WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com
As I got ready to write this article, I felt so terrified with gory news on insecurity coming from various parts of the country. Boko Haram struck again in Borno, bandits in Yobe and Sokoto, killings and the captivity of innocent citizens going about their normal lives. Turji, just yesterday embarrassed the whole nation when he dispossessed some army officers of their attack vehicles and ammunition and openly showcased them and bragged about it. A kidnapped girl was killed on her father’s farm after collecting ransom somewhere in Ogun State, and the sad stories continue. We cannot continue like this.
Nigeria is apparently at a crossroad where we have no other option but to get the security responses right to the perennial insecurity besetting the country. The office of the National Security Adviser to the President and all security frameworks of the country have been working, but desperate time is upon us and we must wake up to earnestly rejig the country’s responses to the unbecoming insecurity challenge on many fronts. We cannot but wake up as a nation, as we write a new chapter for the safety of lives and properties of our citizens.
It is embarrassing that at this point in our history as a nation, the story that would be written about us, is that of killing and maiming of innocent citizens, of kidnapping of fellow citizens, of banditry that holds our people hostage and prevent them from doing their legitimate works, of school children being abducted frequently, and among several others, of a region of the country being forced to stay at home on the order of some elements outside government and we can do nothing about it.
The last years since the return to democracy in 1999 have come with the trouble of gross insecurity that cripples the country’s capacity to freely grow as it should be. The citizens’ capacities in most areas have been severely hampered; farmers, either stopped altogether from accessing their farmlands, or being disposed of their harvest at some points, until food insecurity becomes a major challenge of a country that ought not to have anything to do with it.
It began with the menace of Boko Haram, but we have now graduated to the multifaceted, simultaneous assaults from bandits, kidnappers, Boko Haram and unknown gunmen, IPOB and name it. And now it is time to address this issue with all sincerity to present a lasting working solution. It is feasible and we can do it.
Government actions have been obvious in terms of increased investment in national defense. In 1999, the budgetary allocation to the sector stood at N33,832,000,000 and has geometrically increased as the security threats increased over the years to N1,647,780,328,365. But at some period during this era, it was unfortunate that the government apparently played to the gallery in its responses to the insecurity challenge for reasons we cannot tell. This was the case most especially during the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, when we made little to no progress in the fight against insecurity. Nonetheless, even after that, the seriousness of the Buhari administration was only able to reduce to some extent the hit the citizens and the country received from the menace. The expectation of outright end to the menace continues to remain a mirage as new sects and formats of insecurity attacks are being released on the nation.
The Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu Administration has continue to do its best, reorganising and strongly mobilising the nation’s security outfits to a strong affronts against the growing insecurity in the country, but unfortunately, the reality remains that Nigerians are not still safe; kidnapping continues to be on the increase, the bandit are growing in size and population and they are wreaking havoc with reckless abandon. The South-east remains under serious control of forces that undermine the safety of the entire region.
So, we are at a point where we must return to the table and ask the right questions. What do we have to do? Where are we starting from? And what are we not doing right? We cannot continue to do things the same way and expect a different result. The president’s good intention to find a lasting solution to the menace must not be allowed to become a waste and an ill intention.
Days ago, after the terrible incident in Zamfara state, the decision for the military special operation to relocate to the state to decimate the bandits and those responsible for insecurity in the state, was taken. What a good reaction, but unfortunately, the manner of handling the action does not show that we meant business going into the state. Even while we were yet on the move, the media was agog of the entire plan to invade the bandit camp. I asked myself, are we serious? Where is the element of surprise in this kind of attack? Do we want to win the war or scare away the bandits to enjoy some respite or even free themselves permanently?
We must move away from romancing these sects. Nigeria and Nigerians are bleeding from their acts. We cannot continue to see the repetition of the events of those days when bandits were freely brandishing AK47 rifles in front of our military men; when communities held peace talks with terrorists in the presence of the Nigerian Army as a witness. Those days when we cleared roads for them to pass through towns without disturbance; when we asked the men of the military to step down to allow them free passage.
Now, for the president to achieve his security goal there is a need for us to exercise restraints. With the change of guard in both NIA and DSS, rather than rushing to act, we should rather, wait to gather as much intelligence as we can; the local communities are brimming with the solution to the problem that we are not accessing. The bandits are members of the local societies they frequently terrorise. We need to work and walk with the communities and build alliances with the people. Even external forces are coming to operate in any locality; they would still have to join forces with existing local forces to flourish at their illicit trades.
If we do our homework; gather intelligence enough, we can easily take the battle to their enclaves, and even probably turn them against each other as was the case with the earlier and stronger version of Boko Haram. This will be possible only when we have full knowledge and information about whom and what they are. Gathering intelligence is a must to unravel the forces at the head of the table benefiting from the entire mayhem.
The next important agenda for the government is to establish a strong working relationship militarily with all our neighbouring countries. We cannot afford to have these sects moving easily away into bordering countries to evade attacks without immediate responses for those nations to respond with commensurate attacks.
Then, we must move to starve the entire band of insecurity outfit; the bandits, kidnappers and even the Boko Haram of recruits. We must engage the children and youths. The recent protest is an eye opener to how easy it has been for insecurity to replenish its forces from our streets. If we can cut their access to free recruits, in a matter of time, their strength will wane and collapsing will follow. It is very important that the government devises the best way to offload as many of these young ones off the street, and make useful lives out of them, in the interest of the country.
The country is blessed across the board with strong academics in the field of social science and related fields. Our universities record research works in the field which we do not convert to useful materials for information and responses to social and security challenges. We have every year hundreds of quality research works on social challenges facing the country, supervised by able and respected academics. These research works are literally abandoned in school libraries. It is therefore recommended that the office of the National Security Adviser recognises the importance of this subset of our society and engage them towards harnessing their inputs in resolving social malaise in our society.
Finally, another major premise for continuous insecurity and crime in Nigeria is the yet-to-be-resolved challenge of the Gulf of Guinea. The only reason our crude is successfully stolen without anyone raising resistance is because we do not have mutual cooperation with the Gulf of Guinea and so those who steal crude are able to form alliances against the country that sees them moving freely along the route. We must set up a new system to resolve the maritime challenges in waters around the gulf, form stronger collaboration among stakeholder-member states and put a joint and responsive system in the gulf to eliminate crimes and insecurity against each and every benefiting member state.
