With a social contract in tatters, an indecisive political leadership and Nigeria bleeding out, the nation’s unending insecurity could only spell disaster, writes Louis Achi
All the cases of insecurity in Nigeria beg the question: Do we have a functional federal government? Are our priorities set right as a country? Of what use is Trader-Moni and N-Power if the citizens that the government seeks to empower with N10,000 are not sure if they would see the light of the next day? These lucid posers were recently pushed by miffed Professor of History Toyin Falola-Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker, Chair in the Humanities at The University of Texas at Austin.
More, mid last week, the US warned that ISIS and al-Qaeda were planning to penetrate Southern Nigeria. It also said Al-Qaeda has started penetrating the North-western part of the country. US Air Force Maj. General Dagvin R. M. Anderson passed on this warning during a recent media briefing. Anderson serves as the Commander of the Special Operations Command Africa. Previously, he was the Deputy Director of Operations of the United States Indo-Pacific Command.
His words: “We have engaged with Nigeria and continue to engage with them in intel sharing and in understanding what these violent extremists are doing. And that has been absolutely critical to their engagements up in the Borno State and into an emerging area of Northwest Nigeria that we’re seeing al-Qaeda starting to make some inroads in.
“So, this intelligence sharing is absolutely vital and we stay fully engaged with the government of Nigeria to provide them with an understanding of what these terrorists are doing, what Boko Haram is doing, what ISIS-West Africa is doing, and how ISIS and al-Qaeda are looking to expand further South into the littoral areas.
“When it comes to Nigeria in general, Nigeria, obviously, is a critical nation to West Africa. It is a critical nation and we realise that Nigeria is a lynchpin.”
Anderson then cut to the heart of the matter by pointedly noting that for international efforts to yield desired results in the fight against terrorism in Nigeria, the government must take the lead.
Perhaps, in a quirky sense, in terms of policy obfuscation, opaque military spending and procurements, debatable inter-agency cooperation, indecisive leadership and huge trust deficit, the government is actually taking the lead.
On Thursday, the nation’s security chiefs including the Chief of Defence Staff, Lucky Irabor; Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Attahiru; Chief of Naval Staff, Awwal Gambo and Chief of Air Staff, Isiaka Amao appeared before a jittery Senate in plenary.
Also present were the Director Generals of the State Security Service, National Intelligence Agency, and the Defence Intelligence Agency as well as the Acting Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba. This was in response to an invitation by the Senate penultimate week, over the nightmarish and intractable security situation in the country.
It is no secret that terrorists and sundry criminals are taunting the Nigerian State and the government appears clearly helpless. One of the most dangerous dimensions to the infamy playing out is that schools are being mercilessly targeted.
Twenty-three students of the Greenfield University, Kaduna State, kidnapped on April 18 are still in captivity after the kidnappers murdered five of them and are threatening to kill the others unless a ransom of N100 million and 10 motor cycles are paid.
On Wednesday, kidnappers released the remaining 29 students they were holding captive nearly two months after abducting them from the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Kaduna State. Gunmen took 39 students on March 11 and previously released 10 of them. The newly released students arrived at police headquarters in Kaduna city on Wednesday night looking weak, forlorn and wearing dirty, torn clothing.
More than 700 people have been abducted from schools in Northwestern Nigeria since December in a rash of kidnappings for ransom in the volatile region. Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai has repeatedly said his state government would not negotiate with “bandits.”
Many stakeholders are counselling closure of threatened schools in Northern Nigeria or anywhere kidnap threats exist. With modern educational technology, students can learn from their homes until a semblance of normalcy is restored.
Recently, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning Minister, Zainab Ahmed, told the Senate Committee on Army on Tuesday, May 4, 2021, that a total of N1,008.84tn was released to the Army between January 2019 and April 2021.
Ahmed, who was summoned based on complaints by the Nigerian Army that it had outstanding N50bn to collect from the ministry, which was part of the budgetary provision to fight terrorism, had said the Army got more than budgetary provision during the period under review.
Kabir Adamu, a security risk management and intelligence specialist believes the Nigerian Army had so far failed in its mandate despite the money released to it. He holds that Nigeria witnessed more cases of banditry, terrorism and kidnapping during the period.
His words: “What was the mandate given to them? Is it not to contain insurgency? Unfortunately, they have not justified it. If their mandate was also to curb banditry, they have not been able to do that.”
Adamu’s position was however countered by Col. Hassan Stan-Labo (retd.), a security specialist, who said the N1tn was not enough, describing it as a drop in the ocean. Stan-Labo, who described the defence sector as a capital-intensive venture, stressed that the sector’s neglect in the past years had created a vacuum, which made the funding by the Ministry of Finance insufficient.
According to him, “The defence sector has been neglected for too long by being starved of adequate fund and well-equipped inventory. This got this long, because as a nation, we are not security-conscious. Even under this dispensation, you can see that there is no seriousness.”
Clearly, with rising attacks against security agencies and their facilities in the Southeast, terrorist and criminal turmoil in the North and detectible threats and outright killings in the Southwest, many strongly believe the nation’s fate is hanging over the precipice. Many are also wondering why calls for separation are scaling up. Today, even respected statesmen are morphing into activists.
The time for decisive action is now.
