By Comrade Ogbu A. Ameh
It is no longer news or a deliberate attempt at sounding as an alarmist when one asserts that Nigeria has never in her history of existence witnessed such alarming rate of insecurity like what obtains since the return to civil rule in 1999. Many theories have been adduced, but pertinent to proffering sustainable solutions the security agencies have the blame and the praise.
It is in light of this position that I quote profusely the admonition of the legendary Sun Tzu: “ If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
The Nigeria’s security community is guilty of two stanzas in this quotation. It knows itself but does not know its enemy. Therefore, for every victory gained fighting the factors of insecurity, it suffers defeat in ten folds. Sometimes, it does not know itself or the enemy therefore succumbs in every battle. This is aptly so due to over-politicisation of virtually every issue in this country including life and death. The various security agencies are infiltrated with Fifth Columnists, Ethnic Irredentists and Religious Zealots. It is yet another way of showing loyalty to nationalist passion latent in the hearth of the Nigerian Question.
Have we bothered to interrogate the escalating level of corruption and the correlation to the alarming sophistication in crime wave leading to insecurity over time? At this juncture, Howard Zinn’s food for thought provides us with a sober reflection as a people. “Our problem is that people are disobedient when the jails are full of petty thieves and all the while, the big thieves are running the country.” It is not, who comes from which part or what religious identity the person professed that matters. The hearth of the matter is the class or clique that runs the economy of the country through its political power. This class uses ethnic and religion identities while waving it as a symbol for block support and vote to acquire political power.
The allusive quotation above is compelling hence, the aptness as analogy in this conversation on the topical issue of discourse. Did this great mind know of Nigeria when he penned his thought way back in a far-away land? His observation as opinion graphically paints the picture of Nigeria today and its political ruling class. In discussing the above topic, I have to tie it to the recent National Security Summit, perhaps the second edition convened by the Inspector General of Police.
The incumbent leadership of the Nigeria Police Force knew this too well when the IGP inaugurated this summit. The summit holistically captures the entirety of the internal security threats to the country; thus, farmers- pastoralists’ clashes, kidnapping and other forms of violent crimes including; bank security in Nigeria. The new dimension to insecurity ‘Terrorism’ falls within the ambit of the armed forces that is a member of the security and intelligence community too.
Undermining effectiveness in the security intelligence community are; inter- agency squabbles and duplication of functions. These conflicts have led to castigations from critics on the merit of the idea of the “deep state” which implies some secret and hidden centre of power. One critic of this argues that; “the state is better understood as a temporary and historically contingent crystallization of social forces, a formation whose institutions are as liable to come into conflict with each other in times of political duress as they are to align seamlessly in times of stability”.
We are living witness to institutional conflicts among different agencies and social institutions since the emergence of this government. Could it be linked to the economic recession and general insecurity leading to fear and discontents by the masses? However, another school of thought rebut this view of the state, but asserts that; “ the state , at its hearth which is its force of physical political police intervention and high administration is made as far as possible, to be not affected or even traversed by the class struggle.
The core issue at the hearth of insecurity, instability and high-level corruption among others is the Capitalist State. The capitalist state is neither a secret conspiracy nor a contingent effect of social struggles. The military, police and intelligence are necessarily for the core of repressive apparatuses of every state and provide its institutions with a minimum degree of coherence”. In comparative analysis, where is the Nigeria’s security intelligence community in maintaining internal security and the armed forces before Boko Haram attempted to overrun the entire Northern part of the country and make a bold expansion towards the Southern part?
This question become pertinent at this time in cognizance of the colossal internal security challenges posed by oil bunkering and pipeline vandalism in the Niger-Delta region. Other forms of insecurity like kidnapping, armed robbery, terrorism, cultism, ritual killings, armed conflicts and violent communal clashes are also rampant across the country.
If the military, police and intelligence community form the core repressive apparatuses of every state, it is reasonable to expect that they play their important roles. These important roles transcend maintaining the country’s internal security stability to coordinating, implementing and managing the country’s global policy and the projection of her power worldwide. In absence of such, criminal elements disguising as religious extremists will always try to undermine their effectiveness and capabilities. In addition, different power tendencies who lost political power through democratic processes always take undue advantage of security intelligence lapses as prevalent today.
We need to see the manifestations of these dual roles in the face of escalating insecurity challenges made worse by the sheer affront of a rag-tag insurgent group that has held this country ransom over the years now.
Ameh is a Public Affairs Analyst, Social Critics and Activist based in Akatekwe Kingdom
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