By Akaninyene Esiere
Ten years ago (precisely on April 14, 2014), Boko Haram attacked the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, in eastern Borno State and kidnapped 276 girls. The world was aghast at the news of this singular incident. Many in remote parts of the world who did not know a country called Nigeria existed became aware of the country through this incident, and its brand of madness. And many Nigerians who doubted that Boko Haram was real and could be so evil started taking the group seriously. Ten years later, and three Presidents and governments, over ninety of the hapless girls are still in captivity. After ten years. And the sleepy hilly countryside of Chibok has been etched on world map permanently all for the wrong reasons.
Like the French Bourbon, we have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing from this incident. Just last week and the week before, and as if to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Chibok tragedy, insurgents’ attacks have happened in the North East, North West, and North Central of Nigeria, leaving just about 30 percent of the country’s landmass semi safe (if you bring in the South East which has been on a different scale of insecurity).
First, the same Boko Haram, which, from the account of one loquacious former information minister, had been technically decimated some seven years ago, allegedly kidnapped a staggering 400 people, mostly women and girls, from the same Borno state. That’s the number tallied by Amnesty International (the State Government has estimated a far smaller number). The kidnapped people happened to be from three internally displaced persons camps at Babban Sansani, Zulum and Arabic in Gamboru Ngala. The women and girls were said to be in the bushes gathering firewoods in a country blessed with abundant gas, much of which is being flared by upstream petroleum operators. Babagana Zulum, the governor of the state, who has done a lot for people in IDPs, would be totally distraught by the turn of events.
In the North Western state of Kaduna, over 280 students and pupils and their teachers were said to have been abducted by insurgents in Kuriga in Chikun Local Government Area of the state. Two days after, it was the lot of students in a mixed western and Islamic education school in Sokoto state who saw 15 of their classmates whisked away by kidnappers.
The attack in Kuriga was presaged by an earlier attack a week before when an undisclosed number of people were abducted by bandits in Gonin-Gora community in the same Chikun LGA. That particular attack prompted residents, who had been tired of serial attacks, to barricade the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway in protest. As it is now a permanent feature, the government did not see the signs that worse could happen.
And in an apparent calling of the bluff of the armed forces and the federal government, the bandits struck on Tuesday March 12, 2024 at Buda community in neighbouring Kajuru LGA of Kaduna State; this time going away with 61 people.
It is now routine in some parts of the country for one to expect to be kidnapped. And there are no guarantees that victims will return home safely. The fairy tales we used to hear about happenings in some parts of South America have become our stories. Increasingly, many younger generation of Nigerians do not know what it means to live in a peaceful country.
And because the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration’s preoccupation does not seem to be the safety of the people (everyone in his government seems to be consumed by the zeal or pretense of it to ship in unwilling foreign investors), appropriate responses to these existential threats are not likely to be forthcoming. “The latest mass abductions clearly show President Bola Tinubu and his government have no effective plan for ending years of atrocities by armed groups and gunmen that are increasingly having a free reign across many parts of Nigeria. Whatever security measures being implemented by President Tinubu and his government are clearly not working,” said Isa Sanusi, the director of Amnesty International Nigeria.
It is not lack of money that is the problem. Since Boko Haram came into existence under President Umar Musa Yar’Adua in 2009, several trillions of Naira and billions of dollars have been poured into the security and defence sector. Just this year, the Tinubu administration has increased funding to the defence and security sector (military, police, intelligence, and paramilitary) by 46 percent from N2.22trillion in 2023 to N3.25trillion (amounts that are far more than the entire full budgets of some West African nations). All of this money has helped generate more insecurity. If you ask anyone in that sector why they are unable to arrest the security threat in the country, they will first say that they are highly underfunded. If you ask them a follow up question such as if the bandits causing this insecurity are better funded than the entire country’s security system, they will scratch their heads and say gibberish. Hand over the entire national budget to them to kill insecurity, the problem would become even more compounded.
The House of Representatives seems to be echoing this same sentiment when it mentioned it was worried that in spite of the N3.25trillion security and defence spending approved by the National Assembly, the security situation in the country was far from the expectations of Nigerians. The House was debating a matter of urgent public importance titled “urgent need to tackle the abhorrent abduction of over 200 students in Kuriga community of Chikun and secure lives and property in Kaduna State.” It would not be the first as previous National Assemblies had done in the past on many occasions, nor would it be the last since nothing will be done because this is Nigeria where things are not expected to work. Even presidential orders are meant not to be obeyed but only issued as a semblance of responsibility.
