At a time when Nigeria’s Armed Forces are stretched thin fighting Islamist terrorism in the North-East, banditry in the North-West and marauding Fulani herdsmen in the North-Central and South-West; the country should avoid opening another intractable theatre of conflict in the South-East. The General Officer Commanding, 1 Division of the Nigerian Army, Kaduna, Usman Mohammed, told the Senate Committee on the Army last November that troops were currently deployed in at least 33 of the 36 states of the federation. They are carrying out law enforcement assignments because the Nigeria Police cannot be relied upon to efficiently carry out its constitutional duty of providing internal security.
Indeed, the Nigerian Army can ill-afford swallowing the bait, however enticing, to make clashes with self-determination agitators in the South-East a permanent feature of its military-civilian engagement. The clashes have become recurring. In May 2016, Amnesty International confirmed that the Nigerian Army gunned down at least 17 people and injured nearly 50 others when soldiers “opened fire on members of the Indigenous People of Biafra, supporters and bystanders at three locations” ahead of a planned pro-Biafra commemoration events in Onitsha, Anambra State. Another bloody clash between IPOB and security agencies in Emene, Enugu in August 2020 reportedly led to the death of at least five persons, including two officials of the State Security Service.
In January, no fewer than 10 people were reported killed, and many others injured when soldiers from the 32 Artillery Brigade, Obinze, near Owerri, allegedly engaged in a bloody clash with volunteers of the Eastern Security Network formed by the outlawed IPOB in Okporo community in Orlu Local Government Area of Imo State. The ESN volunteers were allegedly deployed to the bushes and forests around Orlu to dislodge the herdsmen said to have occupied the forests and from there, threatened the security of the farmers and travellers. Five buildings, including a church, were allegedly set ablaze by “some armed security operatives” who stormed the area said to be the operational base of ESN. The Commander, 32 Artillery Brigade, Yusuf Tukura, alleged that the group first killed security personnel, which necessitated the bloody reprisal. As this newspaper has repeatedly said, the military ordinarily has no constitutional role to play in routine internal security.
In civilised societies, laws and traditions place limitations to military authority over civilians, including the lack of statutory arrest authority, which generally prohibits military assistance to civil authorities in enforcing civil laws. It is unfortunate that the political leadership in the South-East spectacularly failed to respond suitably to the desperate yearnings of their people for protection from an existential threat. By failing to take the initiative in forming the long-desired security network, their dithering and costly inaction allowed IPOB to step in and fill the gap, albeit illegally.
For over a year, there had been a deafening clamour for a regional security outfit in the South-East patterned after the South-West Security Network, Amotekun, to tackle the rising insecurity in the region and protect the people from the criminality of deviant herdsmen and bandits. Accentuated by an under-resourced, ill-equipped, inefficient and over-centralised Nigeria Police, herdsmen and bandits have made movement on the major highways and farming across the South deadly undertakings. The South-East governors, who are the Chief Security Officers, however, chose to play the ostrich. Instead, they preferred to buy into a nebulous community policing proposal being executed by an ineffectual Federal Government, to avoid rocking the boat, and be politically correct. It is apparent that if the state governments had championed the formation of the regional security outfit, as their South-West counterparts did through Amotekun, there would have been no need for the ESN, formed and promoted by IPOB, a group classified as “terrorist organisation” by the Federal Government. And by extension, the lives lost in the Orlu would not have been possible.
Also, had the governors been more proactive, the ESN, like Amotekun, would have enjoyed legislative cover, driven by state apparatus and supervised by the governors. Because nature abhors a vacuum, as the state governors dithered, the South-East youths, goaded by IPOB, resorted to self-help, which is a dangerous cocktail that prepared the ground for the bloody clash. This is saddening.
In July 2020, the five state governors under the aegis of the South-East Governors’ Forum in a virtual meeting held to design a common response to the security challenges bedevilling the region, expressed their readiness to unveil a security outfit. They promised that the outfit’s name would be announced at their next meeting, and that all the necessary arrangements for its take-off were on course. Six months after this declaration of intent, nothing was heard from them again, fuelling anger and suspicion by the people that the governors were not concerned about their security and welfare. Similarly, a promise by the Chairman of the forum and Governor of Ebonyi State, David Umahi, that after unveiling the outfit, the commissioners for justice of the different South-East states would finalise a draft bill for passage into law by each state’s House of Assembly to give it a legal backing was not followed through.
In May, the governors had mandated the various state assemblies in the zone to commence the enactment of laws establishing a regional security outfit in line with their joint security programme. Like their executive counterparts, there was no scintilla of courage, conviction and political will on the part of the lawmakers to undertake this ennobling and redemptive legislative activity to secure the lives and property of their people who, on a daily basis, are facing threats to their lives.
The governors and the legislators should be proactive; the police should be equipped to undertake their job and should be the first responders to criminal activity. The military should be a last resort, called in only when the police are overwhelmed. The authorities should investigate the circumstances of the recent skirmishes and put measures in place to avoid any reoccurrence. The South-East state governors should move swiftly and establish a region-wide security agency, fund, equip and motivate its personnel to keep the one safe.
