Who Wants To Live Under Perpetual Terror?

For the first time in a long while, I saw fear in the eyes of federal legislators last week after President Tinubu’s directive for the withdrawal of police orderlies attached to certain categories of political office holders.

If there is one thing that automatically unites Nigerian legislators across party lines, it is their belief in entitlement. Legislators are so well paid that they can afford to hire security aides of their choice from any of the many security companies in the country, so that the police can be deployed to carry out their primary duty of protecting society at large. As far as Nigerians are concerned, the president scored a bull’s eye with that ban.

The perceived shielding of public officials from the common hazards that confront the rest of society is one of the inequities responsible for the palpable trust deficit between the government and the people.

With the proposed increase in the number of additional policemen, soldiers, and DSS operatives, the security services will have more boots on the ground to enforce order. I think the president has been largely decisive in addressing the issue of inadequate personnel and logistics. His statement on armed ‘herdsman-ship’, however, falls short, in my view.

Stopping Open Grazing

“Our administration created the Livestock Ministry to address the persistent clashes between herders and farmers,” said the president. “I call on all herder associations to take advantage of it, end open grazing, and surrender illegal weapons. Ranching is now the path forward for sustainable livestock farming and national harmony. The Federal Government, in collaboration with the states, will work with you to solve this problem, once and for all,” he added.

Knowing how bureaucracy works in this country as I think I do, we shall still be addressing this problem in the next decade with this hackneyed style. If the federal government wants to stop open grazing immediately, it can be done. Has anybody taken a look at the ranching model executed during the government of Dr Abdullahi Ganduje in Kano? I commend it to the federal government.

We now need to be very intentional and more scientific about the counter-terrorism effort by learning from others who have studied the phenomenon. British journalist Andrew Brown, writing on counter-terrorism in the liberal news and opinion website SALON, counsels that an adroit blending of a cocktail of violence, diplomacy, intelligence gathering, and getting the buy-in of the local population should do the trick. The key is to get the right mix designed for our peculiar circumstances.

Terror Industry

Two recent incidents in the northern parts of the country show that the government has to be single-minded in ridding the country of terrorism as it is a lucrative venture which has cross-border dimensions.

Along Funtua Road in Samaru, Zaria, last week, a sack containing bullets dropped from a speeding, overloaded trailer. The locals gathered around the instruments of death scattered on the highway discussing the implications for the entire region.

The other incident happened in Adamawa State where two trailers with registration numbers NNY-236-XA (Yobe) and GAS-330-XA (Taraba), carrying a cargo of about 550 passengers, were stopped around Numan Bridge. The locals thought it was irregular for such human cargo to be transported in trailers in such numbers as if they were cattle. They intercepted the trailers and drew the attention of the immigration, police, and military officers nearby.

The joint security team interrogated the passengers about their destination and mission only to find out that about half of the passengers were not Nigerians. They were from Niger and Chad.  The other half comprised Nigerian citizens from Yobe and Katsina States. The passengers could not explain the purpose of their movement nor the sponsor of their trip. The security team ordered the vehicles to make a U-turn and escorted them back to the Adamawa/Gombe State boundary to begin their return journey.

With the spate of region-wide kidnappings in Northern Nigeria since the Trump threat and the open sympathy to the ‘cause’ of bandits by so-called clerics, especially the likes of Abubakar Gumi, the gloves are off. Trust netizens to take immediate note.

Divided We Stand

And the social media is awash with a centrifugal clamour. Many southern and middle-belt Nigerians now feel that they have had enough of the threats to their lives and property perpetrated by elements from the core northern states. Unfortunately, the peace-loving masses in the core north don’t have a voice; they are doubly victimised.

Nigerians have been calling on President Tinubu to move more decisively against terrorists and their sponsors. They recall the list of Nigerian sponsors of terrorism released by the UAE during the Buhari administration and the fact that the government has since swept the list under the carpet. That list allegedly implicated high government officials, bureau de change operators, serving and retired military and security officers, traditional rulers, clerics, and businessmen. What is President Tinubu doing about that list? People ask.

The reason why a section of the political, religious, and traditional elite in the North is not interested in the eradication of the Almajiri system is that it provides a ready, uneducated mass from which politicians, terrorists, and just about anyone with an agenda can recruit followers. Nigerians still recall with sadness the sabotage of President Jonathan’s efforts to use federal funds to educate the Almajiri children through the Almajiri Schools Initiative.

If you advise the Northern elite to empower their youth economically, they’ll scoff at you. They prefer to sponsor mass weddings for jobless young persons so that they can produce more almajiri to feed the ever-bulging multitude of out-of-school children. If the Almajiri system is all about religion and paradise, why are the children of the elite not enrolled in the scheme?

There are grim disclosures on social media of plans by terrorists to strike many states simultaneously in the coming weeks to overwhelm the government. Now, Nigerians from the southern and middlebelt regions say they are tired of the cyclical bloodletting programmed by a rapacious elite determined to weaponise insecurity.

Whenever the government moves against the terrorists, Islamic clerics sympathetic to terror blow their sectional bugle: “They are killing Muslims!” However, contrary to the incendiary defence of bandits mounted by Sheik Gumi, the National Assembly recently witnessed Senator Musa Sani’s spirited call for the destruction of terrorists in whatever guise. He is on the same page with President Obasanjo who insists that nothing short of a scorched earth policy and, possibly, assistance from friendly countries is required.

CENTRIFUGAL PULL

However, most people outside Northern Nigeria are already tired of the saga of insecurity and are calling for a plebiscite to determine who wants to continue with this way of life and those who want to opt out to rebuild their lives as modern independent states. The minimum damage control that President Tinubu and his party can do now is to fast-track their promised unbundling of Nigeria to make it more governable.

People are beginning to say on the rooftops that there is nothing indivisible about Nigeria if perennial insecurity is part of the fare. They want to leave! You can’t fault their reasoning: it is better to have a morsel with peace of mind than a big acrimonious feast with bloodshed.