Insecurity: From Abaribe, to Northern Groups & the EBTE (Excuses & Blame-Trading Exchange) - Ik Muo, PhD.

 ‘But you know, the virus is a very formidable foe here. The only way we're going to get our arms around it is by doing the things that we know work…avoiding physical contact, putting masks on, not going to crowds, closing the bars -- that's the answer... We can do it’( Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.) On Monday, 20/7/20, I strolled into a neighbourhood store for sundry purchases and asked a young lady I met there (she appeared educated and enlightened) why she was not wearing a facemask. She responded that she was in an inner street, not on the highway. I then asked her who said that  Coro only circulated in the highways and she replied: ‘There is nothing like that ( Coro); they are just deceiving us’.  I them reminded her that the Minister of External Affairs had just fallen victim and she responded: ‘it is for them there’. That is, the thing does not exist and even if it existed, it is for the big men up there. Sad indeed. Meanwhile, the WHO has  just ( 20/7/20)warned about  the alarming increase in Coro cases  in Africa as many countries now witness the rate of  acceleration far more than that of South Africa, which  roughly 30% increase in COVID cases in the past week is dwarfed by  Zambia (57), Madagascar (50%) Namibia(69%), Botswana(66%) and Zimbabwe(51%).Those who have ears, let them hear!

But while fighting Coro, we still need to attend to other matters of urgent national importance and so, lets go to the menu for the day. Last week, we moved from the Abaribe declaration in January, the security situation in February and the consequential statements by the Northern Elders Forum and the Northern Youths. We ended with the warning by Ohaneze that they would not stand by and fold their hands  and be finished in their own homes.

Things  have continued to deteriorate on the security front. The National Orientation Agency has reported that Nigerians in Zamfara, Kastina, Kaduna were  more worried about insecurity than about Coro.  This tallies with the submissions of Hon Kazaure that banditry is more dangerous than Coro based on the number murdered by bandits vis-à-vis those killed by Coro. Between the 8^th and 13^th of June, 2020, 240 people were murdered  in the North, the highest per day in recent times( Borno-114; Kastina-75; Adamawa,24, Kogi:9,Benue7). The previous week, 1^st to 7^th June, 183  Nigerians were murdered, while between May 25-31, the death tally was 149! The US based  Council on Foreign Relations, under its Nigerian Security Tracker has disclosed that 2771 Nigerians had been murdered in cold blood  between February and May 2020.

Alarmed by these morbid figures, the Northern Elders Forum, in June 2020, revisited the security situation in the north in particular and  scored the President a big, red ‘F’  in security matters.  They declared that ‘The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and governors have lost control over the imperatives of protecting people of the North… The situation is getting worse literally by the day. Bandits and insurgents appear to sense a huge vacuum in political will and capacity which they exploit with disastrous consequences on communities and individuals. It is no exaggeration to say that the people of the North have never experienced this level of exposure to criminals who attack, kill, maim, rape, kidnap, burn villages and rustle cattle, while President Buhari issues threats and promises that have no effect. … This is unacceptable.  We are tired of excuses and verbal threats which criminals laugh at, and our fellow citizens see as a clear failure of leadership which they see as part of them. Enough is enough’.  The presidency  replied immediately, describing the group  as a mere "irritant and featherweight", and  their leader, Prof Ango Abdulahi, a general without troops, leading  a quasi-organization that boasts of no credible membership.  Was that an answer to their concerns and how did that response address the issues?

While the elders, the mere irritants, were talking, about the insecurity, the youths decided to ACT. At first it was uncoordinated and impromptu. Some angry residents of Yantumaki town in Danmusa LGA took to the streets, ‘burnt down’  the President, the Governor and APC. (billboards containing pictures  of the Governor, President and APC logo). Eventually, it became more coordinated as a larger number, under the aegis of Coalition of Northern Groups, embarked on peaceful protests, passed a vote of no confidence on the Governor and the president, and asked PMB to resign over the worsening insecurity( thereby supporting the motion moved by Senator Abaribe).

