AA guns for the police

Commenting on any matter relating to the security situation in Borno State is hazardous these days and I am personally not eager for a repeat of what happened on Sunday last week, when three soldiers sporting AK 47 rifles marched me from the Fourth Floor of Daily Trust building, down the stairs and all the way to the gate, having brusquely rejected my suggestion that we should use the elevator.

Maybe the Army is slightly less sensitive this week because its men have recaptured Baga and other towns in Kukawa Local Government with relative ease. From the reports I read, Boko Haram offered little resistance when the troops came marching. Maybe, just maybe, last week’s offending Daily Trust on Sunday story, rather than “compromising” military operations as the army feared, actually ended up serving a psych-ops purpose because Boko Haram saw the hammer coming, decided they would be unable to withstand it, and melted away.

You see, in 1996 I participated in a tour of Israel facilitated by the country’s Foreign Ministry. We visited many places including the occupied Golan Heights. I was surprised that our tour bus driver, who was a Reserve Artillery Captain in the Army, was [in my opinion] careless with military information. At one point he stopped near an Israeli tank division, with tanks packed like sardines in a small square, and asked me to take a good look at a Mirkva tank. Then, as we stood in the No Man’s Land separating Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights he said, “There are not supposed to be soldiers of either side in this place. But if you did, dig you will see our troops.” I at first thought he was a security breach but when I later thought about it, the Captain probably wanted me to relay the info to the Syrians as deterrence!

Anyway, hot on the heels of the soldiers’ invasion of Daily Trust, a delegation of Borno State’s most eminent leaders and elders delivered a letter to the President in Abuja last Monday. It was the outcome of a meeting they held in Maiduguri the previous week, which was attended by 212 people. The delegation that delivered the letter included two former governors, traditional rulers, elders, national and state assembly members, local government chairmen, representatives of unions of women, labour and journalists, and religious leaders including the state chairmen of the Christian Association of Nigeria [CAN] and the Jama’atu Nasril Islam [JNI], led by the state governor.

We heard that the letter that Governor Kashim Shettima handed over to Buhari made twelve observations and ten requests, though none was disclosed. Maybe that was due to the sensitive nature of the issues involved, but the Borno elders soon began to pay a high price for their discretion. The contents of their letter were selectively leaked, and the leaks sought to question their standing as responsible elders. For example, three stories successively appeared in the Daily Independent of January 9th, in Vanguard of January 10th and in Daily Times of January 11th. All three “stories” said the Borno elders asked Buhari for permission to set up their own militia in order to tackle the state’s pernicious insecurity problem.

I was wondering; the meeting that took place in Maiduguri was attended by army, police, DSS and Civil Defence officials. The elders and elected officials too were of different political persuasions. Will that kind of assembly ask to establish a militia and if so, who will control it? A militia is usually controlled by a warlord, not by a democratic assembly of elders and it would not be long before it is abused. Stories posted by Premium Times last Friday and by Daily Trust on Saturday, probably based on leaks as well, did a lot to clarify the issue. According to the Daily Trust report, the Borno elders’ second demand to the president was that he “should consider and approve, as a matter of special case, the specialized use of AA rifles for the Borno State Police Command for capacity enhancement as against the current dependence on AK 47 rifles.”

Outside Borno, no one in Nigeria will support arming the Nigeria Police with anti-aircraft guns. In the late 1970s when the police first got F-16 rifles to replace the batons that they previously carried, we immediately began to have cases of “accidental discharge” which snuffed out many innocent lives. Matters got worse with the coming of Mopol, once known as Kill and Go, with their semi-automatic rifles. Now most police men sport AK 47s and we are deeply uncomfortable with the situation, as it were.

The Borno elders’ request was however preceded by an earlier observation. They had said, “Borno State Police Command, which has the duty to preserve constitutional authorities in liberated and rebuilt communities, is faced with challenges of low man-power and dependence on AK-47 rifles to counter Boko Haram fighters who attack communities with AA (Anti-Aircraft) rifles.” There is nowhere else in Nigeria where the police face criminals firing AA guns, so it is clearly a special case. Three years ago or so, the Army complained that it was being slowed down in its pursuit of Boko Haram because it has to garrison liberated communities. It openly wished that the police will take over garrison duties so that soldiers will exploit their successes against insurgents and pursue them. As far as I can see, this request is in tandem with that observation but of course the police cannot hold any town when the army itself is having trouble holding them against determined assault by insurgents who think nothing about firing an AA gun into a town. So, at the minimum, the police must have the same weapons if they are to garrison liberated towns.

Arming policemen with AA guns was however not the most controversial issue arising from the Borno elders’ letter. It turned out that their fourth request was, “Mr. President should kindly consider working with the National Assembly towards the speedy amendment of the Terrorism Act or coming under ‘a doctrine of necessity’ to approve the specialized and regulated use of non-prohibitive arms for selected volunteers of the Civilian JTF, for the specific reason of fighting Boko Haram in specific locations. Such use of arms should be for a specific period of time under strict monitoring by the Military.”

I don’t think the caveats can be more stringent than these. As we have seen from Army videos, CJTF members are embedded with frontline troops. It is unfair that they carry knives and sticks to the frontlines, which explains why more than 1,000 of them have died since 2013. Hot on the heels of this demand was the request that “Mr. President should kindly consider directing that the over 800 members of the Civilian JTF enlisted into the Nigerian Army be immediately re-deployed to Borno State, be equipped and given specialized training where necessary, for the purpose of contributing their local knowledge of the terrain in Borno State in the fight against Boko Haram.”

Army spokesman Brig Gen Sani K. Usman replied to the latter by saying “the Nigerian Army does not deploy based on the three extraneous variables of religion, ethnicity, or geography.” I agree it shouldn’t, but if someone was recruited into the Army precisely because he contributed to the fight against Boko Haram due to his zeal and his knowledge of the terrain, I see no harm in deploying him where he will continue to render such knowledge. It was not for nothing that the British Army had Gurkha regiments fighting in Burma during World War Two. When the Boko Haram war finishes, the Army could redeploy him to wherever it deems fit. It will be a mistake not to give serious consideration to the Borno elders’ requests and observations. They contain the kernel for ending this war once and for all.