I will recall that President Buhari issued an order to the then inspector general of police, Usman Alkali Baba, to relocate to Benue State until the incessant killings there were stemmed. The man traveled to the state, spent a day or two and returned to Abuja to sit under the breath of the president and nothing happened to him. Till date, Benue is still a killing field.
It beats imagination that in semi arid regions of the country, hundreds of its citizens would be forcefully taken away by nonstate actors and the state with a standing army and Air Force will have no clue nor capability to rescue the citizens. Because successive governments have failed to deal with the problem of insecurity squarely, it has festered. Every part of the country is generally unsafe. Niger, Plateau, Kaduna and Benue States are now places where killings are occurring with increased regularity. The people of these states have become used to, knowing too well that the state will not come to their aid.
As I write, Haiti, a Caribbean nation just a missile throw away from the United States, is effectively ungovernable; made so by bandits and gangs. It started little by little just as what we are currently facing in Nigeria. Like cancer, once you don’t address the security problem, it metastases and easily becomes deadly. Insecurity is killing Nigeria slowly but steadily. Successive governments think that we the citizens are being too alarmist. Ask the Afghans, the Pakistanis and the Yemenis, just to mention a few, how they crawled into where they are today.
President Tinubu should not be satisfied with just being called commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he needs to show that he truly is. Because other presidents paid lip service to security challenges in the country is no excuse for him to do same. He needs to be on the driver’s seat, follow up with his service chiefs and the national security adviser on his commands and timelines, and effectively drive insecurity out of the country.
It is not enough to issue vacuous statements from the presidential publicists every time some community is attacked and then retreat to a shell until another community is attacked for another empty statement to be made. We have seen all this happen time and again with absolutely no effect on ground. The immediate past president was always fond of saying that he would not leave the bad security situation to another government. We know better.
Unfortunately, the response from the current President is deafening. Rather than act like a commander-in-chief, he is more interested with playing the role of the coordinating minister for the economy. He and his children are leading from the front when it comes to economic diplomacy but he is leading from behind, or not leading at all when it comes to security matters.
You cannot honestly expect foreign investors to troop into a country that is, for all intents and purposes, unsafe and dangerously unstable. Unless you are asking them to come to Lagos only, which is gradually becoming an economic Gaza Strip, investors are not going to move into the country. The easiest way to attract investors into the country is to make your country safe, first for the citizens and then for foreigners. Investors want to be sure that, from the get go, their investments are safe before they invest. Hardly any Nigerian with means travels 200 kilometres by car for fear of being kidnapped or killed by armed gangs. Things have gone from bad to worse as the years go by.
What should be done? Truly, no easy answers lie in the horizon and there is no single bullet solution to insecurity in the country. However, there is a single most important factor required to win the war: complete and absolute determination by the government to route out terrorism from the country. It is this sheer determination that will open up the multifaceted possibilities and solutions that lie everywhere. In fact, once the insurgents know that the government is serious about fully protecting the citizens and the country, they will get the message. It is not rocket science.
Beyond revamping the economy, President Tinubu must take northern Nigeria, and by extension the entire country, back from bandits.
SHORT TAKES:
SHAMELESSNESS TAKEN TOO FAR
Nigeria, which is technically not at war, with over 200 million people and 37 million square hectares of arable land (slightly bigger than the entire landmass of Germany), begged for and collected 25,000 tonnes of wheat as emergency food assistance from Ukraine, a country which has been at war with Russia for more than two years now. By this act of shamelessness, the government formally downgraded our country to a beggar nation. Mohammed Idris, the minister of information and national orientation, sees nothing wrong with this begging as he has been labouring to justify this act of shamelessness. He doesn’t need to labour any longer; his detergent can’t wash out the shame. This is level where the giant of Africa is today.
STILL ON HERBERT WIGWE!
I am so happy that I did a piece on this great man. The six day-long funeral service was an eye opener for me as it revealed a lot more about the man; and challenges us that we can be more. He packed so much into his 57 year sojourn on this part of eternity. They are worth emulating.
Adieu, the fearless.
Esiere is a former journalist!
© 2024
