In The Name Of National Interest

For some of us who are somewhat addicted to investigative and espionage movies, the word “National Interest” (or National Security) sometimes invokes quite terrifying images.
Often times, immediately it is mentioned, what inadvertently comes to mind is whose interest constitutes national interest at each time and occasion.
One thing one can almost always be sure of at such moments is that any time the word comes to play, the right of somebody,  group of persons, community, State or even a country will most likely be trampled upon. And sometimes, the price victims of national interest are made to pay can be really steep, to say the least.
Take, for instance, in the Movie “24” in which the US Government made a deal, albeit quietly, to sacrifice Jack Bauer, the protagonist in the movie, and a top government agent working with the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU); it was at the instance of a terrorist, who said unless the government handed over Bauer to him so he could kill him personally, he would detonate a nuclear bomb in a highly populated State of the country.
The government made a deal with the terrorist to save thousands of American lives. Bauer’s crime was that he killed the younger brother of the terrorist, thereby stopping him from carrying out a similar terrorist attack.
The government made its choice in the name of national interest, or security. As far as they were concerned, losing Bauer, a single person, cannot be compared to losing thousands of people, not to talk about other possible effects of a nuclear bomb explosion in any part of the country.
There are other shades of protection of national interest with different countries having their own peculiar circumstances, according to the dictates of the government of the day.
Take the Niger Delta agitation issue in Nigeria, for instance. The crux of the matter is that the agitators are saying that government should ensure that the people of the zone not only get their fair share of proceeds accruable from exploitation and exploration of oil in the zone, but that they also feel it in terms of infrastructure and social amenities.
In other words, government should critically look into their age-long impoverishment in the face of plenty coming from oil exploration and exploitation activities on their land.
Recently, militants in the region resorted to blowing up oil installations as a means of crippling the economy of the country with the hope that the government would be touched to have a rethink of their seeming nonchalant attitude towards the plight of the Niger Delta region.
In all of the above two scenarios, two key things are involved: the interest of the country, as is deducible from the definition of national interest by the authorities, on one hand, and the real interest of the people, on the other hand.
The extent to which national interest could be understood when national Security measures are taken in the interest of the people becomes a huge question begging for answer.
Taking the Niger Delta issue as an example, shouldn’t the fact that people are not only being impoverished by the actions of oil exploration and exploitation, but are also dying by the day be a thing of national interest, before the situation degenerates to a point where the people would take their fate in their own hands?
In the circumstances, whose interest should rightly constitute national interest? By what is the national interest of a nation or State measured at any given point? How can the interest of a State or nation be severed from that of an opportunistic authority? What should be the right thing to do when it becomes glaring that a decision taken in the name of the State or national interest was actually based on personal interest?
A non-prejudiced response to these and similar questions in a given circumstances in governance will surely go a long way in setting the pace for a truly egalitarian society, free of the current self-centered and rancor-infested melodrama,like the one Nigeria is made to be.
The irony of it all is that everybody worth his or her onions knows this, but our tendency to always make self-interest operate in the guise of national interest is always paramount. Why?
The only fathomable truth is that nobody truly bothers about State or national interest in the real sense.

Soibi Max-Alalibo