A large swath of Northern Nigeria is now at the mercy of marauding bandits. From Adamawa to Zamfara, the region has become bandits’ killing fields. Images of massacres are too gruesome to watch and the stories from survivors too heartbreaking to hear but, hearing and watching we must, because this is the reality under which our people now live.
These bandits roll into our towns and villages in convoys of motorcycles riding three on each, brandishing AK47 rifles. They spend hours killing, burning, raping, carting away livestock, and abducting women as sex slaves. They put taxes on the people and keep coming back, again and again to attack because of the absence of law enforcement to protect the people. Security personnel oftentimes show up after the carnage to count the bodies.
It is not only tragic but shameful that these bunch of ragtag bandits on motorcycles wielding nothing more than rusty AK47 rifles can roam the land with impunity causing so many deaths and destruction in a nation with a standing Armed Forces and Police force.
Anytime President Muhammadu Buhari talks about the insecurity bedeviling this nation either at home or at his many international outings, he refers only to Boko Haram without even acknowledging banditry and kidnapping as major security problems.
The few times he talks about banditry, he admits he doesn’t “understand why people of the same religion and ethnicity are killing themselves”. Lately, he has jokingly added that he will speak to them “in the language they understand”. He usually concludes his remarks by saying that he has ordered the Military to be “ruthless” in dealing with them.
The things I find most depressing about the President’s pronouncements and body language are: {1}. He seems distant and disconnected from the realities of our people,. {2}. He sees banditry as a Military problem that requires a Military solution, {3}. He does not appear properly briefed on the causes and the existential threat that banditry poses to the nation, {4}. His unwillingness to understand banditry beyond the Military prism {5}. His refusal to widen his cycle of consultations beyond the Military to involve community leaders, traditional rulers, clerics, victims and their families and academics that have done excellent research on banditry.
MEASURES THAT HAVE NOT WORKED
{1}. Border closure: Closure of Nigeria’s land borders for 16 months has not been effective in stemming the flow of illegal weapons into the country.
{2}. “Rejigging the security architecture”: Which included changing the Service Chiefs and the Presidential directive to them to bring peace to the land so that farmers could return to their farms during the rainy season.
{4}. The President should concurrently explore all opportunities for non military solutions by reaching out personally to traditional rulers, clerics, local community leaders and elders in the region
{5}. Now is the time for the President to act decisively because he does not have the luxury of time. The NSA recently reported after one of the security meetings that the President told his security chiefs that “I don’t want to leave office a failure”. Nobody wants or prays for that but, His Excellency Sir, if things continue this way, this outcome is inevitable.
May God Almighty bring peace to our land, Amin
Usman Yusuf is a Professor of Haematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation
