Going Beyond Immediate Emergency Security Measures

Postscript by Waziri Adio

In response to the latest surge in insecurity in parts of the country, President Bola Tinubu last week declared what he termed “a nationwide security emergency.” Among other measures, he approved the recruitment of 50,000 additional personnel into the police force, the deployment of forest guards by the DSS, and the withdrawal of police officers assigned for the protection of VIPs. “This is a national emergency,” President Tinubu stated midweek, “and we are responding by deploying more boots on the ground, especially in security-challenged areas.”

The president cannot be accused of sitting on his palms in this instance. He, sensibly, cancelled his trip to South Africa and Angola for the G-20 and EU-AU summits. He received briefings from and held meetings with the heads of the security forces. He said the right things. And he has announced some measures. However, at this moment, it is difficult to know how faithfully those measures will be implemented and, even when implemented as intended, if they will truly make much dent in making Nigeria a safer country.

If anything, the large-scale abductions of students and church-goers in Niger, Kebbi and Kwara states and the ambush and killings of our soldiers (including a brigadier general) in Borno State are a stark reminder of the tormenting fact that insecurity has become a part of the fabric of life in Nigeria in close to 20 years. Undeniably, progress has been made in some areas—at least, the thick sense of siege over Abuja has since lifted. But old faultlines keep resurfacing and new fronts of attacks continue to open up. Today, there is no geo-political zone that is spared, even though the intensity varies. Generalised insecurity seems to have taken hold.

Thankfully, the worshippers and the students abducted in Kwara and Kebbi states have been released or rescued and hopefully all the kids kidnapped in Niger State will soon rejoin their families. But there is a high risk that the current sense of urgency may dip once those snatched are returned and some relative calm is restored. This is a tendency we need to actively fight. We should not wait for the next wave of attacks, then start thrashing about for how to contain the spread. We need to break the surge-lull cycle of violence and the growing normalisation of insecurity as part of everyday living in Nigeria.

Without a doubt, an immediate response is needed to the disturbing episodes of the past few weeks. It is critical to signal a sense of urgency and seriousness. Nevertheless, we need to go beyond episodic and symbolic measures. What does “a national security emergency” mean in practical terms for the assortment of criminals waging wars against us, for our security forces on the frontlines of these never-ending wars, and for the mass of our beleaguered citizens, especially those in remote areas who seem to have been left to their own devices?

As forms of immediate response, there is nothing wrong with redeployments and with increasing boots on the ground. But we need a series of well-thought-out, properly-sequenced and deftly-implemented strategies and actions for how to drastically and sustainably improve security in Nigeria. We have left this challenge to go on for too long. Events of the past few weeks should focus our minds on how much of a crisis this has become and how much worse things can get. President Tinubu should not waste this crisis. He needs to refocus his energy on how to strengthen the state to discharge its primary responsibility: the protection of life and property.

In this wise, the first task is not even money or where to find it. To be sure, improving security will cost money. But we should resist the impulse to simply continue to throw money at challenges. Security budgets have ballooned in the past ten years, with scant result, transparency and accountability. We probably still need to spend more money, but we need to spend more smartly.

The first real task is to take a studied step back. We need to undertake a quick but comprehensive review of how to make Nigeria a more secure country in the current context. Clearly, the enemies of today are different from the ones that our security forces are traditionally trained and resourced to confront and some of our institutions, like the police, are clearly out of their depth. While increasing the size of the police force and optimally deploying personnel are necessary, we need to figure out how to make the police and others fit for purpose in the prevailing environment.

A comprehensive review is likely to surface not just where the challenges lie but also point at the security architecture, strategy, institutional arrangement and technology mix that is better suited for these testy times. Such a review should also yield the required reforms across the board including in terms of the size, governance, training and operational needs of the police, intelligence service and the military. I am certain many such studies exist, including by think tanks and academic institutions. It will be necessary to update, consolidate and validate such studies in consultation with the leadership of our security forces, while the Office of the National Security Adviser should lead the implementation of the required reforms.

A necessary complement of the review and the reform of our security apparatus is the rebuilding of the capacity of the state itself. Evidence of the collapse of state capacity abounds not just in the vast areas of our country with little or no state presence but also in the areas in between where the state’s capacity for predation is only matched by its incapacity to deliver basic services. The collapse of the state makes citizens vulnerable in the ungoverned spaces, provides fertile grounds for easy recruitments into extremist ideologies among, and limits the capacity of the state to exercise the monopoly of violence.

We don’t talk about this enough but state capacity has been seriously eroded in Nigeria, and this grave erosion is roundly implicated in the multiple crises confronting the country. Rebuilding the capacity of the state to get basic and non-basic things done is a slow, tasking but necessary work. It is not the kind of work that politicians and development partners fancy. But there is simply no substitute for a capable and competent state if we truly desire to get out of the present bind. Financial Times captured this point well in its editorial of Wednesday where it urged that “Tinubu must now urgently set about building a competent state with security control over all its territory.”

The last task I want to highlight is that we need a coordinated and firm approach to fighting insecurity over a reasonable stretch of time. In the heat of the moment, governors are meeting in zonal clusters and are proposing different things, some of which may actually worsen matters down the line. We need those in positions of authority to be responsive and there may indeed be zonal peculiarities to be factored in, but we also need calm heads and measured tones. We need proper coordination across tiers and zones, which only the president can provide. We also need the country to pull together and tone down growing divisiveness across regions and religions.

It is also very important to address the growing and evident perception that the state treats some sets of perpetrators and criminals with kid-gloves and even cuddling some. This paints the state as a partisan, creates bad blood, encourages the resort to self-help and breeds impunity. The semantic distinction between terrorists and bandits has become vacuous. Anyone who visits violence on Nigerians, irrespective of motive, should bear the full consequences of their actions. On November 19th, President Tinubu made a vow: “those who threaten the safety of our citizens will face the full weight of the Nigerian state.” It is high time words like these began to really count.

.