In this nation, we habitually leave issues only to fight the shadows. There was a time most Nigerians agreed on the need to decentralise the nation’s security arrangement. We seem to have backed off. Now that the consequences of this stare us in the face, it’s another language we’re speaking. I should assume we all ought to recognise this is what the current security challenge speaks to. Instead, everyone blames the three service chiefs – Lt. General Tukur Buratai, the Chief of Army Staff; Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, Chief of Air Staff; Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ekwe Ibas, Chief of Naval Staff.
Not long ago, I examined reasons the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), might have chosen to retain the security chiefs (The PUNCH, March 13, 2020). Here, I call attention to us as a people, how we have contributed to the insecurity for which we now think three officers are all the solution. First, we’re not having the appropriate conversation regarding insecurity. State governors know the current arrangement is not effective, but they aren’t actively pursuing the matter to effect change. Lawmakers leave this issue only to put the blame on three security chiefs. Celebrated public commentators get caught up in the fixation about three security chiefs. Meanwhile, those who started the argument that the three officers must go began on an emotive note, expressing bitterness that their relations and friends retired from the armed forces without having the opportunity to become service chiefs. Now it’s the narrative everyone proclaims, and I’m baffled.
As a people, how we easily lose focus as well as trivialise what is a serious national dilemma is concerning. Sometimes, we even drag life-threatening matters to the abattoir of ethnic and religious bigotry. Whenever the consequences of this attitude stare us in the face, we shift the post of the blame somewhere else. For instance, recently, former President Olusegun Obasanjo said he heard some say things like “It serves them well”, regarding the killings that happened in parts of the far north. He said this shouldn’t be the case. I think categorising the killings going on in parts of the north this way is the most vindictive, bigoted comment I’ve ever heard any Nigerian make. This mentality shared by many is part of the current problem. For once the mentality is wrong, the calls made will be wrong, and the outcome will be the same. Our people are dying, the nation is experiencing a downturn on all security indices, yet all that some could do is look at it from a narrow tribal and religious prism. The same way some trivialise a collective national security problem by saying three service chiefs should go just to give room for their relations and friends.
Acts of violence in any part impact every other part of Nigeria, however remotely. But a majority of Nigerians don’t make the connection because of ethnic and religious prejudices, the type education hasn’t been able to purge. Also, some of us struggle not to be cynical as people mouth religion, fight for religion, yet there’re contradictions between their action and the injunctions of the religion they claim. I gave examples in the past on this page. People have a religion that says they should win others over.
Those others dwell in their community but they say they must go away because of acts of criminality of a few. Yet when there’s trouble as a result of this intolerant disposition (patently contrary to the injunction of the religion they claim), they say they are being persecuted because of their religion. They don’t see the contradiction in their claims, but some of us won’t stop showing it to them. Why? This matter has been badly handled at the local level. By their intolerant disposition, unwillingness to find local solutions which could have ensured that criminals are separated from peaceful residents (as some Nigerian communities wisely do), they contribute to insecurity and thereby give the security chiefs more job than they have the capacity to handle.
In addition to this are the divisive action and utterances of those who should show example to the younger generations. They encourage hate, their writing and comments are full of bigotry, worse than what should be found among the uneducated. (Education is supposed to open minds, make us see that ethnicity and religion in themselves shouldn’t harm, except the person who answers to them cause harm). But some of the worst ethnic bigots in Nigeria are people with good education. They say the worst hate-filled things about people belonging to tribes and religions other than theirs. I submit that their comments contribute to hate-propelled inter-ethnic violence we’ve witnessed, thereby creating more problems for the same security chiefs that they now blame. It’s their type who say, “It serves them well.”
As already noted, insecurity in any part of Nigeria affects all Nigerians. If there’s violence and our people cannot farm in the north, it affects the amount of agricultural products that gets to other parts of the nation. The same goes for the southern parts. Yet some trivialise the unfortunate situation in which fellow Nigerians are killed. For me, it’s the same kind of disposition that has made us, at this time when we face so much insecurity, to leave what we should focus on and concentrate on peripheral things. The three men heading each of the security outfits can’t provide all the solution, so they cannot be all the problem there is with regard to the current insecurity. This challenge didn’t with start with them. Before they arrived their duty posts, we had blamed the wrong-headed security architecture that the nation had. We’ve said as big as Nigeria is, transporting the police and other security forces from far places to any part where there are threats to life and property isn’t effective.
We’ve agreed that we don’t even have the number of soldiers to cover every part of Nigeria and secure it, which in effect means doing the job that the police ought to do. The ideal thing is that the police should be on the ground to prevent and stop attacks on civilians in towns and villages. The police aren’t on the ground to effectively do this, being moved as they are from one part of the country to the other. They’re too ill-equipped, too. Now we don’t even focus on that gap in police responsibility anymore. Instead, everyone blames the service chiefs whose officers cannot be on the ground in our communities all the time.
We’ve said states should have security outfits that know their terrain. They are the ones who can forestall the hit-and-withdraw attacks being witnessed in Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi and Sokoto states. Instead what we see is window-dressing that the police call community policing. It means we are unwilling to change a security arrangement controlled from the centre that is clearly isn’t working. If we’ve talked theoretically that the centre-controlled police arrangement needs to be recalibrated, the current unbearable insecurity is the evidence we need to aggressively back up the argument.
I don’t argue that the security chiefs should be in office for ever. My point is that we’ve been changing security chiefs since the increased violence in the north began in 2009, but it hasn’t curbed it. Moreover, the dynamics propelling the current state of insecurity are not only internal, they are also external. So what do we do? We reorganise the security arrangement such that it meets both new internal and external exigencies. Merely removing three security chiefs doesn’t address that.
We must have a decentralised police arrangement. In my view, many of the conditions that made us centralise in 1966 don’t exist anymore. This is especially so in the current democratic dispensation. Now we have political parties that are nationally spread.
The current regime has support in every zone. Once each zone is given its due, no one will talk of breaking away from Nigeria. People agitate for autonomy because they feel stifled. Once many of the areas they have concerns about are decentralised, no one would think of secession as they can develop at their own pace. Decentralisation of the security arrangement would have solved a huge proportion of the problems for which some now blame security chiefs. When state governors, lawmakers and public commentators turn attention back to this, that’s the time we start talking.
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