A former Guards Brigade Commander and commander, Corps of Artillery, Kontagora, Niger State, Major General James Nyam (rtd), has said Nigeria’s inability to end insecurity was not due to lack of capability by the military but the lack of political will.
The senator representing Borno South, Ali Ndume, recently urged President Bola Tinubu to engage mercenaries to fight Boko Haram terrorists in the North East and bandits in the North West zones of the country.
But General Nyam said there are some fundamentals in the management of national security that can never be overlooked.
He said, “The conceptual, moral and physical elements or components if you like, all these are forged together in the application of national power to achieve strategic objectives. If our current efforts have failed; what we should be asking is, why have they failed? Are we doing enough? If not what else should we do? A cursory study of our current security challenges is indicative of certain factors that have caused it- most of them at the doorsteps of poor governance. I also align with those who have been advocating application of ‘whole of society approach’ to resolve our challenges. That to me is still sacrosanct.
“Mercenaries cannot do a better job of creating the conditions for other processes of peace and stability to be emplaced in Nigeria than our military and security forces can do. Resorting to hiring mercenaries would at best just be a revenue guzzling programme and still leave us with the challenges. Besides, what about our national pride? We are just not thinking aright. That takes me back to the ‘conceptual element’.
We have not conceptualised correctly and done what we need to do as a country to overcome our security challenges,” he said.
He, therefore, urged the government to recruit the right scale of manpower and train them for the job, institute proper, inclusive and good governance, fight corruption to the barest minimum, enhance community/citizen engagement and pursue vigorously, justice and equity, enforce laws by punishing offenders, whoever they might be.
“Some of the challenges are enthroned by those who are leading us,” he said.
The director, media and publicity, International Institute of professional Security (IIPS), Dr. Abdullahi Muhammed Jabi, said it was retrogressive for any Nigerian to suggest to the federal government to engage mercenaries.
He said contrary to beliefs, the military has the capacity to defeat insurgents and bandits.
“We have the capacity and the tenacity to win this war. Why the war persists is because the security commands in the last 10 years have seen insecurity as an opportunity to make money. That is why they are not putting in the required efforts,” he added.
He noted that in the past 10 years, anybody building a big structure in the name of a house works in any of the security agencies because their budget is the highest allocation, and so because of that they see it as a conduit pipe but what the federal government is doing now, it would end soon because there is commitment now.
“This is what they did against Jonathan, that they hired mercenaries to fight Jonathan in 2024 thinking he’ll not hand over in 2015 but when he said the blood of any Nigerian was not worth his ambition and handed over power to … They couldn’t pay the mercenaries they imported. That is the beginning of insecurity,” he said.
