Beyond the Delta Bloodbath

ENGAGEMENTS BY Chidi   Amuta

Nigeria’s endemic insecurity took a different turn last week. Sixteen active duty soldiers were ambushed and killed by presumed youth militants in the Okuama area of Delta State. Not only were the soldiers killed, their remains were reportedly treated with barbaric disrespect and indignity. The most significant symbolism of the bloodbath is not that soldiers died. Soldiers signed up if necessary to die fighting in defence of the nation. In this instance, the soldiers did not die in any combat situation. The deceased were men of war who had gone in search of inter communal peace in their theatre of operation. They were slaughtered instead by  a faction of the very people among whom they had gone to make peace.

The feverish hunt for the real perpetrators and effective background to what happened in Okuama has since commenced. The free use of illicit weapons as well as military gear by rival youth militia is self-evident.  The flamboyant presence of state enabled warlords as non-state wielders of illegal arms is also obvious. A long standing proliferation of military grade weapons in the entire area has been taken for granted for far too long.  From the heydays of the Niger Delta militancy, all manner of criminality has become endemic. The Nigerian state itself cannot totally be exonerated from culpability in the militarization of consciousness in parts of riverine Delta.

When government recognizes certain warlords to the extent of ceding aspects of national security to them, the background for authorised criminality has been laid. It is common knowledge that the federal government has in recent times paid billions of Naira to companies owned by militant warlords to perform functions ordinarily reserved for the state or its agencies. But the precise immediate cause of this unwarranted bloodbath of the soldiers is what now constitutes a clear and present national security threat.

Understandable outrage and palpable fear has swept across the nation. There is outrage at the  barbarity of what has happened. There is a clear sense of collective humiliation that our soldiers should be humiliated this way. But there is also fear as to what might result. Our history of the relationship between the military and the civilian populace is not too edifying. When civilians and soldiers clash, mayhem usually ensues. More people get killed than when the trouble started. Houses get burnt. Property gets destroyed. In all such aftermath, the victims are usually innocent others who happen to be in the vicinity of the affected neighbourhood.

Beyond predictable nationwide condemnations of the killing of the soldiers, something of a national consensus seems to have quickly emerged. It is on how not to treat our men and women under arms who are in harm’s way for the sake of the security of the rest of us all. The men and women who wear the nation’s uniforms in the pursuit of peace and security of the nation deserve to be treated with dignity. The choice to dedicate one’s life in the pursuit of the peace and security of the nation is the highest dedication to nation and fellow citizens.

Above everything else, the armed forces remain the highest expression of our national sovereignty. To assault men and women under arms and in uniform is a direct assault on national sovereignty. To assault and even kill personnel of the armed forces except in war is an outrageous affront on the supreme authority of the state. Those who bear illicit arms and use them to challenge the state ought to be fully aware of the consequences.

In encounters between armed forces personnel and even the most irate civilian factions, there is a clear Red line. Civilians in possession of unauthorized arms ought to know that attacking and killing active duty soldiers is crossing that Red line. Therefore, those who expected the worst outcome in retaliatory actions over the Delta incident may not have been too far off the mark.

Fear of frightening reprisals in all such situations is not just peculiarly Nigerian. It is inherent in the training and professional instincts of every military. For the military mindset, humanity resolves into two categories of people: Enemy or Friend. A Friend is to be protected. An Enemy is to be vanquished. Therefore, when a civilian populace that is entitled to the protection of soldiers crosses the Red lie to relate to soldiers as enemies, it sets itself up to be treated as an enemy force. The risk that we run in the Delta bloodbath is therefore a consequence of this breach of the psychological make up of every soldier. The challenge of military and political leadership in the present situation is one of management of violence to serve the ends of democratic civility and orderly coexistence. That obligation happens to be above the limited confines of the military’s professional mindset.

The situation requires a deft management of force to prevent unstructured reprisals and flagrant violations of the rights of innocent citizens. Reports from the affected area indicate that there have been increased hostile activity as well as suspected reprisals by the military and other opportunistic beneficiaries from the crisis. Clearly, the blazes that have been caught on video look more like reprisals by a determined adversary. The challenge to the military authorities in the situation is one of restraint to prevent reprisal attacks on the affected communities. For the political leaders, the challenge is to avoid incendiary rhetoric that could incite further aggravation of a bad situation. Even with the heat of anger on both sides and the avoidable actions that have taken place, the supreme national challenge remains that of maintaining peace, law and order in the affected areas.

Those who have equated the casualty count in the Delta incident to what has been happening to our troops in the North East miss the whole point. In the North East, there is an ongoing insurgency war. Casualties in a war situation are understandably considerable. It does not include the cold blooded massacre of service personnel on peace keeping operations. It is lazy analysis to lump the Delta bloodbath with other losses of lives of soldiers in different other parts of the country and term it the human costs of ‘insecurity’. A deliberate mass murder of military personnel whose only crime is that they happen to be soldiers by criminal gangs belongs in a different place. It must be punished for the reckless criminality that it is.

