If you are a student of history, one thing you pick out easily from our frequent cry over the insecurity currently plaguing the land would be that we deliberately have chosen to embark on a journey round a sordid cycle. Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka once made mention of “cycle of national stupidity.” One area this applies is in our handling of insecurity in our society. We know the problem and the manifest answers, yet our leaders choose to beat about the bush. Part of the challenge has its roots in bad political structure.
We have never been politically stable since we got statehood in 1960. Just like it was before independence, each tribe has kept its feet on the neck of the other, regardless of the negative throwbacks that usually follow. Now instead of acting in ways that enhance sense of bonding, we act the contrary way. In the process we provoke resentments that soon grow into lawlessness. People in the South East currently say they can’t find their image at the top echelon of the incumbent federal government. Imagine for a moment President Muhammadu Buhari bent backwards to appoint one Igbo into one security service chief position in addition to the post of Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
Agitation coming from South East may well be there but the steam would have been taken off it and incentive to go extreme won›t be there. Rather than do this simple act of appeasement, we see efforts to circumvent it and even rub sal on injury by lifting Igbo from outside zonal jurisdiction of South East. A question of beingp clever by half. When power manipulators hoodwink a solid group they throw up dangerous variables which turn around to impel progress. Men with foresight have risen countless times to say restructure the society away from harm done to country by military apologists who were narrow minded when they shot themselves to power, run a true federal state, the North who lay claims to higher population and political sophistry say no way, it must be unitary system in a deeply plural. This has anger and angry people will go for the jogular and one million man army with the best of military equipment will not be able to stop them.
The conservative establishment in the North has managed to have their way and the advantages but they don›t have the atmosphere to enjoy their pyrhric gains. Like the rest of us, they are asking why things are the way they are, why is there mayhem everywhere yet the answers stand before them like a giant mountain, very visible for who honestly wants to see and acknowledge. Unitarism alienates groups; the first child of alienation is frustration which leads to deviance. We are into that now. Two weeks ago President Buhari told us he was “tired” with the security agencies. To those who know, it was predictable.
Now rather than look down and pick very germane solutions that are readily available, our rulers chose to pour petrol on an inferno by adding to unitarism establishment of oligarchy, a system in which only the very rich can find themselves in commanding heights of public office. Going by the fees prescribed by major political parties, only multibillion can afford to run for public offices henceforth. Everyone is laughing, forgetting that it is a rich recipe for setting the society on fire in the months ahead. This is one way we provoke insecurity and turn around to behave as if we are unable to decipher the root cause of our challenges. Anger is ventilated when those who feel terrible about misgovernance can find space to participate. Simple lesson in positive nation building.
Rufai Oseni of Arise Television spoke the minds of most well-meaning citizens when analyzing the outcome of Buhari’s security meeting with the service chiefs held on April 21, 2022 in Abuja. He said: “We should be tired of hearing the same refrain every time. If our country wants insecurity to end it will end immediately.” Oseni’s thought hit a cork in the minds of many of us and opened us to a very recent example of security breach in America, where a man shut people on a train station and “disappeared.”
Reaction was swift, visible and verifiable; security agents poured into the area, cordoned it and gave instructions to citizens on actions to take and things to look out for. Neighbouring cities and outlets were placed on red alert. It took only hours to fish out the felon. In our case hoodlums ride in long conveys of vehicles and motorbikes, they pass cities to get to their targets, cause havoc in operations spanning hours, abduct victims in hundreds and still manage to have a safe exit. All that the government does is issue a statement mandating security agents to act and everybody goes to sleep. We hear that and one wonders where were the security agents in first place? No road blocks? No trace? Isn’t it very amazing that a society as wealthy as ours can’t find barbarians who attack us using vehicles and abduct hundreds of victims.
Sometimes one is tempted to believe there is contrivance in the whole happenings. In one incident that happened on Benin bypass, which was published on Facebook in April, Igbo and Ibibio indigenes returning from an event in the East whose vehicle was attacked and taken hostage. These innocent Nigerians were killed. When police swung into action, it was discovered that the culprits were Muslims who were said to have come from the North to work in Edo.
The truth is that only very few of their northern brothers travel outside their zones for their cattle business. We know them and they are not capable of the kind of brutality we see today all over the country. They are calm, focused and very friendly. Sahel barbarians came into the country and were being distributed across our space because few demented ones among us believe they can dominate the entire space using crooked means. Desert foxes are just animals; those who have encountered them in their very unfriendly environment have told us how mean or vicious those felons can be.
President Buhari once told us that there should be free movement of persons across our borders in the spirit of ECOWAS Truth is that countries with far better economy than neighbours don’t rush to implement such proposition. We are building rail line to Niger Republic; even an elementary pupil knows the implications of such to internal security, yet Nigeria is home to all Fulani, Bauchi Governor Bala Mohammed gladly told us on a television interview. We implement all these horrible policies and still expect peace.
After the last expanded security council meeting, the Inspector General of Police disclosed a plan to flood South East with police and equipment because police stations and personnel were being attacked, facilities destroyed. No reasonable person should condone this. It is condemnable. Nevertheless, in search for sustainable answers it should matter to him that in nearly all the cases not one clear arrest seems to have been effected. This some think would have been a pointer to who is responsible. How do more personnel and equipment replace intelligence and arrest? Igbo leaders have met and given options which include dialogue. Isn’t dialogue a strong tool for improving peace? Imagine constructive engagement and Nnamdi Kanu is freed. More killings have continued to happen in Kaduna than the entire South East yet Kaduna is receiving no emphasis of the kind extended to South East. Where is dialogue in Kaduna?
Contrivance appears to be a strong factor in our case and there seems to be enough indications to suspect so. The Buhari administration gave 98% per cent of command of security service appointments to northerners and Muslims. It has never been this loopsided before. It is instructive when one knows history of expansionism in other places.
The regime has been very soft on barbarians, when they kill security agents, the state captures and reintegrates them, with stories of some getting enlisted into the formal security set up and others back into society at a time sabotage by their gangs is far from over. This is a revealing story on its own. Those who attacked the Abuja-Kaduna train last time disclosed they have unfinished business with government, who they insist is aware what they discussed. Do the authorities know them? What have their commanders arrested by the state revealed anything about the activities of the barbarians and their sponsors?
Like Rufai said, if we want to end insecurity it will end. It requires honesty. We know the Sudan scenario where government was pushing for Islamization using state apparatus and yet pretended it had no hand in the fiasco that the country became. If we are serious to end insecurity we better be. Chad, Burkina Faso and others don’t spend the kind of money we pump into security yet the soldiers in those places give bloody noses to vandals. Let’s us democratize security. State, local governments and corporations should have guards. We need free productive education for all. It is also time for state governments in the North to pursue massive education for all their people. Let the government at the centre give us a productive economy. These are simple things to do. If for nothing else, they are things being done elsewhere already. Above all, restructuring is cardinal.