UnderTow
As Nigeria dissolves under the acid rain of insecurity, and the federal government pussyfoots on how best to tackle the problem, traditional rulers will increasingly find themselves caught in the middle between enterprising bandits and sluggish government. Last Thursday, during the fourth quarterly meeting of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council in Abuja, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, warned that the situation was getting out of control and bandits were overwhelming the region. Finding a solution to the crisis begins with honest admission of the dire situation the region is contending with. The Sultan candidly admits this crisis, blighted states in the region groan openly under a problem they seemed resigned to endure, while the federal government endlessly prevaricates, often in metaphors that suggest its limited understanding of the crisis.
It is hard to fault the sultan’s observations and conclusion. He had said: “Security situation in Northern Nigeria has assumed a worrisome situation. Few weeks ago, over 76 persons were killed in a community in Sokoto in a day. I was there with the governor to commiserate with the affected community. Unfortunately, you don’t hear these stories in the media because it’s in the North. We have accepted the fact that the North does not have strong media to report the atrocities of these bandits. People think North is safe but that assumption is not true. In fact, it’s the worst place to be in this country because bandits go around in the villages, households and markets with their AK 47 and nobody is challenging them. They stop at the market, buy things, pay and collect change, with their weapons openly displayed. These are facts, I know because I am at the centre of it. I am not only a traditional ruler; I am also a religious leader. So, I am in a better place to tell the story. I can speak for the North in this regard because I am fully aware of the security challenges there. We have to sincerely and seriously find solutions to the problem, otherwise, we will find ourselves soon in a situation where we would lose sleep because of insecurity.”
The sultan may not have suggested solutions to the crisis, and is instead merely making reference to the problem and passing the nuisance to the right quarters, the lethargic and unimaginative federal authorities, but there is no question how pained his voice was, or how tremulously he viewed a crisis he feared could overwhelm the region. But when he suggested that the North was the worst place to live in Nigeria, he was simply being realistic about how badly the problem had been left to fester for years. He could have suggested solutions to the problem, perhaps in some other fora, but he rather more sensibly and realistically acknowledges that as a traditional ruler, he knows a lot about the crisis engulfing the region and is determined to stay within the confines of just knowing. It is not clear whether he instinctively fears that the federal government would fault his suggested panaceas should he give them, but he knows that no one could fault his adumbration of the security problems afflicting the region. Nigerians must however recognize that state and federal governments, not traditional institutions, are voted into office to find solutions to crises.
The sultan’s observations on the security crisis unnerving the North can be further extrapolated to other parts of the country, particularly the South which is also now inundated by northern youths fleeing their crisis-ridden region and putting inordinate pressures on social conventions and economic resources of other geopolitical zones. Herdsmen were in a way simply forerunners of the security problem constituted by northern bandits. They are not only making southern farmlands and countryside unsafe and sometimes inaccessible; increasingly they are also making interstate travels perilous and unexciting. A crisis of monumental proportion is thus building up rapidly. The sultan may have limited his observations to the North, but in reality, the problem has now become very complicated and has grown geometrically to transcend the North. With each passing month, and as no lasting solutions are found, the seething cauldron of banditry and kidnapping becomes more heated and less amenable to control. The problem began in the bushes, as the sultan noted; it has now become a city issue as bandits become more daring, ruthless and carefree.
Whether the federal government likes it or not, it is incontrovertible that legitimate government is yielding ground to illegitimate authority in the North. It is a question of time before the South is dragged into the melee. Much worse, it is also a question of time before the country erupts into militia fiefdoms and uncontrolled vigilantism. Years ago, when the insecurity crisis began, many state governments miffed by the impotence of the federal authorities responded with a potpourri of ambivalent panaceas that saw them sometimes negotiating with and thus recognizing and empowering the bandits, or advocating strong-arm measures that involved the police and the army. Neither stick nor carrot has worked. Indeed, nothing seems likely to work, as the problem intensifies and official dithering worsens on a baffling scale.
Without the recent #EndSARS-inspired breakdown of law and order, the banditry problem in the North was already set to worsen. But seeing how the government’s security agencies displayed a worrisome lack of coordination and even lost both the nerve and initiative to tackle the monumental challenge to law and order in the country, bandits simply became bolder and more intransigent. They had sometimes felt compelled to negotiate with the government, fearing the worst; now they see that the government’s worst bite is far tamer than they first imagined. No one seems capable of forcing the insecurity genie back into the bottle. Insecurity will naturally become rifer, and the government, despite deploying more troops and arms, will become less confident that the overwhelming situation is something they are equipped to handle.
Banditry is not just a casual revolt driven by one or two causes, it is also a deep-seated revolt triggered by decades of bad governance, corruption, injustice, religious fanaticism and politicization of religion, and other nefarious measures inspired by the government itself. Until these social, economic and political factors are understood and resolved, insecurity will continue to multiply until it engulfs the whole country. The EndSARS protest may have accentuated the crisis, it did not trigger it. In one form or the other, the same kind of youth-led protest may rear its head in other forms again. So far, the gestures the government has made in the direction of the social, economic and political underpinnings of the revolt destabilizing the North has neither been accurately identified and analysed nor sensibly tackled. With a recession now baking the country on hot coals, a debt peonage looming badly in the horizon as the government binges on loans for unhealthy reasons, and a distorted and unreformed justice system and bastardised security system destroying the moorings upon which the country is anchored, there is little hope that what needs to be done will be done to avert apocalypse. In short, the sultan’s warnings may be coming a little too late.
Contrary to the optimism expressed by the government, the ongoing recession will not end soon. For even when there was no recession, banditry was still bad. Now, with the economic downturn, bandits have a greater reason to take up arms. There is also no official initiative to repair the country’s jaded and anachronistic security system, a system so out of date and place that it is next to useless; and there is no reform taking place in the judiciary to undergird and strengthen the rule of law, enthrone merit in the appointment of judges, and banish inefficiency and corruption from the hallowed chambers of law. In addition, the country’s economic policy is evidently chaotic, amorphous, and too riddled by contradictions to be focused on anything grand. In plain words, banditry will intensify in the North, unskilled and poorly educated youths will migrate south and put pressure on that region, and the military will be so spread thin in the face of impotent policing that the country’s security system will barely make a dent on the problem.
There is no assurance that the 2023 general election will be delivered safely in the face of the horrendous challenges facing the country. The Muhammadu Buhari administration had all of five years to reverse the trend and forestall the looming apocalypse. It instead indulged in buck-passing, compounded the crisis by ill-informed policies, retained security chiefs at a time when fresh hands would have been appropriate, embraced bureaucratic inertia, and enthroned an imperious governance system that spoke condescendingly to the people and downplayed the seriousness of the crisis. By universal consensus, the country is now described as sitting on a powder keg, waiting for just one little issue to light the fuse.
If it is not already late, the Buhari administration can actively roll back the deathly hands of the clock, replace the country’s security chiefs who appear completely destitute of fresh ideas about what should be done, replace its economic team with the best minds the country can find, displace the amorphous cabal still cruelly and wickedly pulling the strings behind mahogany doors, restructure the country as well as the security system, reduce the weight and cost of governance, and actively, rather than complaisantly, involve the whole country by rallying them behind great causes. It is not an option reposing all hope in the military to fight insecurity and the approaching doomsday, especially after appearing to abandon the police. If the military could not solve the Northeast insurgency crisis as quickly as they had hoped, they will not solve the banditry problem as they have cavalierly insinuated in various statements. The problem is metastasizing. Now is the time to halt the drift to apocalypse.
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