Insecurity, the truth and way forward

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER

info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com

National discourse on security would have been the way to go for Nigeria, but in reality and very unfortunately so, we do not seem to possess the capacity to convene and execute one without bringing the ever destructive religious and tribal sentiments on board. Even now, as we groan under the yoke of mammoth attacks from all corners, what is more important to us is never getting a solution to insecurity, but protection and preservation of some religious and ethnic pride. We spend all day in cycle crying about insecurity, but exert all our energies and resources fighting for religion; brutally and ferociously attacking a presidential candidate’s choice of his vice candidate. What bothers me most is the part that religious organisations and leaders are playing, using insecurity to set their flocks against the ruling party as a weapon to fight a set religious war, while they do nothing, exactly nothing to contribute to the solution to the insecurity.

Few days ago, the government of the United Kingdom via the Director, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office in the United Kingdom, Chris Beecroft, raised a fresh alarm regardong insecurity and its attendant consequences in Nigeria. He stressed the active insurgency in the North East, farmers-herders conflicts extending across the country, resource conflicts in the Niger Delta, the IPOB, ESN and other tensions in the South-East and banditry in the North West as some of the major challenges, and almost directly declared that the 2023 general elections in the country may not hold except there are some obvious and radical interventions and changes.

Indeed, we have had and still have more than a fair share of insecurity over time and recently, despite all the ceaseless efforts and conscious direct and indirect security investments by the Administration of Muhammadu Buhari since 2015; the menace has literally gone overboard with the country becoming more unsafe by the day. However, the sincerity of the concern displayed by the United Kingdom also calls for scrutiny. This is not the first time such a nation has prophesied doom for us in Nigeria. I remember vividly, sometimes in the days before the Buhari era, America concluded that Nigeria was failing and would soon disintegrate. Yet, we didn’t, in fact, against the naysayers’ prediction, the country got better on many fronts and indices. A nation that would speak of our problems in isolation without referencing the positives that abound in our system cannot be totally truthful to itself and the cause it claims to follow. The UK would have done better if it recognised alongside the undeniable progresses it sees in the country over the same period and which it considered necessary to be sustained by getting security right. 

At this point, we need to get our house in order, not because the UK or anyone points us to it, but because it is necessary and sacrosanct to our continuous peaceful coexistence, safety and wellness of Nigerians and Nigeria. Infrastructural development and improvements in social structures and programs would be insignificant and baseless in a system pervaded by insecurity. It remains true that the people must be safe to function in the system; and appreciate state efforts at redefining the national infrastructural base among other critical achievements of the government. The attendant high cost of staples, though, becoming a global trend, wouldn’t have been as intense as it is in the country but for the contributing factor of insecurity and its prevalence in the rural settlements across the country; which both directly and indirectly affect farming activities. It therefore wouldn’t be out of order to declare an absolute state of emergency in the nation’s security system.  

We must be truthful to ourselves along the process of rediscovering and salvaging our land and people from the ravaging insecurity and their perpetrators. We cannot continue with our regular self-deceitful practices of playing religious and tribal affiliations with all emerging issues in the country without regards for consequences; as much as we must be set to separate the need to win the ongoing war against insecurity away from politics. When we realise that up till this moment in time, we, all of us, on the streets, the media and using all possible instruments, are the major catalyst fueling the operations of the terrorists invading our land and subjecting our people to terror; realising that on one hand, our decision to translate their actions to political campaign points as has become a recurring trend with PDP and all the party’s foot soldiers, and on the other hand, projecting insecurity-based organised lies and propaganda, and inadvertently or otherwise doing more than all others, to empower and spurring the terrorists to unleash more attacks on us while helping them to achieve their terrorist aims.  

We would be on the way to make everything right  when we all, regardless of tribes, religions or political party leanings, agreed that the safety of Nigeria is a joint task for all of us and a priority. When we stopped having among us media houses, who are bolstering the menace by converting it to emotional products and for their unethical businesses; when political parties desist from enjoying propagating insecurity as weapon of winning elections instead of contributing their quota to ending it, and when all Nigerians stand up to say enough is enough. When our religious bodies and leaders stop seeing insecurity as just a tool of attack on the sitting government but taking it as a challenge to deploy their influences to contribute to the solutions.

Some years ago, when we thought we were already winning the war against Boko Haram while at the same time banditry was rearing its head and the herder-farmer conflict was assuming a new and dangerous dimension, some of us came up to raise the red flag to Nigerians to the fact that what we were seeing was fake victory; that it was the same Boko Haram reconfiguring its formation and operations to survive the onslaught from the Nigeria Army, but our intense fixation on negative and self-profiting media gyrations of insecurity in the country wouldn’t allow our people to see through the curtain. We shouldn’t have at any time allowed the banditry nomenclature to stay; because the bandits and Boko Haram are one and the same. 

The war against Boko Haram from the onset has been unconventional; and the inability to pinpoint the enemy to a particular location makes it difficult for the Nigeria Army to consummate in record time. Yet, as Boko Haram grew wings on the back of the many successful attacks in the Northeast, it tends to settle down and presents itself to frequent and effective attacks from the Nigeria Army in the early days of the Muhammadu Buhari regime. To survive, the sect mixed with the population, reorganised itself into what we now have as the sophisticated bandits and dangerous herders decamping and relocating very easily across regions and states with relative ease. Rather than recognising this, we allowed the bandits to spread and settle down conveniently to carry on their trade, assuming we are dealing with newly emerging dissidents. We failed to ask ourselves the simple question: how could the bandits easily in a short period of time armed themselves enough to become such a threat to the country?

The reality of the current insecurity challenge and dimension is that attempts to maintain an onslaught on the enemies as dispersed as the sect is in its many forms, formation, and incarnations would always result in an exercise in futility for the Nigeria Army and the country. Boko Haram, bandits or whatever other form it assumes, can and would easily disarm, travel, rearm and resume their operations without hindrances, until we return to the table to research and evolve the best ways to deal with such an unconventional war as the sect presents to Nigeria.

At this point, we must organise all our resources to make a comprehensive analysis of unconventional welfare and sum up the best strategies and tactics to engage in confronting the unique insecurity imposed by the menace of Boko Haram and its appendages on our country. It is high time we fully recognised the part that political competition plays in the insecurity we face as a nation, and be decisive in also using it to producece the outcome we desire. Here, our nation of political struggles, must become a tool to win the war we fight. This is saying that we are not going anywhere until we separate politics from insecurity; and all Nigerians, regardless of political affiliations, and inclusive of all political organisations, assume responsibilities to join forces to the fight.  

The war is winnable but until we unite to fight and fight the right way. It is until we unite to fight that we would be able to strengthen the efforts of the military at the theater and also to rein in inefficiency and the rotten regime of corruption that hitherto impedes the walk to victory for the country. Until then, it would remain the customary media and street lamentations, the growing opportunism and the attendant consequences of the insecurity that weighs us down on all sides. 

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA !