A Contest of Bandits and Terrorists

ENGAGEMENTS BY Chidi Amuta

Politicians tend to get into trouble when they tinker with language to conceal mischief. Former US president Donald Trump, the most advertised quintessential linguistic idiot, was in the habit of getting lost in a forest of simple distinctions. He could not distinguish between truth, facts, fiction and faction. He tinkered with ‘alternative truth’ instead and hit a brick wall. He finally settled into a world of his own lies and illusions, preferring to see everything else as a ‘hoax’.

At home, political mischief has found a hiding place in a pretension to linguistic incompetence. See what a constant struggle Mr. Lai Mohammed has been waging just trying to distinguish between terrorists and bandits. Between Lai Mohammed and his chattering backup cast in Aso Rock, Abuja has trouble as to how better to define bandits as against terrorists. Sundry establishment spokesmen and politicians have insisted that the bandits are merely hungry citizens engaged in petty crimes of kidnapping, hostage taking and extortion in search of survival. At some point, Mr. Lai Mohammed said that the bandits cannot be called terrorists because they fly no flags and subscribe to no definable ideology. Sheikh Gumi, who more than anyone else is the most knowledgeable insider on bandit affairs, has advocated a generous cash payout to the bandits for their ‘patriotic’ services and sacrifices.

Someone in government once gave me the foolish line that the bandits are having a field day because this law abiding president does not want to get into trouble with the international human rights community. According to this version of international law, the Nigerian military cannot shoot at the bandits because they fly no flags or banners identifying them as insurgents or secessionists even if they are decimating government troops and taking territory, making it impossible to govern large swathes of Nigerian territory. My friend Governor El Rufai of Kaduna State joined that chorus by insisting months ago that the bandits were a category unto themselves. According him then, they are just opportunistic armed criminals out to make some loose cash in a harsh economic situation. In line with this logic, the bandits were no different from armed robbers and other criminals operating elsewhere in the country. Fighting banditry was merely an aspect of crime control. That was before the bandits decided to virtually shift their operational headquarters from Zamfara to Kaduna State!

Of late, however, the tone is beginning to change. It seems as though the National Assembly has woken up to the reality that the bandits mean serious business. The Assembly has joined calls on the Federal Government to designate the deadly bandit squads as terrorists in order for the full force of existing anti terrorism legislations to be invoked in dealing with them. Governor El Rufai, whose state has been at the receiving end of the worst display of bandit terrorism, has had a change of heart. He now agrees that the bandits are indeed terrorists and should be so categorized and treated. The question has come down to the simple common sense ones of: when does banditry graduate into terrorism? What acts qualify as terrorism? What do terrorists target and bandits abhor?

I have an intellectual discomfort about the narrow politically inspired definitions that guide the actions of Nigeria’s officialdom. Maybe acts targeted at individuals and organisations of limited social and political consequence should be left in the territory of banditry. May be terrorists should be left in charge of acts that frighten the state or large groups of people. The trouble is where and how to draw the demarcation line. If a bandit group abducts an individual official of state, say a minister or his family, and demands ransom and probably gets it, I guess Nigerian officialdom would say that is banditry. But if no ransom is paid and the bandits proceed to televise the gruesome execution of the minister or his family, I guess someone will scream “terrorism”! If a squad of bandits invade a church or mosque and simply go straight to behead the Imam or Priest and so sends shock waves down the spine of the congregation, would that action against just one individual not qualify as an act of terror?

Similarly, if a squad of bandits bomb a railway line for the purpose of gaining access to stranded passengers who they now proceed to fleece and terrorise and rob serially, does the subsequent act of petty robbery vindicate the original terrorist action of breaching national infrastructure and thus reduce everything to banditry? Still further, if a bandit action of mass abduction of school children leads to the closure of all schools in a state’s entire school system for months on end, does the initial bandit objective of seeking ransom from a multitude of parents justify the terrorist outcome of denying all children in a state of the opportunity to be educated for a long stretch?

Bandits have rendered Zamfara State practically ungovernable for years. To help the state combat the bandits, the National Communications Commission decided to deny bandits communications all over the state by shutting down all telecommunications infrastructure and cell phone sites in the state. Cell phone stations in neighboring countries can now be accessed by Zamfara citizens who are however losing social and business communications as a result of the original bandit sabotage. Where does banditry end and terrorism begin?

Ordinarily, acts by illicit agents which suddenly and violently disrupt the normal order of life is terrorism. Terrorist acts are marked and united by the shock and awe which they inflict on innocent unsuspecting people and on society at large. A gruesome knife attack on an individual at a public gathering, a suicide bombing at a church, mosque, wedding, market or restaurant -all qualify as acts of terror. Similarly, the bombing of a passenger aircraft or train, a mass shooting at a school, supermarket, train or bus station or airport are all acts of terrorism. When the act scales up to the sabotage of national infrastructure, attacks on security personnel or deliberate disruptions of the affairs of state or of persons authorized to conduct the normal orderly affairs of the state, we graduate from terrorism and migrate towards insurgency. When the terrorists in such situations proceed to carve out territory, to impose and collect taxes and levies and issue declarations and proclamations as it they were authorised sovereigns, we are squarely within the boundaries of insurgency, armed insurrection and even secession. The trouble with the Nigerian situation is that we are dealing with such fluidity in situations. Sometimes, the bandits abduct people and hand them over to Boko Haram or ISWAP. At other times, a bandit squad commits an act but Boko Haram takes responsibility openly. Either is both or one is the other!

