The example from Zamfara state

From Zamfara State, Nigerians have a new beginning. It is an example of what ought to become the new template in managing the security challenge that has defied the federal government of Nigeria. As reports had it, the Tudun Biri community in Gumi Local Government Area suffered a bandit attack recently. Rather than abandon their homes and take flight, the residents stood their ground and fought back in self-defence. In the outcome, not less than 30 bandits ended their earthly sojourn. That was a great feat. It has emboldened the community to organise better and be more prepared to stand firm before criminal outlaws in the face of the failure of the federal government to discharge its primary responsibility to the people despite repeated efforts by the state governor, Dauda Lawal, to engage with service chiefs and also support the deployment of more federal troops to the state with logistics.

What has happened in the Zamfara community, and perhaps somewhere else, demonstrates the need for community self-defence across Nigeria. This has become imperative given that Nigeria, with one of the largest standing armies in Africa, has left its people with no other option than to take up arms and defend themselves against terror kingpins, kidnappers, bandits etc. and in whatever way they can.

The simple reason for this failure lie in the architecture of Nigeria’s constitution, which places policing of even the rural communities and villages on the Exclusive Legislative List. This interprets to mean that only the National Assembly may legislate on issues of security. For this reason, Section 214 establishes a single Nigeria Police Force and forbids the creation of any other police force in the country. It is so also with the Army, Navy and Air Force. They fall under the President as Commander-in-Chief. The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps similarly operates under federal authority as well. In short, the entire established coercive apparatus of the Nigerian federation, equipped and funded to protect Nigerians, from the constable at a village checkpoint to the fighter jet over a forest, answers to Abuja.

The implication of this is that state governors like Dauda Lawal in Zamfara State, by contrast, are elected by their people who also hold them accountable for their safety. However, they do not command any of these forces. So, a governor who watches bandits burn his communities can call for help, but he has to wait until Abuja approves his request. He cannot deploy the military stationed in his state to stop the burning. The reality tells us that those who bear political responsibility for security in the states of the country have no power to deliver it. The consequences are visible across the North-West and North-Central zones. In Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, Kaduna, Benue, Plateau and beyond, banditry, kidnapping and communal attacks have displaced hundreds of thousands. Families who once farmed their land now live in camps where food is rationed, sanitation is poor, and children miss school for years. Many of these camps are called “IDP” settlements in official language, but for the people inside them the word that fits is humiliation -a once hardworking farmers and traders now surviving on donations, as well as the loss of human dignity that comes with having nothing to return to, and the slow erosion of livelihoods that took generations to build. This is no longer sustainable. That is why self-defence is justified.

The Tudun Biri community’s decision to defend itself is, therefore, not an aberration even in law. It is the logical response of a people who have been told, by the structure of their own government, that protecting them is someone else’s job, and who have watched that someone fail to arrive. Self-defence is among the oldest human rights recognised in law, and the instinct to protect one’s family and home is not something a constitution can legislate away because when the state’s monopoly on force is not exercised to protect the governed, communities will logically organise to protect themselves.

This is why the Zamfara events deserve to be read as a sign of things to come. The template will spread, and many communities will organise to defend themselves. They will no longer sit back and wait for the federal government. This will become the natural outcome of failed government promises, failed assurances and dashed hopes. People who have seen their governor run several missions to Abuja, begging for increased military and Police presence, and supported the same with increased logistics support, but see no improvement in their security, are likely to thank their governor for his effort and then move ahead to create their own security systems for self-defence. That is what Zamfara communities are gearing up to do, with the example of Tudun Biri. The responsibility for the outcome will lie squarely on the federal government for sustaining a system that leaves ordinary and defenceless Nigerians with no lawful means of protecting themselves.

But there is always a remedy. And this is structural. Nigeria should seriously reconsider the constitutional structure that places all policing under the federal government. State police, under the control of governors and subject to state legislatures and courts, would bring security under the authority of officials who answer directly to the people they protect. Such a reform has been debated for years, and the arguments against it, including concerns about political misuse of state police and the risk of ethnic or partisan capture, are real. However, they underscore the Nigerian national habit of a lack of accountability, official impunity before the law and executive entitlement to legal breaches.  These can be addressed through strong safeguards and the enthronement of a culture of accountability, respect for the rule of law and equality before the law. Retaining the status quo has its own costs, and those costs are measured in burned villages, empty farmland and community defence forces mounted by community youths.

Alongside state police, the country needs lawful community security structures with clear mandates, training, background checks, accountability to elected and judicial authorities, and strict limits on the use of force. Several states have experimented with such arrangements, with mixed results, and their successes and failures offer lessons worth studying. The objective is to channel the legitimate desire of communities to protect themselves into institutions that the state can supervise, rather than leaving that desire to spill into unregulated violence.

I reckon that the people of Tudun Biri, like others across the country, did not choose to become the subject of a national debate about federalism and security. They were forced into that discourse by criminals and by a federal government whose design made it hard for anyone close to the danger to stop it. Their story should move Nigerians to demand that the country’s security architecture match the responsibilities it claims. A constitution that gives Abuja the guns and leaves governors without command is a constitution that has outlived its purpose. Reforming it, and building lawful community protection in the meantime, is the only way to ensure that the next community under threat has a government that can actually reach it.