Unrelenting in their bestiality, bandits went on the rampage in four villages in Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State last week, killing 51 persons and setting scores of homes ablaze. Being far-flung areas and bereft of telecommunication network, the communities could not contact security agencies for an immediate rescue. The state, like others in the North-West zone, has become accustomed to this kind of tragedy, with banal assurances, thereafter, from security agencies that they are “on top of the situation.”
Interestingly, the Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, who promptly visited the affected villages, admitted that the tragedy was a clear manifestation of failure of the government to protect lives and property as guaranteed expressly in the 1999 Constitution. He said, “We have asked the security agencies to just wipe them out and we will not rest until the bandits are completely wiped out”.
With the woeful failure of centralised policing in the country and the state’s vast landmass of 46,000 square kilometres, Kaduna and other North-West states might not see the end to these macabre convulsions any time soon. The operations of these supposed bandits should be critically examined. It is a misnomer to regard locking up of a family of 13 and setting the house ablaze, as happened on February 12 in Bakali village in Kaduna State, as an act of banditry; this is terrorism. Sani Bakali, a mourner, recounted the ghoulish murder of his 21 relatives. “They comprised three women and eight children of my younger brothers. All of them were locked in the house and burnt to death. The bandits killed two of my uncles in another building.”
Shehu Sani, a former senator, rightly noted that such atrocities had turned the North into a region of “endless funerals.” He cannot also be faulted in his assertion that “Northern governors are still playing the ostrich, afraid of confronting the Federal Government and taking independent action to protect their people.”
The fad before now was for governors to grant amnesty to the bandits and brand them as “repentant” criminals. Irrationally, Zamfara State thought this was a magic bullet to resolve its security mess. Most disturbing was the role the state Commissioner of Police, Usman Nagogo, played. In self-adulation on how the appeasement of the criminals had worked wonders, he said, “The trust we built has started to bring positive results because the bandits have so much trust in the process and are now becoming our eyes and ears in the forest.” Yet, this is a senior cop, whose duty is to inspire officers under him to take out these criminals from their hideouts. The illegal activities of hoodlums in the state remain a nightmare to the people.
Katsina State Governor, Bello Masari, was similarly deceived into adopting this ineffectual strategy. When it dawned on him later that the state needed to bare its fangs, he got the state Assembly to enact a new law, prescribing capital punishment for cattle rustling and kidnapping. The two acts of criminality fuel this orgy of mass murder and arson raging in the North-West and North-Central regions. As a result, military operations are ongoing in Niger, Kaduna, Zamfara and Katsina, at the behest of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd).
But capital punishment alone cannot rescue the state from descent into this Hobbesian environment, as there is no police presence in the remote villages where the massacres occur. Amnesty International had raised this alarm in 2017 at the height of the bloodletting in Zamfara. The Director of AI Nigeria, Osai Ojigho, had observed that previous military interventions failed to end the killings. He said, “Although security forces were present in the state capital, Gusau, researchers saw soldiers and air force personnel in only two of the villages they visited, Birane and Bagega.” AI claimed that at least 371 people were killed in Zamfara in 2018, out of which 238 died after the withdrawal of the Nigerian Air Force.
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has repeatedly made it clear that the dynamic nature of the current security challenges requires dynamism in tackling it: “Which is why I believe that state police in a large, diverse federation is imperative.” This is the crux of the matter. As the police have abysmally failed in combating kidnapping, armed robbery and banditry, all within their remit; and military operations have not stamped them out, time has, therefore, come for new strategies and Nigeria’s extant political structure that fosters unwholesome atmosphere to be altered.
Consequently, el-Rufai and his colleagues should be thinking of homegrown security solutions to the conundrum, as the chief security officers of their domains. His optimism that the recruitment of more federal police personnel will change the story soon is misplaced. The planned recruitment of 10,000 new hands has led to a supremacy battle between the Nigeria Police and the Police Service Commission over whose jurisdiction it is to implement. With over 100,000 police officers acting as bodyguards to the wealthy, leaving the larger society vulnerable to insecurity, Nigeria will remain imperilled by the nefarious activities of outlaws.
A local brew in the Amotekun security outfit by the six South-West states, no doubt, will complement the efforts of the federal police in the region. Kaduna and its neighbouring states facing a far greater security menace should not shy away from this model of legitimate self-help. The funds governors use in providing logistics – purchasing vans, communication gadgets and other materials to the police and their annual security votes – are enough to start this initiative.
No matter the number of police personnel in any state, even if additional hands are engaged, it will not be enough for penetration to the rural communities that are safe havens for these hoodlums. Only state police will do. Continuing to ignore this pushes the country to the precipice every day; and worse for the North where the reign of terror and banditry is sweeping across its landscape.
