A gory video circulating online of terrorists executing five aid workers captured in the North-East climaxed another week of bloodletting, kidnapping and pillage in a country where scores of people are murdered almost every day and many violent deaths go unmarked. A few days earlier, sending a dangerous message of impunity, bandits had ambushed a military patrol in Katsina State, killing 23 soldiers, while gangsters raided a community in Kaduna State, captured 20 persons and cheekily demanded N900 million for their release. Meanwhile, signposting the floundering of security countermeasures, the Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, has defensively thrown the challenge of ending insecurity back to the people. As lawlessness tips the country closer to state failure with the North as the epicentre, the President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), needs to rally all stakeholders to re-strategise and take the country back from criminal gangs.
The root of the pervasive insecurity is a seriously flawed state capacity. The conflation of insecurity, a depleted treasury, and political instability, displacement of millions of people, corruption and ineffectual state response has disrupted economic activities, especially farming, ruptured social life and promoted conflict among groups in the North.
The country has never been so insecure and ungoverned. From the west to the east and coasts and creeks of the Niger Delta, to the steppes of the North-Central region and Sahelian far north, safety has taken flight. The security services are stretched almost to a breaking point and the inadequacy of the outdated, centralised policing system is obvious and staggering.
Challenges are everywhere in the country, but it is in the northern states that the Hobbesian nightmare is playing out. The cities are under siege, stalked by kidnappers and other heavily armed bandits, the rural areas are unsafe, under-policed and neglected. Increasingly, plying the region’s highways too is to run a fiery gauntlet. Kidnappers, bandits, terrorists and armed robbers are on the prowl. For millions of people, life has become nasty and brutish. They face kidnap, rape, wanton killings, arson, dislocation and loss of livelihood. For others, life can also be brutally short. Apart from the over 100,000 killed by Boko Haram and other jihadist groups since 2009 as tallied by the Borno State Government; about 8,000 persons have been slain by bandits in Zamfara State since 2011 and 200,000 others have fled their homes, said the state authorities. A tally by SBM Intelligence said 2,732 (an average of 30 people daily) were killed across the country between April and June this year. No one is safe. Traditional rulers, clerics, security personnel, politicians, professionals and officials have fallen victim to murderers or kidnappers. Farming, the region’s mainstay, is disrupted in many places. The Crime Index 2020 compiled for Numbeo, a data base, listed Nigeria as the 17th most crime-infested country out of 133 countries ranked. The economy has suffered, with Foreign Direct Investment plummeting from $5.56 billion in 2013 to $1.99 billion in 2018.
In Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina and Niger states, bandits have carved out enclaves, entrenching themselves in forest camps. Two parallel authorities now exist in the North: the state, whose writ is increasingly narrowing to the cities, and bandits and terrorists who romp freely in the remote parts. “The region,” aid workers told the New York Times “is one of the most dangerous places on earth for humanitarians, who often take extraordinary risks travelling through territory the Nigerian Army is too scared to enter.” The International Crisis Group reiterated the global anxiety that armed gangs, bandits, cross-border mercenaries, cattle rustlers, Fulani herdsmen and kidnappers were forging links with terrorist groups. This is dangerous and already, the terrorist tactics of burning down entire communities, kidnapping girls and women, attacking police and military formations and ambushes have been adopted by bandits.
Criticism of the Buhari’s and security services’ failure have spiked, coming from within and from concerned foreign governments, notably from the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union. Some critics have gone from asking the security chiefs to be sacked to asking Buhari himself to resign.
Nigeria needs a new strategy for fighting crime. On his watch, Nigeria ranked the 14th most fragile state in the world in the Fragile State Index 2019. It is adjudged the fifth least peaceful in the Global Peace Index 2020. According to the New Humanitarian, “Nigeria is wobbling. Earlier territorial gains made by the military against a jihadist insurgency in the North-East have been lost; bandits roam the North-West; there have been bloody clashes between farmers and pastoralists in the centre; and a general insecurity prevails.”
It may not be entirely Buhari’s fault that life is so cheap in Nigeria as there are fundamental issues with the country’s political structure. Successive administrations have failed to sustainably reduce homicides and other violent crimes because of the entrenched politics of denial. Critically, they all failed to rebalance power to make the country an effective and productive federal system. The centralised and highly politicised security system allows organised criminal groups to exert de facto rule and frighteningly consolidate control over large tracts of rural areas where the feeble federal security forces are lacking. The Nigerian crime market’s proclivity toward violence is exacerbated by the Buhari regime’s inability to separate law and order enforcement from ethnic and religious sentiments. The criminal Fulani herders causing mayhem across the country have become a law unto themselves as high-ranking government officials rationalise and defend their atrocious acts.
Buhari has to act dispassionately now on all counts and on all fronts. Indeed, inability to crush graft has inhibited the ability to secure the country. Despite his recent, belated scolding of the security chiefs that their “best is not good enough,” the rising carnage strongly suggests that stronger, decisive action is needed.
First, he must set performance targets for the security agencies and a time limit to show tangible results. There is a need to change strategy. The deployment and reinforcement of troops, aerial bombardment of bandits and terrorists alone have not worked. Buratai’s admission that the bandits and terrorists have enablers among the populace; informants, caterers and housekeepers, reveals that poor intelligence may be the biggest weakness of the military’s efforts.
The old, plodding intelligence-gathering system must give way to new structures, new approaches that will maximise human and signals intelligence to defeat adaptable, shape-changing enemies that lurk within the populace. The war must be intelligence- and technology-led, utilising more of brains than brawn, including drones. The US and its Western allies have undertaken radical reforms of their intelligence services since 2001.
Winning over the hearts and minds of the locals as opposed to what experts call the “enemy-centric approach” alone, is central to depriving criminals of material support. They recommend a “population-centric approach, in which efforts focus on cutting off the insurgents’ lifeblood and supply lines by either providing rewards to the population for supporting the state, or by imposing costs for supporting the insurgents.” A study of 59 cases by Rand Corporation found a 73 percent success rate where both approaches were employed and only 32 percent success rate where only the “iron fist” was deployed.
This requires heavy but humane police presence in areas cleared by the military, provision of basic social services and resuscitation of farming and commerce. But Nigeria continues to dodge the establishment of local and state police forces at a huge cost in human lives. The northern state governors need to change their self-defeating attitudes of hasty amnesty for criminals and preoccupation with religion. They should instead accord priority to eradicating poverty and illiteracy that both average about 70 percent, and roll out population control measures. Criminals should be apprehended and punished, not pampered with cows and cash. The military should re-evaluate their operational strategy.
Buhari should initiate a sea change in Nigeria’s security system and enlist the strong support of neighbouring countries to check cross-border infiltration and enforce the yearlong closure of land borders that has been adjudged ineffective in the North. There should be seamless collaboration among the security services and effective coordination, overseen by the Commander-in-Chief. Buhari should truly tame corruption, shake up the security services and shop for talented hands to head them.
The centralised policing system has failed and the country can no longer afford to delay the introduction of state policing.
