Gboyega Bello
It’s a familiar pattern. Insidious and destructive. As each election year inches by, numbing challenges of the state are accentuated. Presumably, by God knows who! There are a couple of examples to draw from. As Chief Olusegun Obasanjo began to launch his interest in a second term of office, the introduction of Sharia Law in parts of the north became an issue. Similarly, when he touted his government’s strides in power supply at the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary election held in Abuja in January 2003, it was as if he’d triggered off a skein of disaster for the power sector. Literally, blackness beclouded the country. The existing fairly stable power supply ceased across the country!
Candidate Musa Yar’Adua was luckier. No big issues to relish by the opposition during the campaign that shot him to Aso Rock Villa. But not so in the case of Dr Ebele Goodluck Jonathan. He had his hands full. There was the security challenge epitomized by the Boko Haram’s insurgency, which was largely confined to Borno State then. It was weaponized. So was the case of power supply outages. The coalition that soon became the All Progressives Party (APC) made an issue of the security challenge, touting General Muhammadu Buhari, a man whose earlier foray into the corridors of power gave him an image of a no-nonsense military behemoth. For power outages the country was experiencing then, the new coalition also got on their soapbox.
Achieving stable power supply is not rocket science, a stalwart of the party had declared. It matters not that power supply remains erratic 10 years into the party’s control of the central government. It had already had its way and had profited by it.
Just like Yar’Adua’s campaign period, the election time that birthed President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term into office was less contentious to rattle the APC flagbearer. Not that all was quiet during his first term, especially security-wise, but somehow, a few months to the election, kidnapping, banditry and even the activities of the Boko Haram ebbed in parts of the country. There were suggestions of duplicity between that government and the outlaws. How was it able to have a calm? It was a puzzle none might be able to solve.
With the herald of 2027 elections, from all indications, insecurity would be primed. It is already primed. Primed for implosion before and after the 2027 elections. The signs are already palpable in all the corners of the country.
In Plateau State, which has become a hotbed of communal turbulence, the season has been an “annus horribilis“. Within the year alone, scores of people have been sent to their early graves in attacks allegedly carried out by herders against farmers. The latest of such cold-blooded murders occurred only last week and even this week! Nothing suggests the situation would improve any time soon. In the North East, specifically Borno State, the state Governor, Professor Babagana Zulum, recently sparred with some military top brass over the resurgence of the Boko Haram activities in his state. Outlaws had killed 40 farmers in the state in January this year, overran some military formations with swaths of the territory said to be in their control. In Benue State, the situation is not dissimilar. Herders and farmers have been consistently at daggers drawn; the latter have killed innocent souls like chickens with little or no support from any quarters. Down South, the situation could not be said to be in the best of shapes. Edo State recently came to national limelight for the wrong reason. No fewer than 16 people were killed at Uromi by a mob taking them for kidnappers. The victims were from the north of the Niger. Where quiet exists in parts of the south, it’s largely the silence of the graveyard.
For close to two decades now, the security situation in the country has been below an acceptable level, but as the election year beckons, it has turned more dire. It’s a period the graph sprints north. A trend that should attract the attention of the central government. It should encourage it to do a little more than the ordinary to arrest the worsening security situation across the country. Doing so benefits the central government more than anyone else. For one, it would remove a potent issue from the campaign talking points of the opposition, one that is strong enough to sway electorates from the ruling party. For another, a secure homeland could create a fertile ground to midwife a flurry of productive business activities in the country. Farming, trading and all. Where farmers are able to go back to the farm resulting in abundant harvests before and during the coming election cycle, the government would reap the benefit of favourable opinions of voters. The contrary would work in favour of the opposition.
What should the federal government do?
It should earnestly firm up security response in the country. Do things a little differently. Hire mercenaries to root out insurgents, bandits and kidnappers wherever they may hide in parts of the country. From all indications, the country’s armed forces are overstretched. Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser (NSA), said recently in Benue State that the country could not afford to send soldiers to police every village. But every villager’s life matters. While the security forces are seen to be doing their best, have offered sacrifices as gallant soldiers, as one of its top officers informed recently, yet the country continues to bleed. Given how intractable the security challenge in the country seems, perhaps external help might be an option. Recourse to the use of mercenaries might be worth considering.
Niccolò Machiavellian rails against the use of mercenaries. “The mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous,” he notes, “and if anyone has a state founded on the arms of mercenaries, he will never be stable or secure, because they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, disloyal; bold among friends; among enemies cowardly; without fear of God, without faith in men; and your ruin is deferred only as long as the assault is deferred; and in peace you are plundered by them, in war by the enemy.”
Nigeria is at a crossroads. If the devil will do the country some good, so be it. The truth is that Machiavelli’s view in this respect is relevant for the Prince who intends to keep mercenaries as a permanent force. My expectation is that the government adopts this set of troops as a stopgap measure to bring security to the land urgently. There is the urgency of now in respect of the debilitating insecurity situations in parts of the country.
When defeat stared the Jonathan administration in the face in 2015, it postponed the country’s general elections for six weeks in order to rein in the opposition’s use of insecurity as a means to pull the rug under its feet. And it did the unthinkable. It hired mercenaries, largely from South Africa, who within a very short time, brought a change to the situation in Borno State. The Boko Haram insurgency relapsed after the elections because the efforts of the mercenaries were not built upon by the new government that emerged afterwards.
Long term, the Federal Government also needs to encourage the firming up of the constitution of state police across the country. A willing state should have a police force that can respond to the challenge of the day, adopting technology to achieve success.
The opposition would wish the security situation in the country to worsen prior to the 2027 general elections, if only to weaponise it against the current administration. It is left for the government to be a step ahead of them.
From the look of things, the security challenge may not be a pre-election time issue only. Post-election, this brand of emerging coalition would not let go so easily. It would test the government’s will. There are ready militias in the Sahel sub-region waiting to be beckoned into action. It had happened before. Their intervention might be more lethal this time around. Of note is that the Tinubu government might not be one to be easily cowed, but it needs to demonstrate to the opposition that the stakes would be higher this time. “Si vis pacem, para bellum“, so sates the time-tested saying.
Nigeria needs peace. Peace to ensure development. But peace is not wished into being. Those to whom the electorate relinquish their freedom would do well to take their responsibilities more seriously. For only on their desk does the buck stop.