Insecurity in Nigeria: SALWs, Decentralized Policing and Citizens’ Participation
In direct opposite to what the government of the day and the immediate past government wants us to believe; insecurity in Nigeria is continuing and growing in leaps and bounds – and still spreading like wild fire across the length and breadth of the country; from Igumale to Owerri, Gwoza to Eleme, Ijebu-Ode to Kagara, Mangu to Agenebode such that nowhere is safe anymore. Since May 29 2023 when the presidential baton changed hands, the country has witnessed many attacks and the new government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu already has its job cut out for it. Before the expiration of his tenure, both the blind and the deaf knew that the government of the immediate past president, General Muhammadu Buhari failed woefully in its duty to protect lives and property in the country. Some months before he left government, former president Muhammadu Buhari told the nation that he would leave behind a safer Nigeria but some of us could not help but chuckle and sneer at such a ridiculous presidential humor. He is back to Daura, Katsina State one of the states in the country where banditry and vicious kidnappings are on the rise.
What has been happening to security in Nigeria? We recall that over a year ago, precisely on 5th June 2022 forty (40) worshippers of the St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State were murdered in cold blood when daredevil gunmen invaded the church during a live Sunday morning service. Shortly after, the Kuje Minimum Custodial Center, located some 30 minutes to the international airport in Abuja; the sit of the federal government of Nigeria was attacked and over 600 criminals including 64 Boko Haram terrorists were released. At the time, it was widely reported by both print and broadcast media that the attackers operated at the prison for more than three hours but no counter force engaged them. Hours prior to this prison break, the advance convoy of the immediate past Nigerian president was attacked on its way to Katsina State. Days after, an entourage of the Presidential Guard was ambushed in the Bwari area of the Federal Capital Territory and four soldiers were killed. On 28 March 2022, a commercial train owned and operated by Nigeria’s Nigerian Railway Corporation heading to Kaduna from Abuja was attacked and nine passengers were killed and scores kidnapped. Under the present government of Bola Tinubu, Mangu Local Government Area of Plateau State has become the epicenter of daily killings. On 9th July 2023, several Nigerian newspapers reported that more than 200 people have so far been killed in that local government in the last two months. All these are the manifestations of the neglect of warnings that if the federal government fails to decisively deal with the Boko Haram, ISWAP and Ansaru terrorists in the northeast, they would spread their reign of terror to other parts of the country. Today, the chickens are coming home to roost in form of banditry, kidnappings, militancy, and herdsmen attacks across the length and breadth of our country but this is not surprising to some of us.
We are not surprised because we know that at the heart of Nigeria’s continuing and rising insecurity woes is the proliferation of small arms and light weapons – and one of the main entry points is Katsina State, Northwest Nigeria. Katsina State closely borders Niger Republic and citizens of both countries share common beliefs, customs and culture. For example in Magama town of Jibia Local Government Area in Katsina State and Hirji town in Niger Republic, residents of both communities walk in and out of each town as they are only hundreds of meters apart. I was reliably informed that owing to the activities of bandits and kidnappers, residents of Magama who are predominantly Nigerians go to Hirji to spend the night because they feel safer in Niger Republic than in Nigeria. This proximity and free and uncontrolled movement of people in and out of the two border communities sharing only virtual demarcation is one of the methods through which small arms and light weapons are illicitly trafficked from Niger Republic into Nigeria; from Hirji to Magama, to Zamfara State, to other parts of the Northwest and then spread around the country. Niger Republic is one of the most thriving entrepots of SALWs coming into Nigeria from Libya, Mali, Syria and other such countries – and the federal government, Katsina State government and the Nigerian military know about this but they are not doing enough to stop this movement.
Small arms are ammunitions that only one person can use without assistance while light weapons are those that two or more persons are involved with before they are operated, deployed or fired. AK47, AK49, pistols, submarine guns, squad automatic guns, designated marksman rifles, etc are small arms while general purpose machine guns, antitank rifles, unmounted heavy machine guns, rocket propelled grenades, medium machine guns, etc are light weapons. In 2018, the Small Arms Survey reported that in Africa, more than 40 million small arms amounting to 80% of all small arms on the continent are in the hands of civilian actors such as private individuals, registered businesses, security companies and non-state armed groups like the bandits, armed herders and kidnappers in Nigeria. In contrast, the continent’s armed forces and law enforcement agencies hold less than 11 million small arms. And of the 40 million in the hands of civilian Africans, 5,841,200 are officially registered, 16,043,800 are unregistered while the category of the remaining is unclear.
The easy and uncontrolled movement of SALWs from Niger Republic and other countries into Nigeria is made worse by four man-made factors: (i) The many boundary routes, some even footpaths into the country that are left unmanned and unmonitored; (ii) The small number of security men deployed to man and monitor the vast and many Nigerian borders; (iii) The non-involvement and non-deployment of modern technologies to monitor the land borders and (iv) The involvement and connivance of Nigerian security officers (police, immigration, custom, military, DSS, etc) in aiding and abetting the entrance, movement, sale and proliferation of SALWs. These four factors (and others such as political corruption and government ineptitude) are why Nigeria cannot yet end the rising insecurity across the country – and until the country is able to address them, SALWs would continue to flood Nigerian communities and with their entrance more and more violent ethno-religious conflicts, terrorism, banditry, kidnappings, insurgency, armed robberies, militancy, non-known gun men, etc attacks would continue to take place across the country.
