Wanted: National Security Emergency (1)

I have spent the last one week in the ancient city of Kano– the once (over a millennium) centre of commerce, trade and the arts. Going to Kano for a national assignment was a nightmare for my family and friends. It was jumping, eyes wide open, into the hungry lion’s ajar-ed mouth. It is a […]

I have spent the last one week in the ancient city of Kano– the once (over a millennium) centre of commerce, trade and the arts. Going to Kano for a national assignment was a nightmare for my family and friends. It was jumping, eyes wide open, into the hungry lion’s ajar-ed mouth. It is a paradox of the anomic state of our nation that, at a time like this in Kano, where the second timer Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso was sweeping the entire state with the effect of a tornado on the path of rapid transformation in all sectors of the economy, and a large majority of the people catching the positive contagion of change, that the forces of terror chose to unleash fear, blood-let and violence on the landscape!! The Kwankwasiya ideology underpinning and inspiring the ‘revolution in Kano is a matter for a separate column(s).
If I succeeded to persuade my loved ones that I was not about to commit suicide or seeking irrational death-wish upon my head by coming to Kano, at this time, then the macabre and bizarre deaths unleashed on Baga, a town on the Lake Chad, which has claimed close to three hundred lives and left thousands of houses in states of destruction, has made nonsense of my valiant effort to appease all who are concerned about my life in Kano. No discernible mind will require any justification for the call that I make in the title of this stint for a national state of emergency! The entire national landscape is under the grip of insecurity—relatively speaking and on different scales and dimensions. I say this, not oblivious of the Committee that the President has put in place to do a magical turn-about of the radical onslaught of Boko Haram, with the probable end result of the Niger Delta recipe of an Amnesty to a ‘sect’ that has announced that it is the State-the Nigerian State—that direly needs Amnesty!! As Boko Haram rages in Borno, Kano, Yobe, Bauchi, and so on, MEND is making its own fresh threats, and I am reliably informed, that OPC is waiting, impatiently at the troubled wings. And, the Niger Delta itself has regained a fresh impetus of restiveness!
The situation in parts of Borno and Yobo lay down for us the confused perception, interpretation and approach to the insurgency (and I think it is now safe to apply the concept of terrorism to this insecurity phenomenon in our country) ravaging our land, especially in the North. A few days ago, over 200 people were reported killed and thousands of houses destroyed in Baga, a small town in the lake Chad region. A few days later, in what appears as reprisal attacks on security forces– a fresh wave of violence erupted in parts of Borno and Yobe—precisely in Baga, Bama, near Gashua), leaving in its trail, some ten dead police men and numerous buildings destroyed. Now, the Jointly Task Force beats its chest that it will contain this wave of violence, but who, in the light of the screaming and frightening evidences before us, is prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt? The truth is that there is no coherent, articulated and systemic response to the violence, terrorism and insurgency rampaging across our state.
Will physical force (monopoly, if there is monopoly of violence that is) provide the recipe to the insecurity on our land? Security and strategy peace experts have since ruled out the possibility of peace emitting from the barrel of the gun, so to speak. The Northern Governors’ Forum has since the past five or so months put in place a Committee of some forty-one wise ‘men’ to seek solutions to the pervasive violence in the north, realizing that development of any serious nature cannot subtend in the atmosphere of terror and mounting insurgency. Finally, the Federal Government has also constituted its own Committee on Boko Haram and asked it to fetch a magic wand for peace from its scabbard. Some members of the committee have elected to opt out on the grounds of alleged insincerity of government in implementing earlier proposals for ending the Boko Haram menace and is therefore in palpable suspicion of the workability of the new initiative of government. Again, my position on this is simple. People have democratic rights to serve or not to serve on any committee on grounds that are  rationally articulated, but I am at a loss when people who have proved competence in helping to crystallize options for the nation out of the Boko Haram seaming- conundrum would rather stay away why Rome burns.
 The case of Datti Ahmed is citable; if his claim that he can access Boko Haram and may have positively helpful access to them is anything to hold out,, then the ego issue of previous effort, perhaps individual, being unattended by the Federal government may be painful but certainly inadequate reason for opting out at this crucial moment when the Boko Haram phenomenon has paralyzed socio-economic and psychological lives of a large chunk of our nation’s body polity. Anyway, this confidence trick is further worsened by the un-denied rumour making the rounds that the Federal government has awarded a contract for internet monitoring known as Wise Intelligence Technology System for Intelligence Analysis and Cyber Defence) to the tune of N6.2billion ($40m) to an Israeli firm. The issue is not whether the nation needs such intelligence monitoring equipment, given the un-co-ordinated nature of intelligence gathering, disbursement and exchange in our country today. The question to ask is whether this purchase, if true, is part of a coherent blue-print on counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism policy of government in the present frightening security emergency that besets the nation. True, we will need every effective and efficient digital gadget to power our resolutions to terminate insecurity through insurrection, terrorism and insurgency, but those can only be implements, instruments, not the crux of resolution, which will embody well-articulated, well-reasoned ideas armed with a palpable political will of the governing elite to terminate insecurity in our country. We are in the inexorable state of security emergency in Nigeria.
Political will, oiled with technology is what the United States has demonstrated in the wake of our new terror pains over the Boston Marathon blast, which with forty-eight hours have been laid to rest. We argue that the magnitude differs but the action needed is similar. There is a national disquiet and there is a prompt, dispassionate and effective taken to terminate the menace instant. There is great national relief and national confidence in governance. This is the crying lack in our country today. As Adamu  recaptured in his Friday Column (do not swallow the whole of his thesis though), the governing elite in Nigeria has a short memory fuse, especially with regard to the Boko Haram issue which mounted, as he argues, because the Joint task Force resulted into extra-judicial killings of Boko Haram members, instead of bringing them to justice. Hence, the current mayhem! We do not nib trouble in the bud. We prevaricate. We vacillate and the speck of fire burns our house into cinders.