closely observed, every subsystem in the societal system functions in ways significantly tied to security. This is why the objectives of effective governance should be about improving security in all its domains. When a system is effective its positive impacts manifest in empirical terms for all to feel; statistics in GDP cannot make up for this. When a system improves, it becomes significantly better by the day. However, when a society stagnates or backslides overtime it becomes parasitically sick and her challenges multiplies and compounds; with this comes insecurity of various shades. No wonder Johan Gultung advises that society needs to reconcile nature and culture so to creature favorable structure. Governanceis intended for the people, not the other way round. This is the true philosophy of social contract.

While the global south is busy politicking at the expense of lives of her people, the global north is on continuous efforts for creative governance. Both sides of the coin pay proportionately. It takes hard works for most parts of Europe to maintain the current most peaceful region of the world and as much hard works for MENA and Subahara Africa regions to keep being the least peaceful part of the world.

Records have shown inter and intra-states conflicts to be on decline while organized crimes, terrorism and non-state violent conflicts are increasing. There seems to be new narratives which support sentiment of aggression against all by all who can unleash the impulse to challenge status quo for want of new order. Thus, it is logical to believe that contemporary mass disenchantment is driven by lack of confidence on governance to deliver on the expected dividends of social contract to the people.Consequently, this manifests in shades of insecurity.

Global peacefulness has been on decade decline according to GPI. Some might argue in favor of Malthus theory perhaps because of struggle for access to shrinking resources by increasing population however, it has more to do with distorted governance, capitalism, and negative new world order, etc. Effective governance system must be measured by the number of avoidable deaths occasioned by violent conflict, insecurity, disease and poverty. Improve security on the other hand must be measured by deaths prevented through delivery of essential peoples' services that guarantee ease of access to every promise made by governance. Governance premised on strategic delivery will focus on improving the following security domain.

Human security: prioritizing the protection of lives of the people and their hard earn wealth.

Food security: making food available to prevent hunger. Hungry man is angry man.

Health security: save people from scourge of diseases with ease of access to preventive & curative medical care.

Economic security: friendly enabling environment for businesses & jobs to flourish.

Environmental security: protect the ecosystem against abuse & assault.

Informationsecurity: a contemporary world driven by info-tech must protect itself against cyber criminals.

Governance should rejig the playbook to deliver effective governance for improved security.

AZUBUIKE NWENEWO

Peace & Security Practitioner,

Lagos Nigeria.