Security: A case of everyone knows better than those in charge?

Nowadays almost every commentator on social and mainstream media outlets, especially on early morning radio and television talk shows, is an expert on security matters. Even among road-side gatherings of friends, every contributor to discussions on the security situation in the country will speak in ways that shows he believes he knows how to manage […]

Nowadays almost every commentator on social and mainstream media outlets, especially on early morning radio and television talk shows, is an expert on security matters.

Even among road-side gatherings of friends, every contributor to discussions on the security situation in the country will speak in ways that shows he believes he knows how to manage it better than those in charge.  This is a big fallacy.

The pervasive false assumptions on security management mechanics and the pseudo solutions mouthed or discussed loudly in the type of fora listed in the opening paragraphs of this item, cannot in any way help in resolving the problem  that has made certain parts of the country dangerous.

Those discussions, uninformed as they might be, on such a sensitive matter, are an expression of opinions and the exercise of constitutional freedom of speech, which every citizen is entitled to.

The snag is that those discussions do not in any way recall and reflect on the security situation in Nigeria after the civil war to date.  They concentrate on the current situation of kidnappings for ransom, abductions for human sacrifice by ritualists, banditry, highway robbery and cattle rustling. Farmer-herders conflicts and those between Jukuns and Kuteb and Tiv people, are also listed.

This item will only refresh our memories of the security challenges faced by the country from the restoration of democracy in 1999 to date.

Many Nigerians may recall that in the period served by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo between 1999 and 2008, for most of the eight years under his watch, the country recorded so much violent communal conflicts and killings across the country that some people thought that Nigeria was on the brink of going the way of failed nations. It did not go that way.

It is on record that kidnapping for ransom started in the Niger Delta in 2006. By the time Chief Obasanjo’s second term in office was ending, more than 500 expatriates oil workers and uncountable number of Nigerians working in the oil industry were abducted and ransom paid for their release. It was so bad that several oil companies suspended their operations there.  One of his answers to the Niger Delta crisis was the establishment of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the rigorous payment of 13 per cent of oil revenue to each of the nine oil-bearing states based on the quantity of crude oil extracted from its territory.  It was introduced by the Military Administration of General Sani Abacha.

His administration also contended with the violent and killer wings of the Odu’a Peoples Congress (OPC) that unleashed their venom to the extent that some international institutions described them as terrorists.  They nearly caused a civil war by marching toward Kwara State with the aim of forcefully annexing that state and Kogi to the South West. Both states are in Northern Nigeria. They at will clashed with and killed Nigerians from other parts of the country living in Lagos and other cities in the South West.  They destroyed their property, burning them to ashes.

President Obasanjo’s era equally contended with conflicts and bloodshed which were, even if wrongly, linked to religious differences in different cities of the North, culminating in the nurturing of the insurgent group of Boko Haram at the tail end of his rule.

It was months into the administration of President Umaru Musa Yaraduwa that the biggest military onslaught on the Boko Haram was launched by land forces and the police.  They deployed tanks, armoured personnel carriers and pieces of artillery with the aim of routing the “rag tag” Boko Haram fighters.  The situation worsened and Boko Haram extended its murderous operations to areas far away from their Borno state primary base and theatre of conflict.

The Nigerian armed forces and military contingents from our immediate neighbours and military advisors and trainers from friendly nations in other parts of the world  joined forces to truly exterminate Boko Haram, which seems to spring back into life whenever it was pushed out of reckoning.  This implies the existence of foreign support and interests in sustaining the insurgency, which is one of the insecurity situations that President Muhammadu Buhari recently truthfully said, are draining our national resources.

The Niger Delta militants too were active as President Yar’adua ruled and parts of the North Central were on fire too. But he took up the Niger Delta challenge by engaging in three-track activities simultaneously to achieve peace there: military operations in the creeks to end sabotaging oil industry installations, negotiation for solutions with the youth and their elders that led to the declaration of amnesty for those who renounce violence and the establishment of the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs to work alongside the Niger Delta Development Commission in accelerating the implementation of development projects in the nine oil-bearing states of the country.

The Boko Haram crisis ballooned, with frequent violent attacks on the capital city of Nigeria and most of the Northern states by its agents, some of whom were detected and apprehended before they unleash their terror in the South West, but they succeeded in inflicting minor attacks on Edo State.

It was so bad that Nigerians feared and avoided public gatherings, including markets, places of worship, schools, sporting arenas, entertainment locations and motor parks.

Meanwhile cattle rustling, so-called farmer-herder conflicts, political assassinations and uncertainty over the legitimacy of installing Jonathan as President to succeed his late boss further polarized the polity and often led to violence flaring up.  His attempted constitutional reform and re-setting of Nigeria called restructuring compounded the climate of insecurity.

The coming together of politicians from across the country to give an alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party, which has ruled the country for 16 years in which violence escalated across the country and insurgency emerged, raised hope. The new political party, the All Progressive Congress (APC), campaigned on some key pillars, including the security question.  It promised to tackle insecurity and ensure public safety if elected.

Muhammadu Buhari, a retired military officer, a civil war hero and former Head of State, was elected President in 2015. His administration went to work and took up the challenge of bringing down the insurgents, who occasionally stage spectacular, publicity-generating attacks that instill fear in the minds of the citizens.

The Nigerian Armed Forces under new service chiefs and stronger morale for the troops who were supplied with new weapons, exposed to different types and layers of tactics and models of fighting insurgency, rolled back the advances of the Boko Haram, ended their fake Sultanate, killed most of its operatives and confined it to a very remote corner of “no-mans-land” where the borders of Niger, Nigeria and Chad meet. Their occasional suicide bombings or infiltration of some locations in Yobe, Adamawa and parts of Borno state does not mean their fighting capability has not been degraded to the level of hit and run.  In the past, they faced the Nigerian military almost squarely.

It was while Nigerians were feeling safe and actually returning to their normal social and economic activities as the Boko Haram insurgency was defeated, that banditry, cattle rustling, farmer-herder conflicts and kidnapping of travellers for ransom became rampant in some parts of the country.  Communal conflicts based on ethnicity, religion and disputes over access to land for farming, which have receded, re-emerged to the chagrin of the Government and people of Nigeria.

President Muhammadu Buhari once more paid attention to those challenges, ensuring that the security agencies were sufficiently supported to do their work.  He would visit troops on operational duty tours, talk them up and link up live with those in the theater of war to encourage them to defend the country. New various equipment were procured for  the forces, some fabricated at their in-house complexes.

This writer is of the firm belief that security challenges have always existed before the Buhari Presidency. All he could do is to reduce the challenges to the barest minimum, which he and the security agencies that are in charge, are assiduously working to achieve.

Dambatta wrote this piece from Abuja.