The governor was apologetic, saying ‘I don’t know what to tell them. I cannot look them in the face because we have failed to protect them, contrary to our pledge to ensure security of lives and property throughout the state. However, the security forces arrested the demonstrators while the ‘presidency’ told  them to thank their stars that we are operating a truly democratic government!

 Subsequently, the President( not the presidency) summoned the service chiefs and told them that their best was not good enough and that he was tired of their excuses after which a high-powered security fact-finding  mission  was dispatched to Katsina State. And this was followed by another closed-door meeting between security chiefs and northern governors.

However, it is interesting to note that such fact-finding missions had been sent to Kastina in February 2020, May 2019 and August 2018. It is also interesting to note that while the ‘presidency’ has been trivaliasing the various comments and protests about insecurity, the military itself has been given excuses and   more excuses for the festering insecurity. In May 2019, the Director of Army Public Relations accused some foreign powers of collaborating with some locals to complicate our security challenges. Later,  Lt Gen Buratai  blamed defeated and disgruntled politicians for the heightened insecurity  and in June 2019, he  blamed the poor commitment of some soldiers. That may be why their Commander in Chief asked them to do something rather than excuses.  So, while the presidency dismisses people with contrary spirits with a wave of hand, the military has been busy blame-trading. How far can we go with these lame-duck strategies? Anyway, they established an Excuses and Blame-Trading Exchange(EBTE), where blames and excuses are traded at the market price. If you don’t know how it works, ask the Nigerian Stock Exchange). There only problem is that there are many sellers  of blames and exchanges but no buyers!  I have had cause to write on the An age of excuses, lamentations, denials ,and inconclusiveness( Guardian,22/3/16)

Meanwhile,  the security crises got  more complicated and complex with  the EBTE becoming more active.  There was mass-attack at Gubio village in which about 81 persons were killed and many kidnapped,  and that was just after the Chief of Army Staff  had finished briefing the president on  his  successes in the  war against insurgency. At least 22 were killed in Zangon-Kataff by unknown gunmen in an attack that lasted between 10-12 July 2020 and that was despite the  dusk to dawn ‘coffee’; 6 were killed in a bomb blast at Yanmana village in Katsina, where bandits also ambushed Nigerian soldiers, killing about 6 of them.   21 people were killed with many injured at a wedding party at Kukum Daji Village of Kaura LGA of Kaduna State and within 24 hours of this, about 11 people were murdered in another attack at Gora Gan village in the killing field of Zangon Kataf.

There were other small incidents such as kidnappers abducting a  student in Kano state while bandits abducted a police officer, the daughter and 4 others  in Kaduna. How do we know when it is a kidnapper, bandit, armed robber  herdsmen or even BH? What is the difference. Things got so bad that  PMBs brethren in Kastina now  take refuge in Niger to escape the deadly bandits. They do businesses in Kastina State  in the day time and return to Niger at Night for safety. So how do we separate Nigerians and Nigeriens? They even sound alike.

Meanwhile, the excuses and blame trading continued. The presidency, through Garba Shehu  for instance has accused some traditional rulers in Katsina state of being complicit in collaboration with the bandits to harm their own people. But then the Governor of Kastina ( where ‘bandits are kings’), who  earlier admitted that the government had failed, then turned round and blamed  volunteers (Yan’sakai) and informants  for supporting the bandits and kidnappers. By that statement, he demoralized the volunteers (who are usually empowered in Borno as JTF) and even made excuses for the criminals. He then went to bed, consulted the oracles and woke up to announce that insecurity in the North was due to the activities of some politicians who want to contest the 2023 general election  and some enemies of APC. I believe they now have an association: AE-APC (The  Amalgamated Enemies of APC). The governor of Zamfara adopted another strategy; cows for guns, giving 2 cows in exchange for every gun surrendered by bandits. He forgot that the hand-shake  Masari had with bandits did not work.  Somebody who can rustle 50 cows at an operation or obtain N10m from a single kidnap incident will not be  pacified with just 2 cows. In any case, the appeasement  strategy never works. And then, Gneral Buratai handed the war against terrorism over to ‘we the people’. His thesis was that since 99% of kidnappers, bandits and robbers were Nigerians, banditry and terrorism would end anytime we wanted it to end, or in the language of coro, ‘took responsibility’. The IGP has also  just reassured us of effective policing( 21/7/20)

