- Buhari must confront Nigeria’s security challenges more aggressively
As President Muhammadu Buhari prepares for a second four-year term in office, it is vital that his administration tackles Nigeria’s critical security problems with increased sincerity and commitment. There is little doubt that the country is in the grip of interrelated security challenges that have become an existential threat to its continued growth and progress.
Apart from the long-running Boko Haram insurgency and the ongoing herdsmen-farmer clashes in the country’s Middle Belt region, there have been outbreaks of widespread violence in Kaduna, Katsina, Nasarawa, Taraba and Zamfara states. In addition, big cities like Abuja, Lagos, Kano and Port Harcourt have witnessed significant increases in serious crime, especially kidnappings, armed robbery, murder and sexual assault.
The country’s security condition is so dire that an increasing number of individuals and groups have become much more direct in their criticism of a perceived lack of capacity on the part of the Federal Government in dealing with the situation.
The Supreme Council for Shari’ah in Nigeria (SCSN) has described efforts at combatting insecurity as grossly inadequate. It is demanding that current strategies be reviewed and security chiefs held responsible for their actions. In similar fashion, the Catholic Bishop of Yola Diocese, Reverend Father Stephen Mamza, accused government of sleeping on duty. Criticising what he saw as a deteriorating security situation, he appealed to the government to listen to the citizens and rededicate itself to ensuring the safety of their lives and property.
The Buhari administration has expectedly rejected such criticism of its capacity and motives. It argues that it prevented the Boko Haram insurgency from getting worse, improved the care of internally-displaced persons (IDPs), and was working assiduously to eradicate security challenges once and for all.
Regardless of its claims to the contrary, the Federal Government cannot deny that the country has witnessed a marked decline in peace and stability in recent times. Old threats have failed to disappear; new ones are emerging with alarming alacrity. The United States-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) estimates that 19,890 people have died of security-related causes since June 2015.
Nor can there be any doubt as to a troubling tardiness on the part of government in responding to security issues. The Zamfara killings, for example, reached scandalous proportions before serious efforts were made to contain the crisis. This followed similarly lamentable patterns in Benue and Kaduna, where impending crises were allowed to degenerate without timely intervention.
This seeming indifference can be seen most glaringly in the way in which the country’s security architecture has remained impervious to change. Security chiefs who have clearly failed to stem the violence have not been removed; policy formulation is rigidly inflexible; messaging is limited to a constant repetition of the same old mantra of ultimate victory.
Security is the first duty of any government. Without peace and stability, economic growth, social development and political progress can never be attained. The Buhari administration must rediscover the will to frontally address the greatest security issues to face the nation since the end of the civil war.
The first demonstration of a renewed commitment to securing Nigeria is a comprehensive overhaul of the country’s security hierarchy. It is obvious that both the military and ministerial capacity to deal with the problem has not been good enough; nothing less than a complete clear-out will suffice. Their replacements must be given definitive deadlines and timelines within which to achieve set performance targets; failure to achieve them should result in summary dismissal.
More must be done to take cognisance of affected communities and state governments in developing long-term solutions to security challenges. The problems in Benue especially were needlessly aggravated by an utterly unnecessary war of words between the Federal and Benue State governments. The resultant poisonous relationship has stymied attempts to deal with the herdsman-farmer crisis.
In achieving this, it is crucial that government avoid the temptation to throw money at the problem. If this is not done, the anti-insecurity campaign will simply degenerate into another bonanza that security chiefs will be reluctant to end because of the fabulous benefits being derived from it.
