Once Secured, Now Unsafe

Nigeria @ 62… Nigeria @ 62… Nigeria @ 62…

Ahamefula Ogbu

Nigeria started as a country on a safe note; so that traversing its length and breadth, one only had to think of the cost implications which comparatively was very affordable. High profile personalities had security officials attached to them as mere status conferrer instead of confidence builders and life savers they have become now.

Apart from the political upheavals in the Western region arising from elections which later culminated into some level of mayhem with attacks on political opponents, the country was generally peaceful and secure even though the crisis degenerated and formed the nucleus of some later day conflagrations. However, the security of the country was not then in jeopardy.

Some argue that the undiluted value system accounted for the safe situation while some think that divisiveness which has fastened its claws on the country was a contributory factor to the sorry security state of the country. However, immediately after independence, there was peace and tranquility with families holding on to philosophy of good name and neighbourliness, hence the brotherhood slogan which apparently the pressure for independence helped to bond.

Then, one could travel either by air, road or rail to any part of the country either by day or night without any scruples or stroll at any time of the day or night in different cities without thinking of his kidnap value. The waterways were equally safe and the word, piracy wore their reality in novels and films but never in reality around the nation. Then, one could lose his wallet in a rowdy place and have same returned to him with the content intact. Armed robbery was low and far between while anyone caught was publicly disgraced and would be a dent on his family name.

Policing then was better organised while most were armed with batons while their presence was not a common sight. Soldiers were well respected and had their presence in the barracks. Kidnapping for ransom, bullion van heisting, crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism were unheard of. People partied freely without fear.

The Nigerian police and armed forces were better managed that they won laurels and were reference points and on high demand in peace keeping duties and the country supplied the world not less than 100,000 of its men to no fewer than 40 countries in Africa and across the globe

It remained so till mid 60s when those Nigeria sent for peace keeping missions completed their rounds and came back with exposures and different ideas. That led some officers to mute the idea of forceful takeover of government and revolutionary ideas and therefore marked the beginning of security sorrows for Nigeria.

The revolutionary ideas said to have gained traction after the Congo interventions soon morphed into a putsch and a counter, then the civil war which accentuated the mass importation of arms and ammunition into the country in a not so controlled manner having there been partial loss of authority. Then the country began to lose it security innocence so that by the time the Nigerian–Biafran war ended, quasi non state actors incubated.

At the end of the war in 1970 the maxim that a man does not go hungry armed with a gun started becoming a reality as arms and ammunition not mopped up from both sides of the conflict found their way into wrong hands and armed robbery and other petty crimes spiked. The war led to a lot of job losses both on the part of the soldiers recruited to boost the war efforts that were offloaded immediately after and on the part of those caught on some sides where they could no longer hold on to their jobs which added to the conflict engendered economic pressures.

It was thereafter that armed robberies spiked but nothing close to the level of insecurity that the country is currently witnessing. It was within that era that highway robbery became common and the likes of Oyenusi, Osunbo, Mighty Joe, Lawrence Anini and Rambo had their days but were eventually caught, tried and executed. Those days of military rule had the luxury of marshal laws which allowed summary trial and execution so that the knowledge that there would be consequences when caught then acted as deterrence of sorts.

Thereafter, pure crime mixed with political thuggery to birth widespread breach of the law, added to popularising secret cults in schools which inured youths from human feelings and took them deeper into crime in the name of peer pressure. However, those vices never assumed the proportion of being security threat to the entire country.

Security breaches of worrying proportion was when the militancy grew wings in the Niger Delta with attendant resort to kidnapping. This made oil workers, especially expatriates which put them in flight and desertion of the Niger Delta region. Oil production also suffered as it dropped before the proclamation of the amnesty programme which quieted the region and partially returned peace.

Most people believed that aside agitation for a fair share of the natural resources in their region, that the other achievement of militancy was that it aided the transfer of power to the South South  and therefore taken by other power seekers as a route to power. Politicians started embracing violence as political negotiation tool to attain power and several of such groups prodded by politicians became common place across regions.

 We were thereafter met with Boko Haram which started as a mere rag tag religious movement which soon transmuted into full time insurgency after their leader was killed. They carried out attacks against civilians and security forces and creating many refugees in the process. Their vengeance on security forces was soon added to attacking churches. This approach made their activities sectarian as Christians claimed they were the targets,

They were so successful in their campaign that they started regularly bombing churches and police station, even the police headquarters , United Nations building and Newspaper houses in Abuja under President Goodluck Jonathan. They extended their campaign even to the South when a bomb exploded in Apapa, Lagos. From Borno State where their campaign started, they extended to the North West, and North Central, spreading it its wake, a swelter of tears and blood.

It was on the strength of the level of terrorism that President Muhammad Buhari used security as the pivot of his campaign and added anti-corruption. As soon as he won the election which campaign slogans reeked of threats of violence, he declared that he would only work with those he knows and it did not take long for the worst nepotistic approach to governance to be enthroned and reactions followed from other sections that felt left out. In the East was birthed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) which started as a peaceful and unarmed organisation before they created their armed wing, the Eastern Security network which they said its objective was to clear forests in their region from marauding herdsmen.

Meanwhile, the opening of Nigeria’s already porous borders by the government ensured influx of herdsmen from other parts of Africa while officials of and illicit arms while government tongue in cheek without condemning the destruction. The North Central was worst hit as several places in Benue state saw massive killings of indigenous populations while government indulged in platitudes of accommodate your neighbours. Allegations that the invading herdsmen were wiping off indigenous people and taking over such lands were rife and still is and as if to look for solution, government proposed RUGA and other programmes which people feared was a land grabbing scheme.

The killings and kidnappings were soon to reach all nooks and crannies of the country with attendant mass kidnap of school children and demanding ransom in hundreds of millions and nowhere was safe. Kaduna, Zamfara, Katsina, Gombe among others became hotbeds of mass killings and abductions. They started with Chibok school girls and presently, it can happen anywhere in any part of the country. In the Eastern states, several villages were attacked and sacked while in Benue, it became daily routine that the number of killings appeared to be of statistics and no longer human lives. Plateau state was not spared and Nigeria found itself in a state of war whereby soldiers took over the functions of the police which was overwhelmed.

While still battling those, the Islamic State of West African Province announced its presence and occupied swaths of territories so that some places in the North East became inaccessible. While sharing the Sambisa forest with Boko Haram, bandits were freely operating in the North West and making highways unsafe as they serially blocked them and took away passengers into the bush where some are killed and ransom collected from others. The situation got so bad that even the airport in Kaduna State had to be shut when insurgents invaded it. They also bombed an Abuja-Kaduna train and took away passengers some of who are still in their custody.

Meanwhile, terrorists embarked on serial breaking of jail houses and freeing their detained members, making our once very effective military appear helpless before. Until attacks in Abuja and the advance convoy of the President where they also sent message threatening to abduct the Commander in chief, the military appeared helpless but after ambushing and killing Brigade of Guards officers and men, the government woke up and started giving them a fight.

As it stands, the military is giving them a bloodied nose with stats and regions forming their security outfits in the face of failure of federal agents to go it alone though some of the kingpins are still making threats but the level of insecurity continues to be a cause for concern as the nation celebrates its 62 years of independence.