For the better part of the last decade and half, Nigeria’s national security status has come to be measured by human casualties. Hardly any day passes without the news headlines featuring stories of gory mass murders and senseless killings. When such news breaks, the question is usually about the scale. How many died? If it is about one or two dead, people move on. Attention and feelings only begin to be incensed when the number of dead is in scores. As a society, our collective humanity has become so inured to the loss of human lives on an industrial scale that we are literally now an insensitive society.
In the last week or so, we have had the Uromi killings of over 18 alleged hunters by local vigilantes. The versions are varied. One says a lorry load of men armed with Dane guns was intercepted by local vigilantes in Uromi, an area of Edo state that has been constantly assaulted by armed ‘strangers’. The armed men who happen to come from the northern parts of our country were killed by the vigilantes. In that single incident, so many aspects of our corporate existence as a national community were abused: citizens’ right to move around freely in their country, the responsibility of locals to guard their safety, the ultimate responsibility of law enforcement to determine who bears arms and for what etc. etc.
In the same week, the familiar inter ethnic and inter communal clashes in Plateau state led to the loss of many lives. All hell was let loose in the state in a now familiar virtual state of emergency in which inter communal communications and interactions in the affected areas have become impossible. Again, religion, livelihood interests and socio cultural troubles were raked up. The Plateau state governor has lamented his loss of security control of many parts of the state to bandits and random armed gangs who have literally outgunned the security forces. Almost simultaneously, similar skirmishes have been reported in nearby Benue state with an attendant loss of yet to be determined number of lives.
In the same week, Governor Zulu of Boron state has cried out about the resurgence of Boko Haram induced violence in many parts of the state. According to him, a new wave of the Sahelian jihadist violence has erupted and is rapidly retaking many parts of the state. Beside these major theatres of violent eruptions, sporadic killings and violence have been reported in places like Zamfara, Enugu and Ebonyi states. These are only recent incidents in a spiral of insecurity and violence that has become a permanent feature of our national scene. Literally, we sleep and wake in a virtual pool of the blood of our innocent compatriots who live in the susceptible areas.
For the past over a decade, every annual national budget has seen spending on defense and security rise astronomically. The pattern of defense spending looks more and more like that of a nation in an openly declared war. Orders of fixed wing combat aircraft, helicopter gunships, missiles, armoured personal carriers and drones have since become part of the annual ritual of our defense and security budgeting. Nothing in our budgeting or defense orders suggests a nation at peace with itself.
Correspondingly, insecurity has come to occupy a permanent place in the rhetoric of our politicians and political actors. Every presidential candidate and virtually every other governorship aspirant has come to include the eradication of insecurity as a priority item in their manifestoes and agenda. There is in fact, a pervasive psychological state in the nation that seems to have come to accept insecurity as a permanent part of our reality. We are a frightened nation. People are afraid of each other. People are afraid to travel along the highways, rail roads or urban alleys. A mood of fear has been added to the prevailing atmosphere of poverty, hunger and economic desperation in the land.
Because our land is among the top five most dangerous places in the world, the military has since become part and parcel of our internal security profile. In virtually all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, joint patrols of the police and all arms of the military have been joined by Civil Defense, Department of State Security personnel and even local hunters armed with charms and amulets in a daily round –the- clock chase after bandits, jihadists, kidnappers, abductors and sundry “unknown gunmen” in urban and rural parts of the country. Squads of combat joint patrol troops in pickup vans have become a common sight on our roads and streets.
Beyond animated physical chases of bad people by security agents, there seem to be little effort to intelligently interrogate the real causes and patterns of our insecurity. Yes indeed, there is a fancy office of a National Security Adviser (NSA) with a full compliment of the paraphernalia of high power. But it is routinely defied by armed non- state actors who terrorize the populace consistently.
In a nation that has weaponized faith as an instrument of national existence, religious zealots have found it attractive to arm their devotees with assault rifles, Improvised Explosive Devices and suicide vests to advance toxic versions of their faiths. In a nation where the government used to maintain a monopoly of ultimate violence and coercion, the availability of the instruments of violence to all and sundry at a market price has demystified the state. Uniforms have become common outfits made by tailors which should not frighten people. People are no longer afraid of the guns or uniforms of the state.
Non state actors have been emboldened to challenge the state and sometimes even outgun the state. The democratization of the technologies of violence, disruption and destruction through the internet and other dark channels have made the task of the state as possessor of the instruments of ultimate violence more herculean.
Add to this the recent rise of micro nationalism in different parts of the world and the popularization of the ideas of self determination of minorities as part of the rhetoric of international political language. Weapons of war and their random deployment by all manner of militias and separatist non- state forces have become part of the language of international political interaction. A new dictum of sovereign assertion has emerged: “We shoot, therefore we are.”
Most dangerously, in parts of the developing world, politicians have come to be agents of insecurity because insecurity itself has also become a tool in the quest for political ascendancy and apex power. Investment in non- state violent expressions has become attractive to politicians and professional trouble makers. It is common knowledge in Nigerian politics that in successive years, politicians have been known to import military uniforms, assault rifles, light arms and tear gas grenades to threaten and frighten and intimidate their opponents.
Thus overwhelmed by rival coercive forces, the state has buckled and weakened under the pressure of violent intimidation. In the process, merchants of trouble and blood have forced the state to cede them space in an illicit power sharing arrangement. Bandit leaders have signed MOUs with elected governors literally ceding parts of the territories of states to bandits and terrorists. Farmlands have been known to be ceded to bandit squads as concessioned territories for revenue collection. Farmers have to pay bandits to plant, weed and harvest their crops.
Credit:This Day