What is wrong with solutions to insecurity in Nigeria
By the way, security is not only a major growth industry in Nigeria, what with the considerable war chest voted to the sector in the 2012 budget, the current phase of insecurity is its description as insurgency and the solution as counter insurgency. These are the two buzzwords making the round. The NIPSS engagement was […]
By the way, security is not only a major growth industry in Nigeria, what with the considerable war chest voted to the sector in the 2012 budget, the current phase of insecurity is its description as insurgency and the solution as counter insurgency. These are the two buzzwords making the round. The NIPSS engagement was the second, the first being the one organised by the National Defence College, presumably under the auspices of the Office of the National Security Adviser and, no doubt, many more will follow this path. Insurgency and counter insurgency is the new feeding frenzy.
What manifested from the three days engagement was that there were more disagreements on the road to agreements. As one of my colleagues did sum up on the “way forward”, the “way” is very foggy hence impeding the movement “forward”. Indeed, the road to agreement is far out of sight as evidenced by the direction of deliberations and particularly because most of the speakers who represented all shades of stakeholders found it difficult to speak truth to power.
Not only were those in policy capacity absent, those who were present operated under the enabling environment that shaped their understanding of security-perhaps more than what they studied and understood about security independently and which influenced their positions. The enabling environment was military involvement in governance. No institution shaped the theory and practice of security and Nigerians understanding of this than the military institution. Were they really so eminent and expert a group in charting the way forward? Were they really given the chance to do this?
What was evidence was that the military institution did not hide its overbearing attitude of being central to the resolution of the security question in the country because of what it misunderstood as its area of competence. This was in spite of its avowed statement about paradigm shift to an inclusive approach.
The three days engagements demonstrated their effort to pretend to begin to take their place in the civilian system underway. They made it known, in no uncertain words, that the exercise in finding solution to the “insurgencies” (there was intense disagreement over whether to refer to the situation in Nigeria as insurgency) and counter insurgency measures were their signature. They were not ready to surrender this “expertise” to any other institution or person.
The centrality of the military in security discourse and practise in Nigeria was, is and will continue to remain the obstacle for the resolution of the crisis confronting the country. The existence of the military is buttressed by its protection of the state against external aggression. With the exception of the civil war, apartheid South Africa and Cameroun over the Bakassai Peninsula which were ordinarily no threats, Nigeria has never confronted the reality of external threat to its territorial integrity to warrant the justification and deployment of the armed forces.
The source of the strength of the military was its dominance of governance, shaping the discourse and practise of security amongst politicians, academics, religious bodies, professional and non professional bodies and the lay people and in particular the reliance of these institutions on the military for direction in the current phase of project Nigeria.
The military destroyed most institutions in the polity and even as the country pretend to have representative governance, it profits from the drivers of the process because it created them and in matters of security they relied entirely on the military.
Their ‘dominance’ in the conference organised by the National Institute was evidence from the first day of the opening presentation when the acting commandant of the Nigerian Defence College, Major General M. I. Idris, drew the attention of the audience to the pioneering role of the College in conjunction with the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) in holding the first of the conferences on insurgency and in directing the emergence of a national counterinsurgency strategy to resolving the crisis in the polity.
According to General Idris, one of the outcomes was their realisation that the previous approaches had been wrong because it was a “government to government approach” without the intervention of other stakeholders. The new counterinsurgency strategy, he surmised, was an “all stakeholders approach”. Unfortunately, like all other measures, as it became obvious in his other submissions, it stopped at the point.
The second point that demonstrated the opposition of the military institution to breaching its ‘territorial integrity’ in matters of identifying and chatting the course for the solution to what it sees as insurgency was his argument, following persistent calls for the removal of soldiers from the streets by various contributors, because of its effect on the population and professionalism of the service, was his submission that military presence was justified on the ground that the police was not ready because it lacked the capacity to provide security.
Using his knowledge of the military, he gave four key points to supporting his argument, insisting that the military will not leave the streets because it will amount to abdicating its constitutional responsibility of supporting civil authority when called upon to do so.
