President Muhammadu Buhari must have been jolted to reality last week as the National Assembly, controlled by the All Progressives Congress (APC), the political party on whose platform he was elected, unanimously called on him to sack his service chiefs over the growing insecurity across the country.
At different sittings on the same day, the Senate and the House of Representatives told the president in very clear terms that the service chiefs have lost direction and cannot arrest the raging security menace any longer.
It is instructive to note that the motion: “Nigerian Security Challenges: Urgent need to restructure, review and reorganise the current security architecture,” which necessitated the call by the Senators, was sponsored by 105 out of the 109 senators.
The senators argued that the service chiefs had overstayed in office and lacked professional ideas on how to combat the increasing spate of terrorism, banditry and other forms of security challenges in the country.
They went further to suggest the use of community policing as a way of arresting insecurity.
The House of Representatives was more radical in its approach. It called on all the service chiefs to resign immediately.
The House also resolved that the leadership of the National Assembly should meet with President Buhari over the issue of insecurity and ask him to sack the security chiefs.
That followed the unanimous adoption of a motion sponsored by the Chief Whip, Hon. Mohammed Tahir Monguno (APC, Borno), under matters of urgent public importance.
They declared that the service chiefs had outlived their usefulness.
The calls came after the Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, had stirred controversy by telling the president himself to resign over his inability to secure the country from marauding insurgents, kidnappers, herdsmen and all other agents of insecurity.
Although Abaribe’s call could be seen as an extreme, which the Presidency quickly reacted to, those of the Senate and the House of Representatives cannot be regarded as such.
In the last two months, Nigeria witnessed an upsurge in the activities of Boko Haram insurgents, kidnappers and other violent criminals, which the country has been battling for the past five years.
Although the spate of insecurity predates Buhari’s emergence as president, it was one of the reasons he was preferred by Nigerians over former President Goodluck Jonathan, who was voted out in 2015.
Not a few Nigerians had expected that Buhari would have overpowered the insurgents and violent criminals, five years into his presidency, but alas, the reverse has been the case. Rather than move ahead in the battle against criminality and violence, the country seems to be moving deeper into the abyss of the unknown, with violence unleashed on innocent Nigerians on a daily basis.
From Borno to Adamawa, Sokoto to Zamfara, Enugu to Port Harcourt, Kogi to Lagos, the same issues of insecurity, violence and similar vices have pervaded the landscape of the country.
It is also instructive that a day after the calls, Buhari held a security meeting with members of the National Security Council (NSC) to discuss the mounting security challenges.
In the words of the National Security Adviser, Babagana Munguno, the security situation in the country has become unpredictable.
After the meeting, Munguno, who briefed journalists at the State House, Abuja, said: “The security situation is like a graph; sometimes it goes up, sometimes it comes down and that is why we have to assess it periodically. It will never remain level till we bring the whole situation to an end. Sometimes it could escalate, sometimes it would go down. So, there is no perfect answer to it….”
We believe very strongly that the NSA’s comment sums up the frustration of the service chiefs and, by the same token, illustrate the frustration of Nigerians with the current security architecture.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the NSA admitted that the security chiefs are uncertain about the course of events in the lingering insecurity.
That is why we think seriously that President Buhari needs to hearken to the voices of Nigerians as presented by the National Assembly to relieve the service chiefs of their duties fast.
That is not because they have not done well or tried their possible best, but because there is need for fresh ideas and strategies in tackling the security problem.
Having served since 2015, there is no doubt that the security chiefs may even be tired and short of ideas on moving forward with the same problem, which they have been battling since then.
We also believe that President Buhari, as a retired Army General who fought in the civil war and participated in other war situations, know, for sure, that the current strategies are not working and are no longer tenable.
We are aware that as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, he may have some other information Nigerians are not privy to. But we believe that he needs to act fast and bring fresh ideas into the fight against insecurity. That is by bringing a fresh set of service chiefs to put a stop to the menace.
We strongly believe that Buhari needs to stop the insecurity now. If as an Army General he fails to arrest this ugly trend, we are afraid of what happens when he leaves office in 2023. We may not have the chance of having another Army General as president.
