” A man’s enemies are the members of his own household” Matthew 10:36.
Since the beginning of the serious threat to our internal security over two decades ago,we have tried many options and those options appear not to be working.
It all started with the emergence of Boko Haram in 2002 in Maiduguri barely three years into the government of former President Olusegun Obasanjo with Mohammed Yusuf as their leader.
Though it started with a ckear message to purify Islam among uts adherents and possible establish an Islamic state in Northern Nigeria.
However,it assumed a new life of its own with the killing of Yusuff in police custody and the declaration of full scale war against the state by followers of the late leader.
Now,over two decades down the line,Boko Haram has not only assumed a life of its own,it has given birth to several violnt groups and tendencies which today has stretch the limits of our armed forces and security agencies.
It is now a full scale war both against adherents of Islam and other faiths in the Northern part of the country.
Today,BH has given birth to armed bandtiry, kidnapping for ransome and the killing of innocent citizens by the very people the sect which set out to Islamise and purify.
The emergence of various militant and violent groups like the latest Lakurawa has taken its toll on both Nigerians and the military especially in the three regions in the country namely the North East,North West and the North Central states where the new variant group has metamorphosis into land grabbing and displacement of indigenous people and communities both to establish an army of occupation and economic hegemony.
It is rather unfortunate that Sokoto State government is also thinking of negotiating with terrorists who always end up using money to procure more deadly weapons to improve their ‘trade’.
Why has Sokoto State failed to learn from Katsina which paid out millions of ransome to bandits but today in spitenof that gesture has more of such terrorizing the state?
At the last count, over 76 000 souls have been wasted in Borno,Yobe, Benue Adamawa, Plateau, Kaduna and Zamfara states as at 2023.
It will be recalled, out of the 276 Chibok girls adopted from a secondary school in Chibok ,borno state,100 are still bring kept in captivity with little hope of being re-united with their families having been married off to strangers.
Just two weeks ago, bandits who have graduated from ransom taking group into terrorists killed over 218 citizens in Yelwata village in Benue State.
This latest killings was the height of barbarism by the terrorists most of whom could’ve migrated from neighbouring countries.
It is incumbent on the Federal government to intensify military cooperation with our neighbouring countries on security in order to curb the menace.
Cooperation and surveillance of our borders shouldn’t be for economic protection alone but now more necessary for security concerns.
In the last two decades,the military has suffered more casualties as hundreds of them has been killed by either ambush or outright invasion of military camps by the terrorists.
On this score,Chief of Defence staff,Christopher Musa made a very strong observation that the successor the onslaught by the terrorists could not be divorced from inside information supplied to them by residents and citizens of affected communities.
He spoke in the wake of onslaught in Yelawata where over 218 citizens were slaughtered by the terrorists.
A week later, over 100 soldiers were killed by terrorists in an ambush in same Benue State.
In this light, the claims of General Musa that the deliberate misinformation given to military security on guard in the community to move to another community where a false invasion is about to take place.
He said no sooner had the troops moved that the terrorists struck and killed Yelwata residents is a pointer for a need for government to turn attention to citizens- civilian and soldiers alike who supply intelligence information to terrorists.
As the saying in Yoruba,”Ehin ikule lota wa,in Ile laseni n gbe” which literally means the enemies are outside but the real masterminds are inside.
With the experience of the past two decades on the modus- operandi of the bandits,terrorists and zealots it is now apparent that such heinous crime couldn’t have been successful without collaboration of insiders made up of residents ,other interest groups doing so for monetary and ethnic gains and indeed soldiers within the security forces for monetary gains.
How do we ensure identification and eradication of such?
It is quite clear that the government has to focus attention on intelligence gathering to identify culprits within who provide information to terrorists.
This should be done using traditional rulers,religious leaders, youths and other stakeholders to supply information to both established Civilian/military joint Task forces in states and endangered communities.
Secondly,the state and federal government need to establish multi- level policing from local government to state and federal level.
Present state of things in Nigeria has defeated the unitarian approach to policing adopted by the military in 1966 ostensibly to coerced the multi- ethnic groups in Nigeria together under military rule.
With over 200 million population,no reasonable and realistic government will continue to use centralized system of policing in a multi ethnic,multi cultural and religiously diverse country and hope to get result.
Since security is the first function of any government, the federal government supported by the National Assembly must fast track the establishment of proposed Forest rangers in all the 774 local governments in the country if terrorism ,banditry,kidnapping is to be eradicated in the country.
Proposed Forest Rangers should be manned by residents and indigenes of each local government such that security of the communities is directly in the hands of its residents.
Using soldiers to ensure internal security is by all means an aberration and should be stopped the moment forest rangers and community policing equipped with intelligence gathering is put in place all over the country.
The evolution of Boko Haram into banditry,kidnapping and terrorism is a direct consequent of our failure to nib the hydra -headed monster in the bud from its locality when it reared its ugly head in 2002 is the direct consequence we are facing now.
Variants of Boko Haram is now prevalent in all parts of the country with the resultant effect of governments diverting funds that should have been used to make life more abundant for the people on avoidable security threats and breaches.
Nigeria has to think out of the box if we must guarantee safety of us all.
A stich in time saves nine.
