Can Buratai Provide an Antidote to Insecurity?

POLITICAL NOTES

Many Nigerians are shocked that since President Bola Tinubu assumed office, the promoters of a former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai (rtd), have renewed their campaigns for him to be appointed into another strategic security position.

The campaigns started last year after the former army chief, who is now the Nigerian Ambassador to Benin Republic, spoke as a guest lecturer at a one-day symposium on National Security, organised by Arewa House in Kaduna.

At the event, Buratai had surprisingly called for dialogue between governments and armed groups. He argued that a growing practice of engaging in dialogue with all parties to a conflict had emerged since the mid-1980s.

While his speech at the occasion endeared him to those who are now promoting him, others were shocked that the recommendation he made was contrary to his conduct while he was the army chief.

The question agitating the minds of some people is: At what stage did he realise that governments need to dialogue and negotiate with agitators to end insecurity in the country?

Many recalled that the army under him was characterised by impunity, brutality and extra-judicial killings of agitators and protesters between 2015 and January 2021, according to the various reports of rights groups, including Amnesty International.

Some military officers also had their promising careers abruptly terminated by unjust compulsory disengagement from service.

It is on record that he compulsorily disengaged 38 senior officers unjustly in one fell swoop without following due process. When the courts and members of the National Assembly ordered the army to reinstate some of the officers, he was accused of displaying his alleged disdain for rule of law by bluntly refusing.

The Zaria massacre of Shiites in 2015 was also to his discredit. The army under him used ‘Operation Crocodile Smile,’ and ‘Operation Python Dance’ to provoke the once peaceful and now proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to establish an armed wing. 

Some of his military operations in the southern parts of the country were considered unnecessary and only provoked violent agitations and generated tensions because of their human rights abuses.

The human rights record of the army under him was so abysmal that many had threatened to write petitions against him to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Many Nigerians believe that Tinubu needs fresh hands and should not reopen healed wounds by recycling some of those who allegedly contributed significantly to the division of Nigerians along ethnic and religious lines.

It  is also  believed that some  of  the  people scheming for  positions in the present administration had already given their best in the fight against insecurity.