On the scale of acts that disturb the peace on a quantum scale, the bandits have left a trail of horror and blood in significant portions of the country. They have killed several innocent citizens. They have abducted scores of school kids, torched whole villages and settlements and killed their residents on an industrial scale. They have obstructed major inter state highways for hours and even days and rendered many of them death zones to be avoided by commuters. Unsuspecting travellers on these roads have either been kidnapped and kept for days waiting to be ransomed or killed when the ransom was not forthcoming.

At the level of strategic disruptions and outright assaults on national sovereignty and critical infrastructure, the bandits have just bombed the strategic rail link between Abuja and Kaduna, destroying public assets in the process. Only a few days ago, The Wall Street Journal carried the frightening but disgraceful story of how the Nigerian Air Force had to corruptly buy off a bandit owned anti aircraft gun for N20 million ($50,000) in order to safeguard the air space of President Buhari’s Katsina State and make it safe for important air traffic. They have rendered some states ungovernable by holding governors in blackmail ransom. Some statewide school systems have been shut down for months as a result of frequent bandit abductions. They have similarly ambushed the convoys of some state governors. Quite a number of state officials and their family members have been kidnapped. Bandits have raided and torched police posts and stations, assaulted military barracks and killed as many soldiers as made themselves vulnerable and available. National food security has been dealt a deadly blow as bandit activity has kept farmers away from their fields while those intent on farming have had to pay huge tolls to local bandit commanders.

As if all this is not sufficiently frightening, the bandits have frontally confronted the defense and security capability of the state. They have shot down combat aircraft and killed the surviving pilots. Two months ago, alleged bandits breached the confines of Nigeria’s premium military academy, The Nigerian Defense Academy (NDA) in Kaduna and killed two officers and abducted one who was lucky to be rescued weeks afterwards. Even before any investigations were conducted, key political figures jumped in to announce that the invaders of the NDA were bandits and not terrorists.

In a bid to contain bandit activity, authorities have had to disable sections of the national telecommunications infrastructure in designated states (Zamfara and Katsina), thereby cutting off significant business and civil communications in these parts of the country with the attendant economic losses. If these bandits are simply opportunistic thieves, how come they have acquired such sophisticated tactical capabilities in weapons handling, communications, field coordination, geo location, mobility etc. as to have become almost invincible? Who trained these bandits? Who and what is enabling these people? Where did they emerge from in the last six years as to have become a permanent fixture of the Nigerian landscape?

There is of course enough in all this to re-designate these bandits into something even worse than terrorists. Curiously, the simple business of naming terrorist organizations and their affiliates has been escalated to unusual heights in Abuja’s treatment of the bandits of the Northern precinct. In a casual aside remark at the conclusion of his state visit to Nigeria last week, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, remarked ,off the cuff, that the terrorist cell that almost overthrew him a few years back is still well and active in Nigeria. But for Nigeria, finding and correctly designating terrorist organisations seems to require special skills, deliberation and conformity to some unfamiliar criteria and protocol.

It was in fact the international community that designated Boko Haram a terrorist organisation in line with the global anti-terrorist and counter insurgency war in the aftermath of terrorist upsurge in major western centres. The Nigerian government merely concurred in order to qualify for international assistance.

In the case of IPOB, the process was simple and straightforward. Once Nnamdi Kanu and his few miserable fellow travellers showed up, a federal presidential diktat pronounced IPOB a terrorist organisation. The Attorney General formalised and legalised the presidential proclamation by going to an Abuja High Court to file the same. Pronto. A terrorist organisation was born. Up to that point, IPOB had not set off a single pipe bomb anywhere in Nigeria. The decision was quickly gazetted and injected into the national political lexicon where it has remained since.

It qualified the South-east for special military security operations and frequent clampdowns. Up to that point, IPOB was better known for floating an annoying pirate radio station with specialisation in silly name calling, abusive propaganda and hate speech. At most, IPOB was more adept at organising processions adorned with the Biafra flag. At other times, IPOB enthusiasts abroad waited for Nigerian officials on foreign trips and gave them the slaps and floggings of their lives!

It has taken years of sustained federal provocation and violence for IPOB to graduate to its present stage of inexcusable belligerence and recourse to violence. Now IPOB and its allied ESN operatives have allegedly torched police stations, breached prison facilities and attacked police and military personnel.

While Nigerian officialdom keeps playing ping pong with distinguishing between bandits and terrorists, matters have progressed rather rapidly. The bandits are not waiting for the pleasure of having Mr. Buhari name or rename them. They seem to have serious business to conduct and are proceeding with it at their own pace. Mr. Lai Mohammed can sit in his fancy office and make silly proclamations and pontifications about what qualifies a bandit to become an enemy of the sovereign state. He can even wait till each bandit formation adorns a flag and prints a pamphlet of ideology or declares a republic. These guys have no time to waste and seem to have plenty of business on hand. They are writing our daily news and deciding for us what is important and what should be headline news. By their schedule, it seems they have a loaded time- table. After all we are a nation of unprotected soft targets, literally.

While the battle of linguistic categorisation rages, we are in the process of losing our nation to the combined force of bandits, terrorists, secessionists, political trouble makers and, most importantly, monumental governmental incompetence.

I have no way of knowing who thinks for this government. If there are any such persons, it would be instructive to take a look at recent happenings in Afghanistan. With all the American hardware and training plus the presence of NATO forces, it took just eleven days for the US-backed government in Kabul to collapse. Today, it is the Taliban and not my friend Ashraf Ghani and his coterie of Washington inducted advisers and strategists that are holding sway in Kabul. It is instead the Taliban that is holding talks with the US State Department on the future of Afghanistan. In a turmoil, the world waits patiently for things to die down. They ask the next question: who is in charge here? They wait for a new order to show up and plan its feet on the ground and then deal with it. Nations may disintegrate but never disappear. To paraphrase V.S Naipaul: The world is what it is. Those who are nothing and want to be nothing have no place in it.