The incident in the Delta is ugly. But it is not new. We have had nasty confrontation between civilians and the armed forces previously. There was the famous Odi incident in Bayelsa State. In the early days of the Obasanjo civilian administration, a contingent of policemen deployed to keep the peace in Odi was attacked and most of them killed. Soldiers were sent in to investigate and bring perpetrators to book. Some of them were also killed. Clearly, the will of the state and the armed supremacy of the sovereignty of the state was under effective assault. The state responded by literally obliterating the Odi community. My late friend and then Senate President,  Chuba Okadigbo, later retold me the story of Odi. He took a Senate team to see what could be saved of Odi. When they got there, they were greeted by an eerie silence: charred homesteads, a field of carnage and not a single living being. His rhetorical question was forever unanswered: “Where is Odi?” Silence and emptiness were the answer that has lingered till today.

Similarly, inter communal clashes in the Zaki Biam area of Benue State assumed political dimensions during Obasanjo’s first term as civilian president. Civil peace was severely threatened. The will of the state was under severe threat as one of the community leaders happened to be a former Chief of Army Staff, General Victor Malu, whose politics ran at cross purposes with those of Mr. Obasanjo. Mr. Obasanjo ordered an armed invasion of Zaki Biam. Houses were razed. Many died. The community fled to neighbouring places.

Taken together, Odi and Zaki Biam become a gruesome short hand for a doctrine on the use of force in the preservation of the Nigerian state.  It is neither new nor original. It goes back to Hobbes, Locke and Weber. Even Machiavelli had words of caution for those who must affront the Prince with force.

Let us give it a Nigerian name  and call it the Obasanjo doctrine. In its simplest formulation, it clearly indicates that democracy should not mean reckless endangerment of the state by armed factions of the populace. At the back of this doctrine is the ancient stipulation that in order for individuals and groups to enjoy full freedoms and rights, the state must exist in the first place. In other words, the existence of the state is the first condition for the existence of rights. There are no rights in an anarchic vacuum.  But the existence of the state is a function of the prevalence of a superior force over other forms of force, especially those that challenge the state’s monopoly of violence and force. 

In the Obasanjo doctrine, therefore, once any section of the Nigerian community takes up arms to challenge or threaten the pre-eminence of the federal government, it becomes imperative for the federal sovereign to overwhelm that insurrection with terminal precision and decisive finality. That is the only way to discourage future random challenges to national sovereignty. According to Max Weber, “a state is a legitimate monopoly of force over a definite territory. The territorial legitimacy of a state corresponds to the area occupied by the group of individuals who signed on to the social contract.”

For a battle tested combatant, the Obasanjo doctrine is a derivative of the civil war dictum of “to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done!”. It served the national purpose of reuniting the country in 1970. When the military quit the stage in 1999 and enthroned civil democratic rule, it hoisted the doctrine of superiority of force as a cornerstone of national security.

Beyond Odi and Zaki Biam, the rise of militant ethno national and regional challenges to national sovereignty became more frequent. Easily the most pronounced and strategically significant was the Niger Delta militancy. It became fierce soon after Obasanjo completed his two term presidency in 2007. His successor, President Umaru  Yar’Adua had to contend with a fierce insurgency in the Niger Delta. His peace gestures were mistaken for weakness. Yar’Adua invoked the Obasanjo doctrine. He mobilised the armed forces for a full scale assault on the worst parts of the Niger Delta. A full scale aerial bombardment of the areas controlled by the worst militant leaders was followed by ground assaults and take downs of militant camps and bastions. The overwhelming force of the federal forces secured a pax Nigeriana. The region was offered the human face of the Amnesty programme as an alternative to total military occupation. The Obasanjo doctrine would once again seem to have worked to the benefit of the Nigerian state.

Beyond the gruesome symbolism of assaulting the sovereignty of the nation, the killing of the soldiers in Delta is only one aspect of the spiraling insecurity in the nation. Other forms of our insecurity undermine other dimensions of our life as a nation. Kidnappings and abductions  constrain the freedom of citizens to move freely in pursuit of their daily lives. Banditry in rural areas affect the nation’s food security by endangering the right of farmers to plant and harvest their crops freely. Separatist violence and militancy affect political freedoms of people in the affected areas for fear that a free expression of their political views could lead to threats to their lives. In the areas subject to jihadist violence, terrorism and fundamentalist insurgency, the secular essence of the Nigerian state is constantly called to question by militant zealots who seek territory, tribute to advance their bad ideology. Arguably, no aspect of the effects of our insecurity is  more injurious that the other. But perpetrators of acts of insecurity  whose actions endanger the existence of the very state undermine the very foundations of our corporate existence as a nation.

The Okuama killings have happened at a time when the need for national reassertion is highest. Therefore, the fallen heroes of Okuama waterside must  be laid to rest in a most befitting manner. Adequate compensation and lifelong support must be extended to their families and dependents. The president as Commander-in-Chief must attend their funeral, preferably in full military regalia. He has taken a good step in conferring national honours on them. He must say something memorable about the sanctity of our national sovereignty and the special place of heroes who wear our nation’s uniforms and get into harm’s way in order to keep us all safe. It is the hour to serve notice to all trouble-makers and criminals that the hour of the walk over Nigerian state is over.