As
the National Security Adviser, you have to be grossly incompetent to not know
how the Fulani herdsmen (yes, they are herdsmen and they are Fulani) conduct
their raids. If you knew and just refused to do something about it, anything
that would stop these mindless, gory massacres of unarmed innocent Nigerians,
then you are just asinine or unpatriotic or both. And if you have laid
everything out for your boss, in this case, the President, and he does not have
the political cojones to do what he is required by law to do – that is, the
protection of the lives and properties of Nigerians, the President has failed.
It must amaze and
confound anybody with a scintilla of security awareness – how much more,
national security awareness – that there are people roaming around the entire
country with illegal weapons, even if they are not killing people with it. No
serious security-conscious person, how much more, one with statutory
responsibility and obligation to prevent such acquisition in the first place;
and the confiscation of such weapons and prosecution of culprits, will sleep
well at night knowing that the country is awash with such weapons. But what is
even more galling is that the culprits are killing people in dozens, almost
daily, and everybody who is getting paid to act is wringing their hands and
praying to God to help them. Come on!
This is
not the first time I will write about terrorism and national security matters.
And each time I deal with these topics, I don’t just wail. I proffer
solutions…practical solutions. But each time I write, I get a couple of
ignorant feedbacks from some people that I believe have vested interests in the
perpetuation of these heinous crimes questioning my qualification to address
such issues. It wasn’t until after Jonathan left office that we received
validation about what we had suspected all along – that our military leaders
were diverting funds meant for the military to personal pockets; that
discipline and respect had taken flight from among the echelons – top to bottom,
and that our armed forces had been reduced to little more than the Boy Scouts.
We are here now. It is what it is. What should we do to solve this problem?
First, I believe that
Boko Haram, as an entity, has not gone anywhere, just like Al-Qaeda never went
anywhere. Just because Boko Haram is no longer making videos doesn’t mean they
disarmed, disbanded and went home. Definitely, they did not surrender to
anybody. So, we have to assume they are still very much around. Knowing that
you have a problem and being able to identify and categorize the problem are
critical first steps in solving the problem.
Which leads to
my second point: if Boko Haram has not gone away, it most likely morphed into a
marauding group or several marauding groups with loose affiliation (or no
affiliation) to a central command. In other words, no command and control
entity at which Nigeria and its
neighbors could direct conventional firepower. If there is no known commander,
no headquarters, no uniforms, no barracks, who then is Nigeria fighting? And the territory that
these attackers occupy span southern Niger Republic, to most of
northern Nigeria, through to
central Nigeria, to the northeast
(including the infamousSambissa Forest), northwest Cameroon and southwest Chad. This is a pretty darn huge swath of
land with various weather, vegetation and topography, making it almost
impossible to neutralize the enemy. Most serious analysts will recognize this
and begin to think of ways to solve the problem. Wringing hands and folding
arms are certainly not some of the options.
General Abayomi
Olonishakin, Chief of Defense Staff (CDS) and Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai,
Chief of Army Staff (CoAS), with possibly Air Marshall Sadique Abubakar, Chief
of Air Staff (CAS) need to take a series of helicopter rides across the areas
mentioned above. If they do that, here is what they would discover:
Thousands and
thousands of cattle being herded in different groups all heading from places
like Maradi, Zinder and Differ in southernNiger, southward to northern Nigeria.
These cattle, if you look further, are coming from Mali, going through the
northern plains ofBurkina Faso and entering Niger through its
western border. The herders have enough sense to bypass Niamey, the capital
of Nigerand even avoid towns like Tillaberi and Dosso so that they would
not incur the wrath of the people there. They skirt the edges of other major
towns and head south into Nigeria.
There is no physical
barrier whatsoever preventing these cattle and their herders from crossing any
of the aforementioned countries and from entering Nigeria. Where there are
physical border posts, most of the cattle do not go through them. They just
grazed through the non-delineated international borders. In other
words, Nigeria is losing tons of revenue on import duties from those
bringing into the countries hundreds of thousands of these cattle on a daily
basis.
Throughout their
peripatetic ambulation from Mali or Burkina Fasoor Niger,
these herders do not carry weapons. They carry sticks and occasionally
cutlasses. Certainly, no AK-47s. Yes, they ravage people’s farms along the way
but they do not encounter serious pushbacks.
And before anybody
writes back to me asking how I know this, listen carefully: I know because I
have personally witnessed it. I have done the tedious work of following the
cattle and learning the issues. I have put my feet on the ground in these
places. So, two of the simple, obvious questions that these three senior
officers should be asking include: Why are the herders carrying weapons
in Nigeriawhen they do not
carry weapons in all these other countries through which they have travelled?
From where are they
getting these weapons?
The answer to the
first question is easy: The herders do not encounter serious resistances when
they move through farms inMali, Burkina Faso and Niger. And even
when they enter northernNigeria, they are tolerated. Why? Cultural affinity.
There are absolutely no physical or cultural differences between the Tuaregs,
the Fulanis, the Zarmas or the Hausas of Mali and those found in Southern
Burkina Faso, northern Ghana, northern Togo, northernBenin and
northern Nigeria. They are nomads. When you see these people with their
cattle, you do not see women with them. How do you think they satisfy nature’s
call? Of course, they TAKE (without resistance) young girls that they find in
the villages and settlements along their routes. Some of those settlements and
villages – dirt poor with nothing…with people…human beings…literally scratching
dust for food, living in thatched roof huts…in hot, dry, almost-prehistoric
conditions, depending solely on seasonal plants and fruits that grow in their
area during the short periods of rain – are all too happy to offer their women
to these men who bring goats along with their cattle. This is not fable. This
is hard fact that I personally encountered in some of these areas.
