The recent depressing report by the Nigerian Security Tracker has reaffirmed Nigeria’s mounting and seemingly intractable security challenges. It is a bold attestation to the fact that whatever the government seems to be doing to contain insecurity has to be improved upon if the country is to be restored to a society where people can live in peace.
To put it bluntly, insecurity has emerged as the biggest problem confronting Nigeria today and the country cannot continue to pretend as if all is well. According to the NST, a project of the Washington-based non-profit, Council on Foreign Relations, 25,794 people have encountered violent deaths in the country since the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015.
Another NST report said 7,253 died from violent activities in Nigeria between June 2018 and May 2019. They were either victims of mass killings by the different insurgent groups holding the country to ransom or those who are victims of extrajudicial killings by the military in the course of their counterinsurgency operations.
The high incidence of killings is quite disappointing for an administration that identified tackling insecurity as its cardinal objective, alongside fighting corruption and boosting the economy. If this number of casualties can be recorded while contending against bandits, one then wonders what would happen if Nigeria is in a full-scale war against external aggressors.
But it only confirms how cheap human life has become in Nigeria, where such deaths are increasingly commonplace. In France, when a satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, was attacked by terrorists in 2015 and 17 people died, it attracted a global outcry. World leaders marched through the streets of Paris, hand-in-hand, in solidarity with the French. Besides, the suspects (two brothers), Cherif and Said Kouachi, were gunned down two days later, while a third, Peter Cherif or Abou Hamza, was picked up in Djibouti three years later.
But in Nigeria, killers saunter away from the scenes of massacres unchallenged, just as they did in Benue last year after killing two priests of St. Ignatius Catholic Church, Ayar-Mbalom and 13 other worshippers. Killer Fulani herdsmen who have been wreaking havoc across the country, described by the Global Terrorism Index as the fourth deadliest terror group in the world, appear to have unofficial freedom to roam the country. They are neither arrested, nor are they prosecuted when police manage to round up a few. How then would the mindless killings and sacking of villages not continue?
Although the country had been under the assault of Boko Haram, an Islamist group, before Buhari mounted the saddle in 2015, the threat of insecurity has been further worsened by activities of bandits spread across the northern states and pervasive nature of kidnapping. Hardly does a day pass without reports of mass murder of innocent Nigerians. For instance, it was reported last week that bandits shot and killed 16 people in Kanoma village in the Maru Local Government Area of Zamfara State. In the same week, reports had it that no fewer than 50 people were killed when bandits attacked five Sokoto villages in Rabah and Isa local government areas.
While Boko Haram has been able to hold sway in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, cross-border banditry has been responsible for many deaths in Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Sokoto states. But, fast becoming the most lethal of them all are the herdsmen, whose sphere of influence extends to the southern parts of the country. Because of their activities, which includes kidnapping for ransom, it has become very difficult for people to move freely in Ondo, Ekiti and Osun states.
On the recent attacks on eight villages in Niger State, an ex-lawmaker, David Umaru, said on Friday that 70 bodies were recovered, even though the emergency agencies had earlier put the number of people killed at 47. Everyone in every part of Nigeria now lives in fear of where or when the next attacks would occur.
The NST report named Borno State, with 9,303 killed, as by far the worst hit, followed by Zamfara, Benue and Adamawa with 1,963, 1,642 and 1,529 deaths respectively. When the 1,488 killed in Kaduna; 771 in Plateau; 649 in Taraba; 467 in Cross River; 301 in Ogun and 252 in Niger are added, it becomes clear why the Nigerian landscape has sometimes been described as a killing field and why investors are giving it a wide berth.
The Nigerian state should not stand by and watch as non-state actors threaten the existence of the citizens. Protecting lives and property of citizens is a constitutional responsibility which should never be abdicated. The authorities have always pretended as if they are helpless and do not know what to do; they should start by disarming all those who are carrying arms illegally. There are too many arms in circulation with more than 70 per cent of small arms in West Africa said to be in Nigeria.
It is a well-known fact that some of the marauders are from neighbouring countries. Striking alliances to stop the free flow of criminals into the country is therefore imperative. It is important to introduce and enforce very strict border control measures, just as the Americans, under Donald Trump, are doing to keep away unwanted foreigners from their borders. The government should also show some seriousness by successfully prosecuting and punishing those caught committing these heinous crimes.
More than 10 years after the Boko Haram insurgency first reared its ugly head, it is inconceivable that the extremists are still having a field day, killing servicemen, kidnapping children and plundering towns and villages. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria started five years after Boko Haram; now the Islamists have been defeated. It has taken a coalition of countries to rout ISIS. The same coalition is needed to end the reign of Boko Haram in this country.
While waiting for that to happen, however, states should be ready to empower vigilance groups to be able to defend themselves against the pervasive and deadly aggression of the gun-bearing Fulani herdsmen.
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