Turning Point!

President Tinubu has finally belled the cat!

If you don’t understand the full import of Tinubu’s declaration of bandits as terrorists and the subsequent bombing of an ISIS target in Sokoto State by the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in cooperation with the Nigerian government, I’ll tell you the story of the origin of the phrase “Bell the cat”.

The folktale concerns a group of mice who debate plans to nullify the threat of a rampaging cat. One wise mouse proposes placing a bell around the cat’s neck, so that they are warned of its approach. The plan is applauded by the other mice. They chorused, “Yes, let’s bell the cat to solve our security problems!” Then, one mouse asks the million-dollar question: “Who will volunteer to place the bell on the cat?”

Bare Knuckles

About the hydra-headed security situation in Nigeria, President Tinubu, in a significant departure from the tepid approach of his predecessors, declared that the government would no longer make a distinction between so-called ‘bandits’ (such as Bello Turji and his fellow savages) and ‘terrorists’ (as exemplified by the Islamic State of West Africa, ISWAP and Boko Haram).

“Henceforth, and under this new architecture, any armed group or gun-wielding non-state actors operating outside state authority will be regarded as terrorists,” said President Tinubu.

The list includes “bandits, militias, armed gangs, criminal networks with weapons, armed robbers, violent cult groups, forest-based armed collectives, and foreign-linked mercenaries,” and groups or individuals carrying out violence for “political, ethnic, financial, or sectarian objectives.”

This is a clear departure from the stance of successive governments in Nigeria, which had treated banditry as a lesser evil than terrorism and virtually conceded pockets of Nigerian territory to the bandits, where they ruled as the de facto government, collecting taxes and imposing levies and ransoms.

For the first time, the government has also reined in the shadowy enablers of terrorism: “Any individual or entity that enables the listed groups as financiers, money handlers, harbourers, informants, ransom facilitators, and negotiators will also be classified as terrorists.”
The classification also includes political protectors and intermediaries, transporters, arms suppliers, safe-house owners, politicians, traditional rulers, community leaders, and religious leaders who facilitate and encourage violent actions and terror within Nigeria.

Pushback

There was an immediate pushback from the usual coterie of clerics, politicians, traditional rulers, and ideologues who tried to equate the phenomenon of banditry with the struggle of the Niger Delta people against the despoliation of their environment by oil prospecting companies. It was this group of banditry defenders that tried to provide a philosophical base to a purely criminal matter with their clamour for negotiation with the terrorists.

Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, an ex-soldier and Islamic cleric, for example, visited several bandit camps and argued that the criminals were willing to lay down arms if their grievances were addressed with land and “enough money”. He, along with Prof Usman Yusuf and Alhaji Isa Yuguda, has consistently advocated for a general amnesty for bandits, similar to the one offered to the Niger Delta militants.

Prof. Usman Yusuf openly rejected military action against Fulani bandits and stated in a widely circulated public statement that, “These bandits are themselves freedom fighters.” In the same vein, Alhaji Isa Yuguda, a former governor of Bauchi State, reinforced the narrative that Fulani communities were victims of ethnic persecution and justified armed violence as a reaction to alleged oppression.

The cries became more strident when, out of the blue, US President Donald Trump suddenly announced that he was ready to start pounding areas in Nigeria where terrorists were engaged in ‘genocide against Christians’.

The Nigerian government deftly handled the combustible Trump position by reframing the problem as one of insecurity affecting Nigerians of all faiths, including Christians and Muslims. So, when US forces launched missiles at terrorist targets in Sokoto on Christmas Day, what could have appeared as a US invasion of Nigerian territory became a partnership and bilateral cooperation to rid the Nigerian space of terrorists.

US Strikes

The US strikes were aimed against militants such as the Boko Haram terrorists linked to the Islamic State group (IS) in north-western Nigeria, where jihadists have long carried out an insurgency. Camps run by the group in Sokoto State near the border with Niger, were hit, resulting in what the US military sources described as “multiple” fatalities.

Since the US strike, the body language of some so-called ‘analysts’, ‘security experts’, and ‘clerics’ sympathetic to the bandits shows that they are orphaned by the development. Some of them said they would rather allow terrorism to fester than have anything to do with the US. They used the allegation of US ‘duplicity and notoriety’ in some other global affairs as a battering rod to knock down whoever disagrees with them. But the game is up. Nigerian and US government officials have confirmed that this is just the first of many more strikes to rid our land, once and for all, of the savage terror groups and their collaborators.

Those trying to ethnicise the US anti-terror collaboration with Nigeria even went to the extent of trying to describe it as an anti-Fulani expedition. Despite the vaunted academic qualifications of some of them, they sit logic on its head when they imply that any fight against terrorists and bandits is an anti-Fulani campaign. However, terrorism has no tribe. No one should be targeted on account of their ethnicity. In the same vein, no one should be spared from the consequences of their actions based on ethnicity.

A group which described itself as “Sons and Daughters of Hausaland” published a frontal rebuttal of the attempt to cast the new no-nonsense posture of the government as an anti-Fulani war. They wrote:

“Bandits are terrorists. Terror has no ethnic justification. Self-defense is a fundamental human right. Vigilantes arise where the state fails. Dialogue without justice empowers criminals. Rebranding terror is intellectual fraud.”

The Nigerian foreign ministry contextualises the relationship between Nigeria and the US in the current military operations: “In line with established international practice and bilateral understandings, this cooperation includes the exchange of intelligence, strategic coordination, and other forms of support consistent with international law, mutual respect for sovereignty, and shared commitments to regional and global security.”

Sheikh Gumi’s wish that Nigeria had partnered with China, Turkey, or Pakistan rather than the US has turned him into an object of scornful hilarity on social media. So has his warning that Nigeria risked becoming a battleground for global powers.

That punctilious strike by the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) marked a turning point in Nigeria’s anti-terror war. Many Nigerian soldiers who had been complaining of internal sabotage, official complicity, deliberate under-provision of armaments and logistics, can now cheer up. The era of perennial bloodfests is about to be consigned to the rubbish bin of history.

The pinpoint strike marks a turning point in Nigeria’s anti-terror war. It was a welcome Christmas gift to all men and women of goodwill in Nigeria and beyond.