We, all of us, must find a way of changing the narrative about the security situation in the country. Before now, we were largely worried only about Borno State, then Yobe and then Adamawa. These were the main theatres of conflict between Boko Haram and the Nigerian people. Now there is a massive expansion in the circumference of the danger we face. Boko Haram has been joined by ISIS West Africa Province (ISWAP). Add to this the terrorism of herdsmen and armed bandits and kidnappers and what you have is a demonic cocktail of disaster.
The spokesmen for the Federal Government and the military have told us umpteen times that Boko Haram has been “degraded”, “technically defeated” and in his 2019 new year message President Mohammadu Buhari explicitly said that Boko Haram has been “defeated”. Maybe that was the President’s way of saying that Boko Haram will insha Allah be defeated. But at present the augury is unsavoury. Our pain has increased and no applause is rising on how we have conducted the war.
The Governor of Borno State, Mr. Kashim Shettima, went with a large delegation of prominent Borno indigenes to speak to President Buhari on the worsening security situation in his State. As he spoke, tears rolled down the cheeks of this brave man, evidence that the situation is truly grave. He had said a few weeks ago that the security situation was getting worse but that he was not going to criticize Buhari because the President has given him “unfettered access to him”. But his tears translate to a grave criticism of the President and his management of the war. Shettima had enumerated how the State had lost 20 out of the 27 Local Governments to Boko Haram between 2013 and 2014. He said: in these 20 Local Government Areas, they established caliphates and put in place sovereign administrators who strictly enforced tax system and violent laws. They abused our young daughters. They forced young men to join their fighters. They turned old men and women into domestic slaves and they publicly executed parents in the presence of their own children and wives for allegedly offending laws that are even alien to the religion of Islam. Shettima said that between 2015 and 2018 the Nigerian military was able to liberate the 20 Local Government Areas hitherto under Boko Haram’s control. As the Governor explained there have been unexpected reverses in the war in recent times which necessitated their Save-Our-Souls visit to the President.
Borno is definitely the best known face of insecurity in Nigeria because it has been the main theatre of conflict since 2009. But it is not the only source of concern. Zamfara has been violently harassed by an assortment of terrorists and other species of criminals for some months now. The Governor, Mr. Abdulaziz Yari, said some time ago that he was no longer the Chief Security Officer of the State. And just last week, he said he would not mind surrendering his position as Governor if the solution to the problem was the declaration of a state of emergency. There are buckets of tears in his eyes, but we are not seeing.
What we are seeing is the apparent helplessness of a king without a kingdom because that kingdom is taken away, bit by bit, by forces over which he has no control. This emphasises again the futility of calling a Governor the Chief Security Officer of a State while the security apparatus is in the hands of someone somewhere who may not share in equal depth the concern of the man on the ground about security in his State. Yari, who is also the chairman of the Governor’s Forum has bought into the idea of State Police just as many Governors have but in politics, we learn by experience that it is not everything that is desirable that is achievable.
In Katsina State, Buhari’s own State, the Governor Mr. Aminu Masari’s eyes are welling up with tears. The tears are flowing in his heart not on his face. He says that gunmen have overrun his State. “Our State is currently under serious siege by armed robbers, kidnappers and armed bandits who arrest rural people at the grassroots at will and demand ransom which if not paid they kill their victims”.
Nigeria hasn’t had a happy life with dirges of women, men and children who are mourning the dead, burying their loved ones and fleeing into refugee camps called internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. It is a horror story from which many horror movies can be made. It is a story of misery, of pathos. What we see about the insecurity situation fills us with the kind of horror and pain that we did not know awaited us as the luxury of quietude increasingly, rapidly, eludes us. This is like a stab in the heart. We are no longer breathing well.
Masari says that the “people of Katsina in the 34 Local Governments now sleep with one eye closed and the other opened”. Obviously, this even-handed man who does not speak in absolutes is smelling the rancid odour of frustration, the kind experienced by Shettima, Yari and several other Governors who have responsibility without authority. If they had authority, perhaps, they would have been able to save the situation but that is merely speculative. Well, at least they would have had to accept full responsibility for failure if that happened and to take credit for success.
I know that war is not a tea party. Today’s war is even more complicated with the introduction of EIDS. I admit also that our fighting forces have exhibited a high level of gallantry taking back the bulk of the territories which Boko Haram captured and planted its flag as evidence of conquest in Borno some years ago. But why did we have all the recent reverses, that led to the killing of our soldiers in ambush after ambush? Were they products of faulty tactics and strategy or of incorrect intelligence or of inadequacy or inferiority of our equipment or men? Simply, what?
Many of us bloody civilians do not understand the logic of soldiers’ deployment. As people inexperienced in the art of warfare, we wonder why it is more important to deploy soldiers for Operation Python Dance in places where there is relative peace and stability instead of where the war is raging furiously. On December 28 last year, Lt. General Tukur Buratai said in Maiduguri that Operation Python Dance is meant to tackle “challenges coupled with other security threats across the country such as terrorism, militancy, kidnapping and banditry”. The campaign, he said, will be taken to all States of the Federation during this period of campaigns and elections to secure the country from those allegedly planning violence. The Pythons are expected to end their dancing session on February 28. However, the Governorship and House of Assembly elections are to be held March 2, so why is the period between February 28 and March 2 not covered by the python dancers? The National Assembly and Presidential elections will be held on February 16, so the military operation will take care of that period. But does it mean that those who want to cause trouble are only targeting the National Assembly and Presidential elections? The failure to cover the other election leaves a lot of room for speculation namely that the Army may be an interested party in the Presidential elections especially. That is why several persons are asking the military to behave in a neutral, apolitical and professional manner. We will be watching how they dance especially on February 16.
But the other matter to grab our attention must be the gradual militarization of the entire country. Now, soldiers are taking over civilian responsibilities that legally belong to the police including the mobile police while their own core responsibilities in area of intense conflict such as Borno are crying for undivided attention. The military, of course, has a duty to intervene in areas where the police have been overwhelmed by criminals. The nation-wide Python Dance, in my view, does not belong here because many States are largely peaceful. In a democracy, the police remains the major instrument for the maintenance of peace and security, law and order.
This makes the Army’s raid of the offices of the Daily Trust unacceptable. The Army says the paper violated the Official Secrets Act, the dead Act enacted in 1962. If that is the case, then it is not a matter for the Army but that of the police and the Courts.
In a democracy, due process must be respected, the courts remain the ultimate arbiter, not the horsewhip or the gun. Communication is an important weapon in a war. Did Nigerian soldiers not see CNN reporters and Cameramen embedded with American soldiers in Iraq, during the war? The idea was to ensure that the reporters covered the war well without any room for speculation. The other advantage of such collaboration was to assure American citizens that their soldiers were happy to offer them their right to know because it is they who bear the war expenses.
Part of the reason there are hiccups in the anti-terror war in Nigeria is the low sensitization and non-mobilization of the citizens’ support for the war. The government thinks it is its war, its soldiers’ war not a war in which the citizens are consciously mobilized and sensitized to support. In normal circumstances when a country is in a war, the people must get a daily briefing on the states of the war. That is not happening in Nigeria.
Journalists must be taken into confidence. They must be given publishable and off-the-record briefing daily so as to leave no room for rumours or to kill rumours if they already exist. That, too, is not happening.
Nigerians are not heartless people. They appreciate the sacrifices made by their fighting forces. They may speak with harsh candour about the state of the war but they support the war and those displaced by it, those widowed by it and those orphaned by it. The government and the military simply need to make the people, including the media, partners in the war because when the numbers are crunched those who have lost more in this war than anyone else are the people.
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