In the course of his most recent working visit to France and the United Kingdom, not less than two hundred and fifty Nigerians across seven States were mowed down by vile terrorists. This is not to add many others who were maimed or abducted. These gory and avoidable deaths inevitably occasioned national wailing, lamentation and indignation.
Rankled to frustration by their sheer magnitude, incessant occurrences and our verging at State Failure, an elder statesman and a soldier’s soldier, General T.Y. Danjuma, urged Nigerians for the second time, to find recourse in self-defense.
Even though President Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not demonstrate requisite fellow-feeling and sensitivity by cutting short his working visit to comfort his citizens and to address these wanton killings forthwith, it was inevitable that upon his return, the compelling and dire issue of heightened insecurity would occupy the upper reaches of his schedule.
In consonance with this, he convened a meeting of security and intelligence chiefs on Wednesday, 25th April 2025 at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The National Security Adviser(NSA), Nuhu Ribadu, who briefed the media in the aftermath of the said meeting disclosed that: the President had issued fresh directives to the security agencies to restore peace and stability in troubled parts of the country; the President said “enough is enough” and that he wanted to see results; and the President had directed them to work more closely with governors, traditional rulers community leaders, especially where issues were rooted in local conflicts.
It is heartwarming that the President had issued yet another marching order to the security and intelligence chiefs. In spite of this, Nigerians are entitled to a sense of weariness, if not outright cynicism. After all, on numerous occasions our security chiefs had been given such marching orders. Instead of these security challenges to abate or cease all together, they have intensified. Due to the fact that these presidential orders are taken with levity or are benignly ignored, the terrorists get emboldened. They mow down Nigerians in their numbers and with unmatched ferocity. A typical example is that of the notorious terrorist, Bello Turji. In spite of the military high command’s grating refrain that his days were numbered and that he was a dead man walking, he continues to wax even stronger and to bestride Zamfara State like a colossus. He does not only go on killing binges of villagers, he and his minions exact taxes from them and they do so with demonic efficiency.
On account of the ebb and flow of these terrorist attacks and the endless nature of the war against terror, Nigerians have begun to speculate, wrongly or rightly, that it it had assumed the proportion of a vast political economy and a viable enterprise in which some stakeholders are feeding fat. Such stakeholders, bereft of any moral scruples or compass, may therefore not be keen to see to its end. Though this theory seems weird and way over the top, many Nigerians are inclined to subscribe to it. Otherwise, how come these mendacious terrorists kill Nigerians in their hundreds, sometimes at night, and at other times in broad day light, and then they disappear into thin air? How come the very few that are alleged to be apprehended are hardly brought to trial or if they are at all, they are said to be tried at Abuja, far from the jurisdictions of their heinous and dastardly crimes? Why do our service chiefs excel in playing to the gallery by giving marching orders to their troops in the media space as happened recently? Has it not occurred to them that by giving such public orders, ostensibly to ingratiate themselves with their bosses, that they are unwittingly serving the terrorists notice either that they should prepare for an impending confrontation or that they should melt away or relocate from their fortresses?
It must be very intriguing, if not indicting, that it took the President, a non-security expert, to underscore to the security chiefs the need to engage with stakeholders at the State and Local Government levels where these killings are being perpetrated.
There is no gain saying it that there is a serious lacuna between our security chiefs and the administrations at the State and Local Government levels. Some have even been quick to define the killings in manners as to suit their peculiar mindsets. Recall the dissonance and discordant tunes rendered by Governors of Borno, Benue and Plateau States and the pronouncements of federal government officials. It beggars belief that federal officials, in the absence of superior or cogent intelligence, would proceed to give a more salubrious picture of the abhorrent security situation in the country. Much worse, it was alleged that one of the federal officials visited an embattled State at the behest of the President without engaging with or conversing with civilian stakeholders. Pray, if only members of the Armed Forces were relevant in the equation, how come they have not prevailed over the terrorists this while? If local stakeholders do not count and only those at the commanding heights of our security architecture know it all, how come we are in this unwholesome mess and tragedy?
As some of us have insisted, and we stand to be corrected by superior and more compelling argument, to this insurgency, there is a strategy and an agenda. These are continuously honed and reviewed by its sponsors and perpetrators. The terrorists also have intelligence beyond the pale about our dispositions. Before Boko Haram, ISWAP, Lakurawa and Mahmudda terrorists struck, they deliberately took their time to deceive and lull their unsuspecting and gullible hosts. They first gave the impression that they were jihadists and religious reformists. Taken in by these sentiments by their innocent and accommodating hosts, the terrorists soon organized and amassed the required resources and vital intelligence only to unleash terror on their host communities. Our communities must thus be sensitized to report strange groups, especially those feigning or professing religious piety. These strange persons should in turn be scrupulously interrogated, profiled and kept under surveillance by our security agencies.
For us to prevail in the war on terror, our security agencies must be more adaptive, creative and divine the methods of the terrorists through careful and elaborate debriefings of their victims and through the infiltration of the ranks of these terrorists. Given their pedigrees and the feats they have achieved in various local and international theaters, our security agencies are professionally equipped to accomplish this mission.
Nonetheless, it is not enough for the president to issue marching orders that are either pointedly ignored or that ring hollow in the manner of his predecessor. Orders must be accompanied with practical and realistic deadlines. There must also be consequences for non-performance or non-delivery. Precious Nigerian lives are at stake. And the country’s dear image is at stake too.