Nigeria’s Invincible Gunmen

 

By Jerry Uwah

Nigeria’s security crisis has taken a precarious nose-dive. Inveterate gangsters derisively tagged gunmen by the Nigerian media have practically turned the country into one huge killing field. 

Last Tuesday the gunmen killed 21 innocent people in different parts of the country. The previous day they killed 18 in one community in Anambra state. The situation in Rivers state is so deplorable that the governor had to declare a curfew. 

The strange development in the escapades of the gunmen is that they are now bold enough to take on those paid and armed to protect the society. In the last two weeks, dozens of policemen have been mowed down by the gunmen who take on police stations as cheap targets. 

In Imo, Anambra and Katsina states, police stations were raided and razed down with massive police casualties and collateral damages. In each of the incidents, police armories were looted by the freelance gunmen after the killing sprees. 

If policemen have become cheap targets for the gunmen, civilians are just sitting ducks. Fulani herdsmen have turned Benue state to one unsupervised slaughter slab. Last week they sauntered into a sprawling camp where some of the thousands of people they displaced are taking refuge and killed as many as they could. 

Two weeks ago an isolated and defenseless community in Ebonyi state was the target of the Fulani herdsmen. They killed, raped, looted and razed down houses. The war of the Fulani herdsmen knows no boundaries. They target both the rich and poor, high and lowly. Last month Samuel Ortom’s convoy drove into their ambush and drew flaks from the murderous herdsmen. The governor of Benue state missed the herdsmen’s bullets by whiskers. 

After the unsuccessful attack on the governor, the herdsmen handed him a one-month ultimatum and vowed that they would eventually cut him down. As highly placed as the governor of Benue state is, he is as defenseless as the thousands of men, women and children in IDP camps strewn across Benue state where people are taking refuge from the ubiquitous herdsmen. 

Ortom is defenseless because even as a governor he has no police under his command. The herdsmen’s cache of AK-47 rifles and bullet proof charms is superior to anything the governor can muster. Besides, the graveyard silence by the men in Aso Rock gives the herdsmen tacit backing of the federal might.

Bandits have taken over a huge chunk of north-western Nigeria. They raid schools at will and abduct students in their hundreds for ransom. The business of kidnapping school children has become so lucrative that many schools have been shut to protect innocent children from the bandits. The bandits freely raid villages in Zamfara, Katsina and Kaduna states. They kill, maim and rape without anyone lifting a finger in protest.  

Ironically, the Nigerian military is gradually losing ground in the internecine war with Islamic lunatics in the north-east. Last week, Sani Bello, the embattled governor of Niger state lamented that Boko Haram which the military claimed to have decimated five years ago, planted their flags in some villages in Niger state. They seized women from their husbands and slaughtered anyone who dared to protest their contemptible presence. 

Blueprint newspaper celebrated the macabre dance of the Islamic lunatics in Niger state with a lead headline proclaiming: “Boko Haram two hours from Abuja.” That is the gruesome reality on ground. 

There is something strange about the war in the north-east. In 1970, the Nigerian military with a handful of tanks and five archaic MiG-17 fighter planes crushed a rebellion led by a Sand Hurst-trained army lieutenant-colonel within 30 months. 

Now a primitive group of terrorists lead by an illiterate Al-majiri has pinned down a military with scores of modern tanks, Helicopter gunships and Alpha jets for 11 years. No one in the Nigerian military can tell the world why Boko Haram is more invincible than the Biafran military which had an organized army with more than 15 colonels and dozens of majors along with a pocket-size navy and a micro air force. 

Corruption and poverty are the root of Nigeria’s mounting security crisis. There are mounting fears that Nigeria’s men in uniform are not sufficiently armed and financially motivated for the worsening situation in the battle lines. 

Sometime ago a senator said on the floor of the senate that Boko Haram terrorists are better motivated financially than the men in Nigeria’s military uniforms. 

The man illustrated his claims with figures. The military protested but could not flaunt figures. Last Wednesday the two generals interviewed by NTAi protested openly about poor allocation of funds from politicians both from Aso Rock and the National Assembly. The politicians argue vehemently that what is allocated does not get to the men in the battle field. No one knows where the road blocks obstructing the flow of remuneration to the men in the battle field are. 

Corruption and Nigeria’s skewed income distribution system is the breeding ground for the escalating insecurity in the land. The cheats who allocate Nigeria’s enormous resources to themselves have inadvertently made Africa’s largest economy the country with the world’s highest number of people in abject poverty. 

India with a population of 1.3 billion people used to have the highest number of poor people in the world. Everyone knew why India had that notoriety. Its population is 1.1 billion more than that of Nigeria. Now Nigeria with a population about that of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has replaced India in the infamous poverty club. 

With a population of 207 million Nigeria has 122 million people below poverty line. India has less than 100 million. Northern Nigeria takes 90 percent of the blame for Nigeria’s notoriety as the world’s headquarters of poverty. Northern Nigeria is actually the world’s headquarters of poverty. That is why the banditry and terror war in the north is irrepressible. 

In the last 30 years, northern elites cornered the wealth of the country to themselves, built very few schools and hospitals and sent children of the poor to Al-majiri schools where they learn the Qur’an and graduate as unskilled illiterates. 

The unskilled and illiterate graduates of the Al-majiri schools are behind the banditry and kidnappings that has turned Nigeria into one huge killing field. The situation is worsened by the free flow of small arms into the country. One estimate suggests that with 320 million small arms, there are more guns in Nigeria than humans. 

The Al-majiri have a choice between dying from hunger due to abject poverty and taking up arms and extorting those who impoverish them and probably dying in the process. Either way, death stares at them. However, with the second option the risk of death is lower because the country’s security system is overwhelmed by the intimidating cache of small arms in the hands of the bandits. The first option offers certain death from starvation so majority opt for the second option and turn the streets into slaughter slabs. 

With unemployment at 33.3 percent, even 600, 000 policemen cannot stem the spate of robberies, kidnappings and banditry in Nigeria. Nigeria with its enormous wealth has more hungry people than even the world’s poorest nations. That is responsible for the breakdown of law and order. 

The first line of defense against the breakdown of law and order can only come from the economic front. Nigeria makes more babies than it creates jobs. Consequently, what is happening now is a miniature of what the future holds for a country where population grows faster than the economy. 

The federal government must empower the private sector to create jobs and take millions of unskilled irate youths off the streets. Government can start the process by opening 100, 000 hectares of mechanized rice farms in each of the 19 northern states. That would not only create jobs but provide food for Nigeria’s army of 10 million people starving on the throes of malnutrition. The federal government can save enough money to open those rice farms if it compels its officials to cut their coats according to their cloths rather than their sizes. Government officials have defiantly live in obscene ostentation even as revenue dropped by 60 percent and pushes millions below poverty line. Politicians and top civil servants should be the first to sacrifice for the fight against poverty.

*Uwah is a commentator on public issues