The General’s submission that the police was not ready to assume the role did not tell all the story. He did not tell the audience that the police, as the first line of defence in internal security, was not ready because the military programmed its failure through underfunding and psychologically ridiculing it in the eyes of Nigerians. It should be recalled that a retired AIG Hamisu Jos informed the audience that a police commissioner in a state with 44 divisions had only one operational vehicle.
In the method of deployment for conflict containment over the years especially under military rule, the police was rated last on the scale of Nigerians when talking about security services’ resolution of conflict. This is because in the shot-to-kill conflict containment script written by the military, the police, not trained to kill, scored last.
The militarisation of Nigerians created the condition where police style of conflict containment, in the context of the military’s manual, was ineffective. His defence of the military’s area of competence as the only institution to drive the counterinsurgency solution question his purported paradigm shift of “from all government to government approach to all stakeholders approach”.
The third defence of the military’s “territorial space” in the quest for solution was his opposition to the NIPSS adoption, with the consent of the participants of “the End State” document entitled “comprehensive efforts designed to contain insurgency and address its root causes achieved”. It was a presentation that was to elicit the comments of participants before its final adoption. His opening salvo, credible as they were, did not give room for discussion.
The followings were the grounds for the opposition of the institution he represented-the military and the ONSA. One, the ONSA through the NDC had already gone through the process of coming out with a counterinsurgency document and therefore the NIPSS attempt should key into this and not to come out with a fresh position.
Two, the title itself was “ambiguous” because it did not state what the end state would be, the path for attaining this, the phased projection and the sectoral approach towards this attainment and the expectations as against what seemed like objective achieved. The intervention from the General was rather impetuous since the presentation of the whole document should have provided the basis for any objection. Three, his opposition was based on the fact that only the ONSA has the implementation instrument for whatever counterinsurgency strategy devised hence the need for the NIPSS endeavour to steer clear of policy prescription.
To this the audience disapprove informing him that it was necessary to collate the efforts recorded in the last couple of days for onward transmission to the government. The seed had been sown and consequently when the document was read, Professor Alemika submitted that because the document was not available to the audience and because of paucity of comprehension and opposition from other institutions including the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution of not been included, the NIPSS using its staff should be given the mandate by the participants to come up with the final document.
The DG, Professor Bande, had to douse the tense situation when he said that the NIPSS collaborated and is collaborating at the highest level with the NDC and other bodies and intends to harmonise its efforts with these bodies.
The ONSA as the coordinating institution for the effort towards tackling “insurgencies” and insecurity in the country, it should be emphasised, is a military institution, staffed for the better part of its existence by military men and police officers. Indeed the use of police officer-Alhaji Gambo Jimeta, a retired IG- was under the regime of General Babangida.
In the last ten years of civil rule, it was the forte of retired military officers who are not disinterested observers in the current travail of Nigeria. The opposition of General Idris and his seeming “territorial consciousness” was in tandem with the corporate interests that permeates the institution. It feeds into the ignorance, fear and incapacitation of the political class in understanding the issues of insecurity; those of the gathered audience on the occasion and the rest of Nigerians.
This military is, in particular, aware of the political class’s narrow military-induced appreciation of security as regime safety to want to challenge the institution. What with the manifest incompetence of the police, destroyed by the military, leaving them as the only institution to guarantee their safety.
Until Nigerians and in particular the political class recognise that the military is stage managing the process, the resolution of the crisis in the country will continue to elude us. Until the military resolve its conflict of interest and distinguish between the policy and operational side of security, the way forward will continue to elude the country.
Having occupied both roles for years, the military find it difficult to concentrate on the operational side of security and leave the policy side to the new managers of the state, who should chart the course of action in tandem with the evolving security governance worldwide. They military is helped by the ignorance, inadequacy and incapacitation of the political class, the academia, non functional institutions and Nigerians in general, on matters of security.
This was evident in the submission of General Idris who not only represented the NDC, the ONSA but also military, even if it was as unofficial spokesman, in the course of the three days gathering.
Onoja is of the Department of History, Nasarawa State University, Keffi-Nigeria, [email protected]