Nigeria's CPC Designation And The Parable Of Ineffective Ikenga
The classification of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, came like a thunderbolt, tearing apart the political cocoon of the Tinubu presidency and bringing breaches of leadership duties in the current Nigeria's social contract bare. Nigeria, the giant of Africa, is in the news again for the wrong reason.
How did Nigeria get to this point? To facilitate electoral victory, Nigerian politicians often engage services of thugs, criminals and extremists. Borno State under Alhaji Ali Modu Sheriff has severally been accused of charting this infamous path; and his thugs alleged to have metamorphosed into the dreaded Boko Haram. During the second tenure of former President Obasanjo, many northern states enthroned Sharia law through which the persecution of Christians and non-moslems are prosecuted on daily basis in secular Nigeria! For instance and ironically too, alcoholic beverage is banned in the Sharia states, yet northern governors who seize and destroy alcoholic beverage fall over themselves in their scramble for revenue generated from alcoholic beverage. Much later, retired General Buhari, after several failed shots at the presidency, resorted to the use of foreign bandits in the 2015 elections. However, the early concession of electoral victory by former President Goodluck Jonathan to Buhari made the use of the already imported criminal mercenaries unnecessary. In the euphoria of their wins, late President Buhari and his henchmen abandoned those great security risks in Nigeria. The foreign criminals resorted to kidnapping, banditry and other crimes.
Rather than combat the criminals through kinetic military programmes, Buhari, chose to negotiate with the criminals and pay ransoms to them. The criminals, being foreigners without base in Nigeria, began to ask for land on which to settle and invest the dividends of their lucrative crimes. That was the genesis of Ruga in the Nigerian political vocabulary in the Buhari era. Because the infamous Ruga programme was vehemently resisted, the criminals joined forces with Bokoharam insurgents from the Borno axis whose jihadist ideology matched their cravings. A spate of unprovoked exterminatory attacks on non-Muslim local communities in various places especially Kaduna South, Plateau, Taraba and Benue States became daily occurrences. Many locals were forced out of their farmlands and communities into internally-displaced persons' (IDP) camps within and outside Nigeria. At all times, before, during and after these killings, all the security odds seemed to permanently favour those Allahu Akbar - chanting killers: Like retired General Danjuma forewarned, bandits were never stopped before or during attacks; and they were rarely arrested after the attacks. Even President Tinubu wondered about this when he visited Benue State over Yelwata killings. Oftentimes, these assailants occupy the communities of their victims.
For over two years, the changes in the security narratives expected from the Tinubu presidency have not come. To the chagrin of ordinary Nigerians, the romance with bandits continued. Suspected apologists of the bandits were said to have even been appointed into sensitive security positions. The de-radicalization programme which has been criticized as a decoy for the roundtrip of insurgents into the society and security system theives. It got to a point where the jihadists brazenly influence transfers of fiery security commanders as seen in the case of the former sector 5 commander of Operation Safe Haven in Plateau State, Col. Dauda S. Mangem. In the same Plateau State, it has been alleged that it is the custom of security operatives to seek permission of the bandits before evacuating bodies of victims of banditry for burial. There are unconfirmed reports that the immediate past Chief of Defence Staff was removed because he preferred lethal kinetic attacks against insurgents.
Reactions of the Tinubu presidency, the logic of government apologists and latter-day patriots as well as the comments of those who celebrate the impending foreign intervention in the security of Nigeria have been interesting. As funny as some sound, it is instructive that there is a consensus that Christians and other Nigerians are massively killed in Nigeria by fundamentalists, armed herdsmen and bandits who all chant 'Allahu Akbar'! Amusingly, nobody has denied that the above slogan belongs to Islam. Nobody, not even the government, has also denied the unlawful and bizarre patronage given to those murderous groups by both the federal government, some state governments and security agencies in Nigeria. Rather, the disagreement is on the classification of the massive and unabating killing of Nigerians, mainly Christians, by Bokoharam, armed herdsmen and jihadists who belong to the various sects of Islam.
It is disheartening that western perceptions seem to matter more than lives of Nigerians to Nigerian leaders. This could be why, upon the outcry of endangered Nigerians over time, the administration could not take proactive steps like proper policing of Nigerian borders and prohibition of open grazing to end the menace of killer herdsmen like Ghana did. Nigerian security agencies for no reasons have remained largely manual and analogue in their operations. The security apparatchik seems to have become either dormant or complicit like retired General Danjuma had alleged.
The truth is that majority of ordinary Nigerians who watch their kindred killed, their lands taken over and their lives endangered daily by strangers welcome interventions from anywhere for the protection of their lives, lands and patrimony. To them, pontifications about sovereignty no longer matter. When a sovereign will not protect her citizens' lives and rights, that sovereign should go hang. Like Nd'Igbo say: "If Ikenga fails to serve its purpose, women could use it as firewood".