A Half Century Of Banditry In Nigeria

 By Chidi Odinkalu

Since well before Nigeria’s return to elective governance in 1999, the country has been overtaken by a progressive escalation of what Hannah Arendt in her classic On Violence called “a massive intrusion of criminal violence into politics”. In contemporary Nigerianism, the word for this is “banditry”. 

“Bandits” is a conveniently capacious bogeyman for insecurity in Nigeria that precludes necessary questions as to the provenance of the descent into lawlessness. It captures diverse elements that may include terrorists, cultists, herdsmen, kidnappers, criminal gangs, and militants. 

Ndigbo: Caught Betwixt And Between In Nigeria (3)

 …Wrong Decisions & Missed Opportunities 

By Ichie Tiko Okoye
According to the source document – recently declassified secret American diplomatic dispatches – “The North was minded to use the civil war as a tool to reassert its dominance of national affairs…The northern section of the Nigerian military was the best equipped in the country. To ensure the region’s continued dominance, the British assigned most of the army and air force resources to the North. It was only the Navy’s they could not transfer. 

“All the elite military schools were there. The headquarters of the infantry and artillery corps were there. Kaduna alone was home to the headquarters of the Nigerian Army’s 1st Division, Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria (Army Depot), Air Force Training School and Nigerian Defence Academy. (On the other hand), the Eastern Region had seized a DC-3 and a Fokker F-27 from the Nigerian Air Force in April (1967, and) NNS Ibadan, a Nigerian Navy Seaward Defence Boat (SDB) that docked in Calabar Port, was quickly made Biafran.”