Banditry and need for citizens alliance against impunity

“When there’s blood on the streets, somebody’s gotta go to jail.” — Keith Frazier (Inside Man)

By Mazhun Idris

There are smudges of innocent blood on many streets of Nigeria, but in the North, armed groups and kidnappers have reached the impunity to shoot down Nigeria Air Force jets as recorded in Zamfara State, and break walls and ferret residents from their homes like rats, as reported in Kaduna State. Northern Nigeria has witnessed endless cycles of violence and armed conflicts for the second successive decade, beginning with the Boko Haram insurgency in 2009. But recent years have brought— into the murderous cocktail— pastoralists-farmers conflicts, kidnappings for ransom, armed banditry targeting innocent schoolchildren, travelers, worshipers, and assassinations of ordinary citizens and even the elite.

To make a statistical sense of the ongoing mayhem, figures from Kaduna alone, per the state’s Internal Security and Home Affairs ministry, showed that in the last three months, incessant “banditry, violent attacks, communal clashes, and reprisals have resulted in the death of 222 persons. Armed groups across the state have kidnapped 774 citizens, injured 266, and rustled 8,553 livestock”. Many students are still being held captive by remorseless kidnappers after several weeks of abduction. Reports have repeatedly suggested that kidnappers have thus far amassed millions of dollars in ransom payments, from victims’ relatives and ostensible government proxies. The stats are a stark hallmark of low-tech criminality rising into full-blown insurgency and rebellion against state power.

Curbing impunity and lawlessness is thus the existential governance challenge facing federal and states governments, so long as human security remains the fulcrum of state existence. What are the essential ways to reverse the trend of armed gangs and non-state actors capitalizing on the deficits in policing, surveillance, and security intelligence? How would the authorities reverse impunity, ensure perpetrator accountability, and entrench peace, security, and stability?

With much of the state armed apparatuses within the exclusive commands of the federal government, the leadership the northern states should explore progressive ideas toward state and human security administration, vis-à-vis citizen participation in policy, capacity, and support mechanisms. From a regional security perspective, the governments in these states should declare a state-of-emergency, and focus on taking operational control in the direction of deterring, mitigating, and foiling potential violent attacks and demobilizing criminal gangs. This security strategy should be complimented by a robust community peacebuilding strategy for community actors, not just leaders, in each of their local government areas.

The new approach is a local-tier community security system, which will aim to make citizens of a locality to take responsibility for policing their constituency. This makes it a good time for local government autonomy in Nigeria, such that these administrative units get the enacted mandate to prevail on grassroots security problems.

The argument goes that due to arbitrary democratization of the use of force and violence for criminal benefits, there is palpable lack of federal capacity to maintain monopoly of force and means of coercion. With the centralized federal armed forces handicapped by manpower and equipment shortage, local government councils must join up as complementary instruments in the security regulatory theatre. Unlike establishing military garrisons or physical checkpoints, LGAs security policy should be aimed at strengthening community-state relationship, and employing local resources in the forms of vigilantes, hunters, trade unions, as stakeholders in general security governance.

Armed robbery, kidnapping for ransom, cattle rustling and banditry are a thriving model of criminal business, with ease of market entry to the crooked social elements of our communities. As long as this unruly trade racket maintains its lucrative profiteering prospects, it cannot be exterminated through the use of sheer force alone. There should exist multi-stakeholder forums for effective policing of criminal hideouts and getaway routes in every district. A strategic goal of this citizen approach should be reclaiming the vast ungoverned spaces around the rural expanse of these states, by means of locally sourced forest rangers and scouts.

Every local government should set up a community-oriented structure built around provincial justice system of local border security, immigration control, forest management, conflict transformation, public intelligence, and similar administrative objectives. In essence, the LG councils should grow into practical executive instruments, with the mandates to execute grassroots community security administration, which supports early warning and speedy response system. This will potentially checkmate proliferation of small arms and light weapons in our communities, and help in intercepting local syndicates and accomplices to gun runners and traffickers in illicit military gadgets.

The security-expert opinion is to view kidnapping and banditry as policing problems, unlike say parochial insurgency and territorial terrorism. The pervasive prevalence of violent crimes and lawlessness does not mean the state always needs more weapons to prosecute overstretched military operations.

The country and its federal apparatus have proved insufficient at overcoming ubiquitous security problems concurrently happening in about 30 states. It’s impossible to overcome criminal impunity with guns and boots on the ground alone. Hence the need to cultivate a social atmosphere of peace, order and justice. The citizen approach will help communities to be immunized against criminal elements and clusters, through public appreciation of the reward for respecting the law and helping restore sustainable peace.

Another basis for this multi-sectoral grassroots approach is that in community peacebuilding, special attention is given to public motivations and individual propensities to commit crime, criminal conspiracy, or join criminal gangs. This is also true since unemployment, corruption, and social isolation are among the drivers of violent criminality.

• Idris is a Senior Consultant with PeacePanel Centre Nigeria, peacepanelcenter@gmail.com