Security still top of the agenda
The fanfare that accompanied the Democracy Day celebrated for the first time ever on June 12th was quite subdued. Much of the reason being the unhealthy security situation bedevilling most of the states of the federation. It is evident that all is not too well. At least that is what one can infer from the […]
The fanfare that accompanied the Democracy Day celebrated for the first time ever on June 12th was quite subdued. Much of the reason being the unhealthy security situation bedevilling most of the states of the federation. It is evident that all is not too well. At least that is what one can infer from the speeches of the President now going into his second term of office and most of the Governors particularly the ones taking their first steps in office. One could hear the echo of the same plaintive voices of our leaders across the country decrying the acute security situation.
Readers might recall that during the handing/taking over season of 2015, the cries were very much the same. Then it was the Boko Haram insurgents having a field day in most the Northern states, bombing at will and inflicting suffering on all and sundry. The attempts to secure the roads by the Joint Task Forces, with many check points here and there, made easy movement from one point to the other, well-nigh impossible. From Abuja going northwards to Kaduna, Kano, Jos and all of the northeast the fear of Boko Haram insurgents on the roads was all pervasive.
Fortunately, a few months beyond the handing/taking over ceremonies in 2015 a major offensive by the armed forces got the insurgents out of most of the areas they captured and the roads they terrorised. It was a major campaign promise of the APC and realizing it brought hope and succour to the beleaguered population, particularly those living in the north-east. Unfortunately, the terrorists though kicked out of the major urban areas were never vanquished. They merely retreated and vanished into the villages and that vast ungovernable area in the Sambisa forest and the arid northern part of Borno and Yobe States, particularly the ring of settlements around the Lake Chad.
Thereafter the insurgents dug in and became a veritable nuisance in the last few years. They made many of the highways impassable, particularly those crucial arteries linking us across the borders with our neighbouring countries. In Borno State even the arterial roads linking major urban areas could only be traversed under a military convoy. In due course the insurgents also radicalized and transformed impressionable young boys and girls into suicide bombers sending them on murderous trips to mosques and markets to cause mayhem. One of the most appalling incidence the Borno State Governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum had to contend with a few days after assuming office was the heartrending triple suicide bombing in a video hall in Konduga where many young people had gathered to enjoy a time of leisure watching a football match.
At least thirty people were reported killed and more than forty injured. Besides these there were other brazen attacks at various military formations in northern parts of the state where our armed forces even tragically lost an officer of lieutenant colonel rank. There had also been attacks in some parts of Yobe and Adamawa States. These attacks are obviously pointers to the fact that earlier gains are being systematically eroded by the rampaging insurgents.
However, the most worrying part is that the theatre of insecurity and conflict has in the last three years or so expanded far beyond the North-East to the adjoining states in the North-West and North-Central where new form of menaces manifesting in banditry and kidnapping, have assumed a proportion far more heinous than the dreaded Boko Haram. The problem seemed to be exacerbating and is even consuming the southern parts of the country at an alarming rate. This became a wake-up call to various interest groups across the country to meet and discuss to explore ways of other means of survival.
The Arewa Research and Development Project (ARPD) is one such groups, and it is now holding a two-day Northern Security Conference on 1st and 2nd July to review the current security situation in the north. Based in Kaduna the ARDP, a group of academics and independent research organizations across the north, reflecting its heterogeneity, is well equipped to do that. And it has done so creditably on many a number of issues affecting the north before. I was invited to witness the event. Before leaving Abuja for Kaduna I scanned the flyer circulated by the convener, Dr Usman Bugaje who shared with us the background and lofty ideals of the conference:
“The continuous wanton killings, the burning of villages, the daily robbery and kidnapping on our roads, the increasing fear that is gripping the cities have all connived to paralyse social and economic life of citizens. The little capital in the already impoverished rural community has been moped up and given to the bandits as ransom, strengthening a growing criminal industry and leaving the traumatized populace in total jeopardy and confusion. Some citizens, like in Batsari Local Government of Katsina State, have started attacking security posts and taking their dead-bodies to Government Houses. Huge and increasing numbers of displaced people are having to relocate into the relative safety of the towns and cities, putting pressure on the poor urban infrastructures, compounding urban poverty and misery and triggering a new wave of urban horizontal violence that can itself be a prelude to only God knows what. Those who remain in the villages cannot go to their farms and are in perpetual fear for their lives, unable to even sleep, much less conduct any legitimate business in the now totally broken communities. Without farming, famine is just some six months away.
Indeed, in the last few weeks the security situation has escalated to unprecedented levels clearly exposing the incapacity of the government security agencies to respond and tempting the public to resort to self-help, which could be a few steps to anarchy. Untold tales of unspeakable atrocities, sufferings and misery is all that one hears daily, precipitating a national depression and inflicting an unprecedented trauma on the national psyche. We have to wake up to the sad and tragic fact that things are getting out of hand, the Nigerian security institutions and the government’s attention span have either been over-stretched beyond their capacity to respond to this crisis or somewhere in between there is an absence of the political will to act.
As at the moment, the existence of the Nigerian State is itself at stake as we seem to have been trapped and there is no solution in sight to the impasse. With the government running out of excuses, security institutions unable to live up to their constitutional responsibility and everything that needs to be said has been said, we, as citizens, have to figure out how to come together to stay alive and respond to this enormous security Challenge.”
I am at the conference and will make takeaways for the readers. Keep a date with this page.
Re: June 12th The Unending Saga. From my mail bag.
SUNDAY OMOLU: I refer to your piece on June 12th. You jettisoned the axiom – while comment is free, fact is sacred. Again even you confessed that you can hardly piece together a complete narrative on what happened. Yet you went ahead to subtly denigrate Nwosu the man who literally stood before a moving trailer by organizing that election which was a watershed that would have turned Nigeria into a nation. They say when in doubt reserve judgement. Only a dead achiever is a hero here. To Nwosu, discretion is the better part of valour that was why he went to court.