The North and Nigeria’s Security Challenges By Jibrin Ibrahim - Liberty TV/Radio - News - Voice For All! Vision For Alll!
Editor 4
July 8, 2019
Nigeria is confrontedby an unprecedented situation of a rapidly deteriorating security situation invirtually all parts of the country. About seven years ago, the then NationalSecurity Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki drew the nation’s attention to numerous activesecurity threats that have led the military to send troops to 34 out of the 36States in the country. Since then, the situation has become much worse. Therehas been a massive increase of the circulation of small arms and light weaponsin the country. These arms are used by insurgents, militants, criminal gangs aswell as ethnic and religious bigots to attack, kill and maim Nigerians. Inresponse, communities have been establishing numerous vigilante “self-help”groups from Civilian JTF to through neighbourhood watch groups to “Yan sa kai”to try and defend themselves.
It’s a statementthat Nigerians are fearful of and responding to the incapacity of the State andits agencies to provide for their security. Insecurity is further fueled by therapidly rising level of hate and dangerous speech in the traditional and socialmedia. Today, in many parts of the country, farmers can no longer go to theirfarms and there is a real threat of famine in the coming months. There is aboveall, a real challenge posed by the near total collapse of national and localgovernance, and the rapid and extensive growth of ungoverned spaces. Themessage everywhere is that citizens must rise to the occasion and devisestrategies to provide for their own safety.
It was in this contextthat the Arewa Research and Development Project (ARDP) in collaboration withSir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation (SABMF), Savanah Centre Diplomacy,Democracy and Development (SCDDD) and the Joint Action Committee of NorthernYouth Associations convened a two-day Northern Nigeria Security Conference inKaduna on 1st and 2nd July to develop a survival strategy for the communitiesof the North and map out pathways for national survival. The Conference focusedon what Northern communities can and should do to protect themselves andimprove public safety. Concerned citizens and people with experience insecurity, logistics and intelligence carried out a thorough assessment anddeveloped a thorough analysis of the security crisis in the country and decliningState capacity and proposed a novel approach and action plan to address therising state of insecurity in the country.
Conference workedthrough the syndicate system in which stakeholders with specialties worked witheach other to develop cogent analysis and recommendations which they reportedback to plenary on. The syndicates were on: The Boko Haram Insurgency,Ethno-religious conflicts, the Farmer-Herder Conflicts, Rural Banditry andCommunal Conflicts, Kidnapping and Armed Robbery, Urban Youth Violence andDrugs and Regional Diplomacy towards our neighbors in Cameroon, Chad, Niger andBenin Republics.
The Conference drewattention to the fact that Nigeria, and the North in particular ischaracterized by deep structural challenges that have created vulnerabilitiesthat push towards conflicts and rising violence. Poverty has been growing anddeepening over the past decade while inequality and conspicuous consumption ofthe rich, most of whom have stolen public funds, is creating anger among the people.Northern Nigeria has the highest population growth rate in the contemporaryworld with a fertility rate of over seven births per woman in the average. Thishas created a huge youth bulge confronted by unemployment and underemployment.These young people are fleeing urban poverty and migrating to urban slums,squalor and precarity.
The root of thecurrent crisis is the breakdown of socialisation processes within the family.The family is in crisis and high poverty levels have created a significant pushfactor leading to poor families sending their boys out as almajirai andmarrying their daughters out at a very young age – often, before their teenageyears. This means families are abdicating their traditional roles of groomingthe next generation to adulthood. The girls are married off too young, producemany children while often lacking the maturity to maintain their marriage whileplaying into male patriarchal notions of men having the right of frequentchange of spouses. The result, serial polygamy and unstable families.
Still on the family,the rise of new religious movements has affected socialisation and religiouseducation within the home. The younger generation moves into new religiousmovements and no longer receive religious education from their parents andtraditional clergy within the community. This process opens the possibilitiesfor the penetration of radical ideas, interrogation of parental and ultimatelypolitical authority. This process is insidious because it undermines the transmissionof values within the community. It was in this context that with the Boko Haraminsurgency, we see young men slaughtering their own parents as if they weregoats. The scorched earth policy that has marked the rural banditry in NorthCentral and North Western Nigeria is another marker of this tendency.Meanwhile, the disintegration of the family is essentially among the poorestsection of society while elite families are able to invest in the provision ofall-round quality education for their own children. Northern society istherefore deeply bifurcated and the ruling class is often unaware of thereality of life on the other side. At the same time, social cohesion and familylife for virtually all families – elite and the masses are being torn apart by aserious and growing problem of drug addiction.
These dimensionsindicate that the nature of the problem is much more than security andsolutions must be all encompassing. Social issues must be addressed and the13.2 million children out of school in Northern Nigeria must receive theeducation they need and deserve. The Almajiri system must be addressed andearly marriage for girls must be discouraged, and access to school until theyare 18 years is the best pathway. The medium-term approach to improved securitytherefore has a massive role for parents, religious and traditionalleader.
This year, the BokoHaram insurgency is a decade old, and while their forces has been, according tothe consecrated word, been degraded, they are still doing a lot of harm. Themilitary approach is simply insufficient and there is a risk that the conflictwill linger for many more years if the “soft” elements of countering violentextremism such as improved religious education and control and development ofcounter narratives by religious authorities is not fast tracked. Improvingcivil-military relations and winning hearts and minds of civilians so that theybecome willing to share intelligence with security agencies is crucial.Security, is everybody’s business and communities must be inward looking alsoto work out what they can do to improve their own safety.
One of the mostserious challenges in the North, is that a lot of the violence and killingsthat do not have the drama of playing into the Christian/Muslim divide hardlyget reported. Recent violence between Muslim and Christian belligerents inTaraba State for example got massive press reports. When the conflict turned toChristian Tiv and Jukun groups, the media lost interest. The massive killingsin Zamfara, Kaduna and Katsina States have also not had a lot of presscoverage. It is therefore necessary for Northern communities to createmechanism for the documentation of the insecurity they live on a daily basis.This could be the basis of feeding into the implementation of a nationalprogramme of early warning and early response to violent conflict that must bedeveloped.
The Nigerian PoliceForce is focused on the provision of VIP protection for those who can afford topay. It is virtually absent in contemporary rural Nigeria, so the police arefriends only to the elite. In this context, all communities must startconsidering the most effective modalities for promoting their security. Theperformance of security agencies must however be improved so that the trend ofself-help and massive procurement of arms by civilians is curtailed. Nigeriancommunities must insist on a robust conversation with Federal and StateGovernments on creating synergy in promoting public safety, combatingcriminality and peace building.
Finally, we all have acollective stake in encouraging the development of responsive and responsiblesocial media platforms and influencers to combat hate and dangerous speech andpromote peaceful coexistence in the country.