Worrisomely , no mention was and is made of the ubiquitous marauding Fulani herdsmen in  all these security discourse. May be they no longer constitute any security threat. Meanwhile, the very powerful Miyetti Allah has also promised to roll out about 100,000 vigilantes across Nigeria,  (Miyetti Allah Vigilante Group-MAVG) to deal with rustlers, kidnappers and to protect  the helpless Fulani herdsmen. They would engage  those who have lost all their cattle to rustlers and  are incapable of doing any other business ( including okada-riding). Since they are in the majority and operate across the country, their MAVG would operate across the land and as other state assemblies institutionalise their own vigilantes (like the Amoteku), the MAVG  would be legalized by any group of Fulani’s wherever they were because that is their own Assembly.

This  treatise started from the ‘hit the  matter in the head’ declaration by Abaribe and the unanimous call of the NASS for the sack of Service Chiefs. Well, fortuitously, we  are going to end with the same declaration because the  Senate has again called for the  Service Chiefs to resign or be sacked,( 21/7/20) following a discussion on the voluntary resignation of a good numbers of soldiers who said ‘we no do again’. You will all recall that one Lance Corporal Martins had in a video berated General Buratai, and other security chiefs for not acting to stop the incessant killings of Nigerians by terrorists and armed bandits. Of course, I believe you know where the young man would be by now.  The presidency noted the resolution, reminded them that the fate of Service Chiefs is in the hands of our oga at the top, who would only do what is good for the country! The presidency further informed that Southern Kaduna enjoys comprehensive security deployments, including Special Forces of both the Army and the Air Force, surveillance aircraft and mobile police units  24/7.

However, unlike other parts of the country, the problem of Southern Kaduna is more complicated than many critics are ready to acknowledge and understand and is an evil combination of politically-motivated banditry, revenge killings and mutual violence by criminal gangs acting on ethnic and religious grounds. The people were also advised against taking the law into their own hands. So? There is heavy security deployment; the government and the security forces   know the causes of crises and then what?  How can an area enjoy such  comprehensive  security deployment  and yet witness these  painful orgies of  non-stop violence? Where are these security personnel while these awful killings (whether original or revenge) are perpetrated?  Once more, the  blame is again foisted  on the people who defend themselves when  it appears they have been abandoned to their fate?

So where do we go from here? ‘If you ask me, who I go ask’? But  as to how we came to where we are, Col  Stan Labo( rtd) has hit the hammer pointedly on the head of the nail: ‘The truth is that we belong to a nation that has problems getting its priorities right; we belong to a nation that would rather prefer to spend billions of naira renovating its National Assembly than committing that to buy surveillance helicopters for its para-military agency to fight insurgency and banditry, yet we turn around to complain about the incessant and unabated banditry attacks on our people. We belong to a nation that would commit billions to buy foreign luxurious cars for its lawmakers at the expense of locally assembled vehicles, yet we turn around shamelessly to complain of the absence of jobs for the teeming unemployed youths. When we are ready, we shall address our problems because we all collectively know the solutions to our problems.” Guardian, 21/6/20.

So, when we are ready, we shall address our problems because we all collectively know the solutions to our problems. I will end this matter for now.

- Ik Muo, PhD. Department of business Administration, OOU, Ago-Iwoye, 08033026625