Insecurity: Surprise! Surprise!

By his preeminent position in government, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is well located to report on where the present administration stands regarding the multipronged security challenges facing this country. Last week, he said it’s nothing to worry much about because the government was ‘on top of the situation’ (to use the common phrase) and was handling the situation quite well.

Speaking when he received in audience at the Presidential Villa a delegation of clergymen under the aegis of Arewa Pastors Forum for Peace, the vice president was reported saying: “We are doing everything that needs to be done. We are handling security well, and as you know, including military deployment in diverse fields, like the Boko Haram in the Northeast. In fact, we have to now recruit more into the Army, and much faster than we ever did because we need men on the ground; resources also – to buy more arms, to buy more platforms.”

Professor Osinbajo spoke against the backdrop of a rash of recent security breaches in the country involving banditry, bloody communal clashes as well as terrorist abductions and executions of unarmed civilian abductees – among them clerics, students and aid workers. The execution lately of the chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) chapter in Michika council area of Adamawa State, Rev. Lawan Andimi, prompted a call by national CAN leadership for three-day fasting and prayer that was capped with a prayer walk penultimate Sunday in which highly respected clergyman and General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, very visibly participated. Osinbajo is himself an RCCG pastor.

The escalation of security breaches in recent times had fuelled hysteria in nearly all segments of the Nigerian polity. Both chambers of the National Assembly early last week debated the spike in insecurity challenge, with the House of Representatives calling for immediate resignation of helmsmen of the security services. President Muhammadu Buhari convened top-level security consultations severally with stakeholders, including the security service chiefs and NASS leadership. Earlier on, governors of the Southwest states of Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, Osun and Lagos launched a joint security initiative codenamed Operation Amotekun to tackle incessant killings and kidnappings, among others, in the region.  

During his audience with the Arewa forum of clergymen, the vice president harped on plans by the Buhari presidency to boost personnel in the different security agencies and fortify synergy among the formations. “At the last meeting of the National Security Council that was held on Thursday, we had discussions on how to beef up the military’s platforms. How do we beef up the numbers? How do we recruit more men and women into the Army? How do we collaborate more with local vigilante, the Civilian Joint Task Force and all that? So, there is a lot going on in terms of trying to beef up security; the security situation is one that is very challenging,” he was quoted saying by spokesman Laolu Akande.

He touched some bit on tactical dimensions, saying: “We are also looking at aspects of surveillance – how we can do more aerial surveillance using drones and electronic devices to improve surveillance.”

‘The appropriate security architecture can’t be a blanket same-style militaristic response to diverse security challenges. Each kind of challenge requires peculiar deconstruction and targeted response.’

One consequential, if not premeditated, effect of the Osinbajo narrative was to further deflect recent media hype about President Buhari saying he was “taken aback” by the escalation of insecurity, especially in the Northwest. The president had spoken when leading Niger State citizens visited him in Aso Rock a few weeks back.

Amidst widespread media reportage that Buhari said he was shocked, implying being unaware of the security situation in those areas, the presidency penultimate week had clarified his meaning to be that he was surprised at the turn of events compared with the scenario in 2015. Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina said: “The reportage of the statement…was slanted to mean that President Buhari said he was unaware of the security challenges in some parts of the country. Far from it, except to the mischievous mind. The president is fully aware and fully in charge of all that is going on.”

Adesina added inter alia:  “The statement by the president was clear enough, and these are the salient points: In 2015, we knew there was Boko Haram insurgency, particularly in the Northeast, and we mentioned it in our campaigns. There are clear economic and cultural factors behind the clashes that sadly rocked many of our communities, be they the Fulani-Tiv, or Fulani-Berom conflict, the Tiv versus Jukun and so on. By now, these conflicts are fairly under control. By 2019, banditry had surfaced in the Northwest. It was surprising, as the area is almost homogeneous, made up of Hausa-Fulani. The combatants are largely Muslim. This is what the president said he was surprised about.”

If communication by the presidency is coordinated as expected, the Buhari administration apparently wants to move on from hair splitting debate about presidential surprise to asserting having a firm handle on the security situation. But does it, really? There is pervasive unease in the land presently regarding overly porous security, which indexes anything but public confidence that the situation is truly on a leash. For many a citizen, there is apprehension that a kidnapper or bandit strike lurks at the next corner. It is doubtful this adds up to a situation that is under control.

The search for solution must be collective, though. And so, my view is: the government’s approach to defeating the multi-dimensional security challenge seems too narrow and mechanistic. There is fixation with boosting sheer numbers of security personnel, who would be mass-assigned to militaristically annihilate the malefactors. Recall that the vice president repeatedly touted deploying the military for internal security functions.

In the book, Challenge and Response: Anticipating U.S. Security Concerns, a collection of essays on military strategy edited by Dr. Karl P. Magyar, an insightful distinction is drawn between the mechanistic theory of war and its psychological dimension. One of the contributors to that book, Martin L. Fracker, in the chapter he titled ‘Conquest and Cohesion: The Psychological Nature of War,’ recalled that the founding father of modern China, Mao Zedong (also known as Chairman Mao) considered the psychological dimension more crucial.

Fracker argued in his essay that the traditional American view of war is to destroy the other side’s physical war-making capacity – an approach that historian Russell Weigley called ‘wars of annihilation.’ He, however, noted the utter failure of this approach in America’s experience with the Vietnam War, saying: ‘Mao Zedong, intellectual father of America’s Vietnam defeat, derided this mechanistic mindset. He argued, and the Vietnam War seemed to prove, that real war is not about destroying physical capacity. Rather, real war is about destroying the desire to keep fighting. War, in other words, is a problem in psychology.’

It bears repeating that the security challenge we face in this country is multi-dimensional – involving Boko Haram insurgents in some areas, killer herdsmen in other areas, bandits and kidnappers in some others, and historical communal fault lines flaring into bloody clashes and revenge attacks in yet some others. Even to a layman, the appropriate security architecture can’t be a blanket same-style militaristic response to diverse security challenges. Each kind of challenge requires peculiar deconstruction and targeted response.