Our worsening insecurity and presidential vows

Some elements in the human rights community during the Babangida administration were often given to tweaking the beard of the regime in a manner that bordered on threats of violence against it. The late Vice-President Augustus Aikhomu thought this was foolish. He reminded them that the government would not quake in fear and retreat in the face of such threats because, in case they did not know, the regime had the monopoly of violence. True. All governments do. Like all other nation states, the monopoly of violence is constitutionally conferred on the Nigerian state. The army, the navy and air force, complemented by the police as a civil force, enforce, protect and defend the right of the state to exercise and enjoy the monopoly of violence - for the public good, of course. The framers of the constitution made security the number one task imposed on the Nigerian state and its agent, the government. The security agencies protect and defend the beard of the government from being cynically tweaked by anyone or a group of persons. Given its professionally trained and equipped personnel in the armed forces and the police, the Nigerian state is in a unique position to neutralise, decimate and even vaporise non-state actors employing violence to breach national security.

But things are not exactly what we believe it should be. Our country is witnessing the reign of violence and violent individual and non-state actors. We are becoming more and more insecure. What has happened to that monopoly of violence that once ensured our right to sleep with two eyes closed and to travel anywhere in the country without constantly looking over our shoulders?

I have no clue. But this I know: criminal elements appear to have cornered the Nigerian stage to themselves and have become the leading actors of planned violence against individuals and communities on the nation’s blood soaked stage. It is no small worry in the land that something must have gone badly wrong with the capacity of the Nigerian state to fully discharge the number one duty imposed on it by the constitution. The egregious breach of our national security has become more or less the norm rather than the occasional and isolated cases found in all societies.

I wonder what has happened to the monopoly of violence that sanctions the right of the Nigerian state to protect and defend itself against state and non-state actors? Has the Nigerian state quaked and retreated, leaving the stage to Boko Haram, bandits, kidnappers and armed robbers? Perish the thought.

Those who argue that the situation has become this bad because President Buhari is sleeping on duty are uncharitable, I tell you. The man has too many chestnuts in the fire. He is dealing with Covid-19 to make the nation and its people survive it; he is contending with the management of poverty and an economy with an unfriendly attitude, forcing him to borrow dollars in billions; and, of course, he is busy catching those who abused public trust by helping themselves illegally to state funds. These are tough challenges any day for any president.

What is the president to do? Well, for starters, he shows that he is not unaware of the killings by Boko Haram in the north-east and the those by a group of killers that has never been properly identified but are simply called bandits, in the north-west and those by herdsmen in the north-central geo-political zone. Each time it happens, the president promptly vows (that is the word) through his media advisers to take them on. But either through acts of omission or commission, we are never told of how he carried out this ominous presidential threat of reprisal. Then it happens again and then he vows again.

I do not think, and I speak as a layman, that these presidential vows can contain the worsening insecurity. Criminals are not afraid of vows, even if they come from the president. They have demonstrated that time and again. We need something more lethal than presidential vows to rescue our country and save it from the reign of criminals. By the way, the president once told a visiting British team that he would use his experience in the civil war to defeat Boko Haram. Time, I think, for him to resort to that experience and defeat the insurgents. For the untutored minds like yours truly, this should a piece of cake for a two-star general with a war time experience.

Let us be fair to the army and the air force too. They are doing their duty to their country. The army has broken the backbone of Boko Haram more times than this grey head can remember. But the insurgents have not become history because they instantly grew their backbones back and quite often surprised the army by either ambushing its personnel or making the blood of unarmed men and women flow in communities selected by them.

On its part, the air force frequently incinerates bandits in Zamfara and Katsina states. Here again, the problem is that the dead rise from their ashes and kill more and more people in the two states. It is easy to work out the maths of our dilemma here. If broken backbones are grown back and if those incinerated by air force bombs rise long before the judgement day, it follows that the insecurity can only get progressively worse.

The experts, and they should know what they are talking about, keep on asking the president to undertake a fundamental review of our national security architecture. But Buhari refuses to oblige because, and this is my guess, he does not think that that architecture is broken, even if its return on investment does not give cause for cheer. You worsen matters by trying to fix what is not broken, obviously.

I hate conspiracy theories but the more I look at our entire national situation, the more I am tempted to give into this conspiracy, to wit, bad luck stalks the president. Less than a year after Buhari assumed office as president in 2015, we were out through the wrench of recession. In the first year of his second term in office, the Covid-19 pandemic has already crippled our economy. Not to mention that under his watch, the chickens came home and our country became the poverty capital of the world. The president is now engaged in the delicate task of managing poverty and guiding our national economy through the creeks of borrowing and a-sorrowing. Pox on bad luck.

I do not think, and I speak as a layman, that these presidential vows can contain the worsening insecurity. Criminals are not afraid of vows, even if they come from the president. They have demonstrated that time and again.