With Nigeria as the largest economy in Africa, it is only normal that many of the small arms and light weapons on the continent find their way into the country. It is also pertinent to note that the discussion of the role and impact of small arms and light weapons on security in Nigeria cannot be divorced and/or separated from the 2011 Libyan version of the Arab Uprising that began in Tunisia in 2010. Throughout his 32 years as the leader of that country, Colonel Mu’ammar Gaddafi bought and stockpiled different arms and weapons – and it is on record that between 2011 and 2014 after the collapse of his autocratic and oppressive regime, weapons from Libya were trafficked into several West African countries including Nigeria (and Mali) which have directly contributed and still contributing to the incidences of terrorism, insurgency, banditry, armed robberies, kidnappings and jail breaks in the country.
Added to this is the reality that Nigeria does not have enough fighting men per her population and area. The officers and men of the Nigerian police are less than 400,000 while the military (Army, Navy and Air force) are not more than 250,000. The officials of the Department of State Security (DSS) are barely 25,000. Put together, the active personnel of Nigeria’s twenty-three (23) military and security organizations are less than one million in a country with more than 220 million people and a landmass of 923,768 km2. Add to these deficiencies the reality that the country does not deploy adequate modern technologies and gadgets in its monitoring and securing of the homeland. We must also take into consideration that typically the military is not trained and commissioned for internal policing duties and functions – so it should not be altogether surprising that the Nigerian military is not performing as many Nigerians expect. Add to this structural functional dilemma the reality that the warfare against terrorists and bandits is not a conventional one requiring an asymmetrical approach that sometimes leads to civilian casualties which raises condemnation from human right groups. How then can Nigeria tackle this continuing and rising insecurity in the country?
In a documentary televised on Trust TV late last year, the former governor of Katsina State; Aminu Masari argued for the devolution and decentralization of the command and control structure of the Nigerian police as an immediate tactics to improving security in his state and the country – and I agree with him. The reality that every stakeholder in security but particularly the federal government must now embrace is that the concentration and dependence on Abuja to police the whole country is outdated – and independent command and control policing in the states is our immediate bet for addressing the country’s continuing and rising insecurity woes. As a security analyst, I know that every insecurity problem is local so each state in the country should, on the basis of its unique SWOT analysis of its terrain deploy local content, local strategies and local personnel to tackle insecurity within its sphere of influence. In the USA and much of the developed world, policing structure is decentralized and “decongested” down to the council level where council police officers operate independently from the state but cooperate when the need arises. In the USA, each County (what we call “local government” in Nigeria) owns and funds its own police unit headed by a Sheriff who is usually someone who has lived in the community for many years. This way policing is made local and therefore more effective because residents know each other such that whenever a stranger comes into the area they are aware. This is the approach Nigeria must now adopt because as opposed to the top to bottom policing architecture we have been practicing, the bottom to top approach to security challenges is proving to be more efficient and effective. With the decentralization and localization of policing, curbing the proliferation of small arms and light weapons becomes easier with immediate impacts on security of lives and property.
But even with the right political will that decentralizes policing, there is so much the government can achieve without the active participation of citizens. In many of the safe and developed countries that we admire, the people, the ordinary men and women are actively involved in security by “seeing something and saying something”. Nigerians must begin to take a cue and become involved in the security of the country because only the government and the military/security agencies cannot successfully confront the enemies of the country. Citizens must begin to pass real time information to the military, police, DSS and other security agencies when they observe any untoward and unusual persons, movements or meetings in their communities because the criminals, kidnappers, bandits and terrorists are not ghosts so they live among us. We also know that some of them are foreigners who work in the country as gatemen, cobblers, okada riders, mairuwa (water vendors), etc. It is because of these that the reality we must now face is accepting that security is everybody’s business: government, military, paramilitary, police, DSS, political parties, religious bodies, corporate organizations, traditional institutions and ordinary citizens.
As already stated, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has his job cut out for him: improve security of lives and property across Nigeria – and one of the ways to go about it is to restructure, decentralize and localize the command and control structure of the police (and the customs service) to tackle the proliferation of SALWs. For this to happen, President Bola Tinubu must have the political will to tear down the old unproductive, ineffective and inefficient order of centralized and “Abuja based” policing. Also, there is the need to recruit more Nigerians into the military, police, DSS and other security agencies, installing 21st century security technologies and gadgets, and an increment of the salaries and allowances of the country’s policing and fighting men. It must also be pointed out that implementing these recommendations is not akin to traveling to space because they are doable and practicable. The only thing needed is the political will. Does President Bola Ahmed Tinubu have the political will to disrupt the old policing order? The answer to this question is important as the country experiences life after the ignoble, inglorious and inept administration of former president Muhammadu Buhari; the period when life became excruciatingly solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
