Decoding the Reign of  Terror

ENGAGEMENTS with  Chidi Amuta

President Bola Tinubu has finally decided to wrestle with the ogre of insecurity. He has named the wrong and declared an array of measures to contain the scourge. The public has been incensed. The nation over which he presides is tethering on the brinks of avoidable unravelling. He has declared a long awaited national  security emergency. The declaration is as wide ranging as it is incoherent. But taken together, the declaration, if implemented to the letter could reduce the incidents of insecurity.

Additional soldiers and policemen are to be recruited and deployed. Something called ‘forest guards’ are to be deployed to police the nation’s vast ungoverned spaces of forests, bushes and rolling savannahs.  Implicit in the emergency declaration is the possibility of establishment of State Police formations by states that feel the necessity. For obvious reasons, the Presidential emergency treats the insecurity as a general collapse of national security.

The efficacy of the measures outlined will depend on the general efficiency of the departments of state responsible for national security. The major obstacle here is that we are entrusting the new security initiatives in the hands of agencies of a failing state. Whatever happens, the effectiveness of the declaration will be tested by what happens in the days ahead. For now, the nation that Tinubu was addressing remains a very skeptical audience.

The backdrop is an avalanche of embarrassing security calamities. In rapid succession, Nigeria’s insecurity recently surpassed its previous robust records. Just as I began to write this last weekend, the Deputy Speaker of Borno State House of Assembly  reported the abduction of no less than 13 female farmers in the Askira-Uba local government by  Boko Haram. A girls school in Kebbi was  had earlier  been sacked, its Vice Principal executed in the presence of his wife and over 25 female students carted away mostly on motorcycles. Gladly, it has now been reported that the girls have been released. In Niger state, another school was attacked and over 300 students abducted. Again, it has been reported that most of these have similarly been released.

In the mixed faith state of Kwara, a church was stormed and over 23 worshippers abducted. Unconfirmed reports have hinted at similar terrorist attacks in Nasarawa and other states. Reports indicate that the church abductees have mostly been freed.

Between the abductions and the success rate in the release of victims, there is a rather dramatized synchrony. Government needs to be congratulated on the improvement in its rescue and recovery efforts to free the many abductees. It is definitely an improvement on previous lacklustre efforts. However, the public expects these announcements of rescue or release to be accompanied by reports of arrests of those responsible, their trial in open court as well as their convictions. More importantly, thorough investigations should expose those behind these raids.

In panic response to the series of school abductions, many northern states have resorted to school closures. Katsina, Plateau, Yobe and Bauchi states have announced mass closures of schools. Others may soon follow. Even the Federal Government has followed the emerging pattern. The Federal Ministry of Education has announced the shutdown of 47 Unity Schools. No one knows what other institutions will be shuttered next. Even harder to figure out is where next the roving bandits may strike. Even harder to figure out still is the logic or compass of the random attacks and school shutdowns.

In these sporadic and random knee jerk developments, the uneasy realities of today’s Nigeria are unfolding.

First, terrorists and bandits are the ones now determining the school  calendar and other government agenda in many parts of the country, not the federal or state governments. Terrorists are acting. Governments are reacting. We are witnessing a virtual overrun of the machinery of the state and its governments.

On a broader strategic level, we may have approached the implementation stage of the original doctrinal intent of Boko Haram and its allies and affiliates. The wholesale repudiation and violent rejection of Western education has been the primary original intent of Boko Haram and its variants. The terrorists now seem to be fast achieving that strategic objective.

If these mass school closures persist and spread, we may get to that tragic point where states may choose to operate no schools. Some may consider it safer to operate just Islamic schools only to insulate themselves from attacks and these embarrassing abductions. Boko Haram or ISWAP may even appoint the teachers, who knows. For a country mired in illiteracy and lacking in development, the road to modernization and development may be farther than previously projected. Return to the dark ages.

At best, we may have allowed insecurity to demarcate the country into schooling and non- schooling areas. This division will inevitably coincide with a North-South and Christian-Muslim divide. We all hate to imagine this unfortunate outcome but apocalypse  now stares us in the face. This inevitable misfortune will translate into a sad political schism. A foreseeable political decoupling of  the Nigerian federation is too heavy a price to pay for our current failure to decisively address our present insecurity. An incumbent government is literally watching the unraveling of the nation under its watch. And government is watching helplessly with no credible response.

