Insecurity: Violence defying ideas
By Sam Omatseye On Jan 2, 2022
The year ended the way it began. We can take one of the icons of violence; that is, Zamfara State. The state of gold and dust, of death and potential plenty, a wild, wild place on the Nigerian earth.
A few days to new year, bandits stormed and they prowled from house to house, seeking the living to be the dead. And they identified targets, fished them out and shot them dead. The lucky ones they manhandled and bundled away as kidnap victims. Women limped away with them as trophies, a district head as a prize among others whose fates in the month or even year, or even forever we may never know.
It is on that note we look at the nation in 2022 as security takes centre stage in a year that promises to be turbulent on another front: party politics. It promises to be a year of nomination more than rumination.
What will the year look like? Shall we find resolution and strategy? For the past few years, the federal government claimed it had resolution. The resolution came in the form of official prattle and rhetorical bluster. They said they had control. But bluster did not bust the enemies. There was a rhythm of silence and explosion. At one time, after the President, Muhammadu Buhari, had changed his service chiefs after relentless clamour, a sense of optimism replaced fear.
But respite came despite evidence of nothing concrete on the ground. So, the respite might just have been that the evil was at rest like murmuring fat cat and refreshing and re-strategising. Then they came in big bursts of disasters. We started to see some states in deep trouble. We saw Zamfara, and then Kaduna and then Katsina. The normal fear was Borno and Yobe corridors. But while the violence in that region seemed to normalise in routine tragedies, new vicious excitements erupted in those states.
One question that was asked at the beginning, and was never answered as the year ended, was why the federal government has not mentioned the culprits, the sponsors. Why have the lords of violence with deep pockets not fished out of their pockets of hiding places? They were obviously hiding in plain sights. The government named three groups, Jama'at Nasr al-Islam Wal Muslimin (JNIM), Islamic and
Muslim Support Group (GSIM) and ISGS. It was a charade of an announcement. If they were groups what were the names of the people behind them. Where were the arrests. The sponsors cannot behind in the pall of groups. They are humans with loads of cash.
Wealthy men by definition cannot hide. They live in splendour. They nest in mansions. They travel not alone but in retinues of glamour. Their bank accounts cannot flaunt themselves in home vaults alone. Even if they do, they are also tangible. Big bales of cash, whether in the official innards of banks or in their homes, cannot hide. So, why are these men still walking around while they are in remote corners, and they press buttons of slaughter and killings.
But the bandits did something that analysts tried to come to terms with. Were we seeing a new mutation, whereby the zealots of mayhem where now transmuting into secular plunder? Were those who swore in the name of the Almighty, those who said they did all the burning of markets, slashing of throats, shooting down of army aircraft, and the bonfire of mosques and churches, were they now forswearing their God and turning to mammon? Were we seeing the death of their spirit and the rebirth of their flesh?
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So, the army of the ragtag nature had now become fodder to bandits. They joined the those who began as gold hounds and kidnappers of humans as gold dust, and they made a wild business of it. Schools became soft targets. In Niger State, in Kaduna state and Zamfara state, the boys and girls were easy pickings.
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In looking to the new year as strategy, the federal government has to look for ways of either rejigging old strategies or starting with new ones. The old ones did not get much traction. One of them was the assault on cellular networks. Some northern states, including Katsina, decided to shut down the networks. They believed that once the hoodlums did not talk with each other, they could not map plans of assault. But it did not work. The violence still happened, and school children were still ferreted away. District heads still disappeared and
damsels as trophies were still falling. The strategy was counterproductive. The state also shut down certain highways, and that shut down commerce as markets were immobilised. That also did not work.
The networks had to be restored. No one knows how much was lost. There was even fear that the collapse of commerce could breed a defection from the law-abiding persons to the ranks of the hoodlums.
The state also employed an appeasement policy. Governor Aminu Masari, who had wailed in public over scarcity of policemen in the state, tried to woo the gangs with free housing and market stalls. The hoodlums couls be normalised when they lived among sane people. How naïve. They were living among the, before they left. They were making millions in single raids in their peripatetic lifestyles. A governor proposed to hem them in with little pickings. It was no temptation and the governor had to drop that.
Of course, shutting down schools was no strategy. It was a surrender. It meant that Boko Haram was achieving its philosophy. Kaduna, Niger and even Sokoto had to shut down some schools. Sokoto came with a good idea of ensuring that boarding schools operated as day schools close to the wards' homes. This eliminated soft targets like the Chibok or Dapchi girls.
operated as day schools close to the wards' homes. This eliminated soft targets like the Chibok or Dapchi girls. That was a good strategy but it could not be an enduring formula because boarding schools were an essential part of developing social skills and the communal spirits of education.
The federal government changed its service chiefs. They thought that was a solution. But the idea of change of service chiefs was advanced as a decision that would come with a change of strategy. We did not see much in the year. Except that the foot soldiers put more of their sweat and brawn on the line. The argument is that if the foot soldiers were fighting harder, it was because their leaders were more inspired. We saw this in the fight against Boko Haram in the northeast, and progress is believed to have happened on that front.
But a sense that where victory happened was pyrrhic has renewed the sense of despair that we have not found the formula to end the insurgency. The inflow of warriors from Islamic State also called ISWAP has complicated hopes and thinking as to how to tackle it. As the year drew to an end, rocket fired into Maiduguri, an otherwise safe haven, raising the spectre of a vulnerabilities where strength was believed to be projected.
We have always thought as a nation that spending more would overwhelm the enemies. We bought Tocarno jet fighters for the are lightweight and easy to manoeuvre and could strafe the bandits into silence. The result so far has been mixed. There is still time to find out whether we shall have joy from their skies.
One big area of hope was actually in the southwest. Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo state has spearheaded the Amotekun onslaught on hoodlums. His convoy collided with the men and rolled through. Many of the kidnappers have been intersected and stopped. It is a measure of will and coordination. He tackled the federal government over forest reserves with ultimatum, and it is cheerful to recall his fortitude. His actions have revealed that the problem of the region was not only herdsmen but also ritual murderers.
Even as the year ended, a place as far off as Sokoto started to moot the idea of vigilantes in the mould of Amotekun to slay the head of bandit dragon. The new year opens but few new ideas hover on the horizon. Optimism is still subdued just like a year ago.
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