The herdsmen know these routes. They’ve
been through them before. In fact, they’ve probably sired one or two offspring
during previous visits. The villagers are probably relatives. While they lean
more towards Islam, they are not even close to being religious…certainly not
staunch Muslims. They don’t settle long enough in one place to build a grand
mosque. And they don’t engage in proselytization. Those who say they care more
about their cattle than they do about their children are dead right. All they
care about are their cattle. When a herdsman is on the move with his cattle,
meandering through the bushes (and people’s farms), he is with other grown-ups
or older teenagers. The only time you see children (pre-teens) with them is
when they are near a settlement. So, there is no resistance at all when they
come through these areas where they share the same culture with the locals.
Therefore, they do not need weapons in these areas.
But the deeper south
they go in Nigeria, the more resistance they encounter. Nigerian farmers
are beginning to resist the nonchalant ravaging of their crops. Also, western education
has spread deeper into northern Nigeria. And so has Christianity. Fewer
parents now want their girls to be impregnated by an absentee man, especially
parents in places south of Niger, Kaduna, Plateau, Gombe and Adamawa states
where Christian and Western mores have taken hold; and where these herdsmen
seem to have been trapped. These have occasioned a dearth of “easy” girls that
they could just TAKE. How then do you persuade a virile herdsman who has been
living in the wilderness with cows for months, and who has not had a woman for
the same period, to not forcibly TAKE a vulnerable young girl?
In anticipation of
these resistances in Nigeria, the herdsmen got smart; they started acquiring
all sorts of weapons as soon as they entered Nigeria, including the dreaded,
easily-available, low-maintenance, standard-issue-for-many-countries-military,
assault rifle – the AK-47. I have seen hundreds of cattle and their herders
moving in the direction mentioned above without a single weapon. It is when
they enter Nigeria that they acquire weapons and willfully brandish
and use them. They may be itinerant people, unsophisticated in the ways of
static Nigerians; they are not stupid. They know that they have one of “their”
own at the helm of affairs inNigeria. He will not support the kind of
shoot-at-sight order that was recently issued by a regional police chief
in Ghana to deal with Fulani (yes, they were identified as Fulani)
herdsmen that were destroying farmlands in the Ghanaian Konongo area. (By the
way, since that order was issued in January this year, there have been no
further destruction of farmlands. And no herdsman has been seen with a weapon
more lethal than a cutlass – meaning, word got to the herdsmen in the
bushes!).
Nigeria has to
deal decisively with any and all kinds of security threats. Herdsmen armed with
a weapon found with cattle eating crops that don’t belong to the herdsmen must
be treated like an armed robber. There is no difference in what both do. They
take things that belong to others with the threat and/or the actual use of a
weapon. They should be shot at sight if caught in the act. And if not caught in
the act, they should be arrested and prosecuted. Believe me, once a few of them
have faced the wrath of the law, the word will get to the rest in the bushes.
And they will conform just like they have in Ghana.
This is not the kind
of mission for which the Nigeria Police Force is equipped or trained. As much
as I abhor the use of our military for internal, law enforcement issues, this
is something the military can and should do. The Federal government should
label these attacks as Terrorism…which is what they are…and embark on a
strategic re-orientation and re-organization of the military to combat it. Our
military’s current posture and organization do not mirror the potentially
existential threats that we currently face. Our military’s current Tactics,
Techniques and Procedures – TTPs – are archaic and should be revamped to
reflect our long and short-term threats. We are not likely to be invaded
by Cameroon, Chad, Niger or Benin. And we are not
saber-rattling with any country that could come at us from across
the Atlantic. So, why do we still have formations equipped and trained to
defend against such conventional battles that aren’t likely to happen while
terrorists like Boko Haram and herdsmen are running rings around our military
and making mincemeats out of us?
We need to redouble
our efforts at training for guerilla warfare – for that is what is needed to
fight enemies that have no easily-identifiable command and control structures,
no uniformed fighters, no static locations like barracks and no heavy fighting
vehicles. We need to triple our efforts at intelligence collection, collation,
analysis, dissemination and actuation.
Our military should
be deployed in large, overwhelming and intimidating numbers, to the vulnerable
areas of our borders to support the customs and immigration personnel. They
should be supported with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) otherwise known as
drones, that can operate at all times of the day in identifying and tracking
people, cattle and weapons illegally entering our country. These are not cheap
ventures. But with our Senators (109 of them) earning roughly N1.5 billion
monthly, the members of the House of Representatives too not too far behind
them, and all the ungodly perks going to members of the Executives at both the
Federal and State levels, somebody with strong political cojones, integrity and
strength of character can find the funds to do it. And I am sure members of our
military will be glad to be so engaged. Every military officer worth his/her
salt will be proud to defend the territorial integrity of his/her country (with
his/her life, if necessary) as long as he/she knows that others, like the
country’s civilian leadership, are doing what they are supposed to do.
I threw my support
behind President Buhari in 2015 with the expectation that he would
protect Nigeria and Nigerians from humiliating attacks like those we
are now seeing. I thought he would repair the damage done to the military by
his predecessors and build on the good they have done. Sadly, after three
years, it would seem like the president has taken his foot off the pedal and
the military has return to the old slide. It would seem like we have run out of
ideas in the national security realm. This is very sad. I would do anything to
be a fly on the wall, listening to Buhari’s national security team giving
advice on how to deal with these security challenges. What advice are they
offering?
* Abiodun Ladepo, formerly on the staff of The Guardian, is a Nigerian patriot and he writes from Ibadan, Oyo State
Comments
Post a Comment