Many observed that there may be political mischief at the root of the escalation of troubles mostly in the northern half of the country. Perhaps the architects of the present mayhem may intend to send the political message that Tinubu is incapable of guaranteeing security and orderly governance. It has happened before. The Boko Haram insurgency and sporadic insurgency were deployed by the Buhari opposition coalition to frighten President Jonathan out of power in 2014/15. It was effective. A spineless Jonathan was hounded out of incumbency and roundly defeated by the ambitious Buhari.

Now, a very ugly and far-reaching political imperative stares us in the face. Like it or not, the present crisis of viral insecurity has turned out to be located mostly in the north. Other parts of the country may be experiencing incidents of insecurity but not in the systematized doctrinaire fashion of the north. The burden is therefore directly on the northern political and other elites. It does not matter now who and for what reasons the current mayhem was inaugurated. If it is to frighten Tinubu out of the Villa, it is wrong headed. Its domestic and international impacts are eroding whatever is left of Nigeria’s credibility and viability. If it is an expansion of the existing nightmare of insecurity, it is a bad chapter. The political elite of the north will bear the ultimate burden of the present flare up.

Most of them can of course afford to educate their children in expensive Western and Southern schools. But the landscape to which these privileged children will return will be bandit territory. Violence will define their very existence and dog their every step. Those fed on the grapes of wrath that their parents sowed will haunt them everywhere they go. That is not the future we wish for our children.

But we cannot, as a nation, continue to live in open denial. We cannot afford to continue insulating the northern political class from responsibility for the misrule and nightmare mostly located in the region. They are squarely responsible for the present sadness. These are the sour grapes of welfare denied the masses, of public goods not delivered, of public funds hidden in private pockets and masses of children rendered destitute. All those fat bank accounts in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Cairo, London and New York have finally yielded the return of the apocalypse now waxing in the north. Apocalypse is standing in the doorway.

It may not be politically correct to say so now. But what the nation is facing is the onset of a northern social and political winter. The northern elite must admit this and cry out for help to their opposite numbers elsewhere in the county. When one end of a house is burning, it is better to join hands and put out the fire lest it consumes the entire homestead. Worse scenarios may follow the present outrage. Sudan, Yemen, Gaza…

What is urgently required is an economic, political and cultural reparation in the north led by the political elite of the region. It is time to head home and face the truth. It is time to pay for the massive transactional votes. It is time for the northern political elite to bow in humility and say to the millions of deprived ordinary people in the region: ‘We are sorry!’

The Nigerian state has an overarching  responsibility here. A stiff security cordon of the region  is now urgently required. We need to terminate jihadist insurgency. We must exchange opportunity for responsible citizenship. Citizenship of the Nigerian state with all its rights and obligations must override residual obligations of faith in order for progress and prosperity to come.

The battle against terrorism has become mixed up with issues of faith and justice in the country. Terrorism and banditry are now largely understood as offshoots of the religious divide in the country. One major religion believes terrorism is the exclusive preserve of the other. Fundamentalist terrorists are believed to be mostly Muslim. This is perhaps the reason why Trump’s threat against anti Christian violence has sounded anti Muslim for the most part. Jihadist terrorism may have a faith background. But the criminality that breeds general insecurity has no religion. It is part of the symptoms of the failing state. When you face the failure of the state, you curb the abuse of faith to forment mischief.

Sadly, the justice system has not been even handed in its treatment of terrorism offenders. In over a decade of the counter insurgency crusade, hardly any major terrorist or bandit has either been arrested, tried or convicted. The few lowly offenders arrested have mostly been released after brief incarceration and then rehabilitated, paid and even clothed by governments as ‘repentant’ terrorists. No deradicalization programme, no punitive measures against culprits etc.

In reverse, those merely suspected of terror related offenses in the southern parts of the country are either summarily wasted by security forces or jailed for long stretches. Mr. Nnamdi Kanu of IPOB fame has just been convicted for  life on terrorism charges. He has been sent to Sokoto prison! We await the arrest, trial and conviction of Boko Haram terrorists and their imprisonment in Ibadan, Owerri or Port Harcourt! In such an atmosphere of uneven justice, the impression is bound to persist that an atmosphere of national injustice is contributing to the thriving of insecurity in the country.

The current escalation of targeted insecurity in the country is bad. Its direction at educational institutions is unfortunate. The collateral targeting at churches and Christian worship places further fuels a narrative that has been lately activated and fueled by President Trump. Its overall message is unfortunate for the existence, credibility and viability of Nigeria’s tenuous federation.

Overall, the Tinubu government needs to conduct a 360 degrees decoding of the situation on hand. This is no time for lazy governance. Salvation for the incumbent government is now also salvation for the Nigerian nation and all it stands for. It is a historic moment that invites stout leadership and wise statesmanship.