The wave of bloody violence across the country especially in the Middle Belt is taking a frightening dimension following the recent pogrom in Plateau State; killing of the vulnerable innocent people, women, children and the elderly. Insecurity and insurgency are not relenting in the least, not even in the Northeast where we are told that the Boko Haram terrorists have been degraded. The insurgents may not be holding swaths of land and hoisting their flags as it was before the 2015 General Elections but there are still trails of blood as suicide bombers carry out wholesale kidnapping, engage soft targets amongst the civil populace, killing of troops and carrying their weapons.
The worst form of violence has now manifested in the form of ravaging herdsmen marauding in the landscape of the Middle Belt down to the southern part of the country. They carry out offensive scorched earth method against their targets leaving nothing on their path; killing their victims, burning their homesteads and farmland in a genocidal faction. The herdsmen violence has been reputed to have claimed more lives that the Boko Haram insurgents since its manifestation in 1999. The entire country has become a killing field.
What is most troubling about the herdsmen attack is the government ambivalence in first recognising it as serious security problem and dealing with it as such. Government and its security agencies have approached the herdsmen violence erroneously as a product of ethnic intolerance of people who do not want the co-existence with itinerant herders’ lifestyle. This approach is poisoning the well and setting one ethnic nationality against the others thereby deepening the resentment across the demographic fault-lines.
I am worried at the ethnic and religious colorations of the violence that is consuming our country especially the inability of the political leadership to tackle it by rising above ethno-religious barometers. Insurgency and insecurity have thrown up all manners of security experts all pontificating and suffocating the airwaves with outlandish theories, lacking in praxis. Many people have called for the overhaul of the security architecture of the country by removing the heads of the security agencies claiming that it is one sided and not designed to reflect national character for neutrality and effectiveness. This school of thought may have its own point but I will hasten to add that it would require more than mere change of the personality to solve the amalgam of security problem confronting us as a nation.
Some have also argued that the troops and fighting forces are poorly motivated and ill-equipped to deal with a more formidable and daring insurgents. Again, it requires more than equipment to win a battle. It would require well trained, disciplined and highly motivated soldiers to drive the equipment to achieve result. It is on record that the federal government have dumped huge sums of money on the security agencies to tackle the insurgency and insecurity which the higher commanders and leaderships have embezzled and allowed the armed forces and the country to be humiliated by the local insurgents. Our security forces have become fractious more than ever before and have to flee at the rumoured approach of the enemy. That is how bad it is.
In all the security analyses, we have ignored very vital aspects which have made the security agencies to appear ineffective. The first is political consideration in appointing the heads of the security agencies. This goes along with its twin sisters of ethnic and religious considerations which have greatly diminished the espirit de corps among members of the armed forces. This is the reason why we have seen the security agencies sinking deeper into partisanship and being used to conduct and rig elections. Another area that is often ignored is the quality of training the troops are exposed to in the course of their career. A soldier is trained to be tough to withstand inclement weathers in the face of adversaries and apply his training and weapons with dexterity in combat. A soldier is not trained to flee before the enemy no matter how formidable. Now the politicians have populated the armed forces and other security agencies with their children and relations who see it only as providing employment for bread and butter like chocolate soldiers. The rot in the armed forces was sown by the Ibrahim Babangida administration as far back as 1985 and that demon has refused to go. The Nigerian Armed Forces used to rank among the best in Africa and they have so acquitted themselves creditably in all their international engagements with admirations. Go and ask the former rebels in both Liberia and Sierra-Leone; the fear of Nigerian troops was the beginning of wisdom.
For those calling on the president to remove the heads of the security agencies, they should understand that the president is not gifted with the spirit to remove his appointee even if it would add impetus to their departments. The president is not broad minded to look beyond his circle of friends within his limited lens view to choose competent hands from across all divides to help him run an all-inclusive government.
The insecurity the country is facing today is not of common criminality but politically rooted. The security architecture is in sync with the political administration and we cannot separate the two for the purpose of cutting off the umbilical cord of violence especially, the herdsman variant. The mutual distrust amongst the ethnic nationalities has reached a crescendo in this government and it would require someone with uncommon passion for the country to galvanize people to rescue the country from running into a stormy weather which we may not survive a second time. More than the heads of the security agencies, the current political leadership of this country need immediate overhaul to give way to a generation with hunger to prove that we can live together as one. It is overdue for the president to change not just the service chiefs but his entire cabinet to give impetus to drive the nation in a different direction that can save our nation from immediate collapse.
- Kebonkwu Esq is an Abuja-based attorney.