By Emmanuel Ugwu
If a
perceptive artist was commissioned to draw a portrait of President Muhammadu
Buhari, he would have to think of how to present an image of a conflicted,
two-faced commander in chief. Buhari is a hawk and a dove. A lion and a lamb. A
war monger and a pacifist.
He is waging wars against cattle rustlers and
Niger Delta militants while winking at the prolific mass murderers that
parade as ‘herdsmen’. He is fighting to secure Nigerian cattle and oil
facilities even as he literally feigns ignorance of a genocidal phenomenon
claiming countless Nigerian lives.
The
double standard is not as a result of an oversight. Buhari receives daily
security briefings. He is constantly updated on the condition of safety of
lives and property in Nigeria Nigeria
So,
why is Buhari treating the wastage of Nigerians by the ‘herdsmen’ with
asymmetric indifference? Why does he condone the killing of Nigerians when he
is raging against cattle rustling and pipeline vandalism? Aren’t human lives
incomparable, in value, with cattle or crude oil? Shouldn't the protection of
endangered human beings come before that of animals and oil?
This
question is important because Buhari and his generals categorize every serious
security challenge as a battle and create a special military operation to
defeat it. They dedicate a new operation to any pattern of criminal behavior
that they consider too dangerous to be allowed to wane on its own timetable.
This
inclination to resort to military operation is the reflex of a Buhari
presidency that feels it is under obligation to use any effective means to
de-escalate any spiral of criminality before its perpetrators develop a false
sense of invincibility.
Constitutional
purists take exception to this new normal of deploying the military to
undertake law enforcement assignments that fall under the purview of the
Nigerian police. The idealists say that repurposing the military as a quick fix
talisman for suppressing domestic crimes is essentially unlawful and
potentially risky. They argue that fitting the military into the vacuum of
weakness of the Nigerian police, in the long run, could have the effect of
orienting the focus of the Nigerian military away from their core mission. They
surmise that the perennial distraction of the Nigerian military with police
duties may be eroding the professionalism of our armed forces, and therefore,
vitiating the readiness of the Nigerian military to defend the country against
external aggression.
The
Nigerian Army is presently prosecuting two military operations to combat
violent crimes that the Buhari administration deems to be beyond the capacity
of the Nigerian police to confront. Operation ‘Harbin Kunama’ is addressing the
menace of cattle rustling in some parts of the North. Operation ‘Crocodile
Smile’ is battling the sabotage of oil installations by militants in the Niger
Delta region. But there is no hurricane-name-sounding, operation-scale
military response to the runaway terrorism of the ‘herdsmen’.
In
July, Buhari flew to Zamfara State to launch Operation Harbin Kunama.
Prior to that time, a part of Zamfara state, particularly Dansadau forest, had
become the playground of cattle rustlers. Armed gangs resident in that bush
were invading villages from and impoverishing people whose wealth is mainly
denominated in cattle.
Buhari
went to the forest dressed in military uniform. His physical presence and his
appearance in combat gear were a message. He wanted to signal that he took the
suffering of the victims of cattle rustling seriously, and that he was
committed to doing everything within his powers to end the scourge.
At
the occasion, Buhari spoke to the heart of the matter. He
said that his government viewed cattle rustling as a crime. He warned, in the
clearest terms, that the mandate of the operation he came to kickstart was to
achieve a complete wipeout of cattle rustlers troubling the people of Zamfara,
Katsina, Kebbi and Niger
