President Tinubu was quick to say that all the 38 kidnapped Christ Apostolic Church members of Eruku have now been rescued. How? Was ransom paid? Did the Federal Government, the Kwara State government or the affected families negotiate with the kidnappers? If so, where are the kidnappers? Were they arrested or did the Nigerian State enter into a deal with them in order to put a red lipstick on an already sticky matter? The Nigerian people should not be denied their right to know…
Clearly, the most compelling and confusing development in Nigeria in recent times is the recurring spate of abductions, the reign of impunity and the apparent failure of the Nigerian State to fulfil its obligations to the people, the most primary of this being the declaration in Section 14(2) of the 1999 Constitution that the primary duty of government is to ensure the welfare and security of the people. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu pointedly acknowledged this over the weekend when after a meeting with security chiefs and his communications team, he declared that he is determined to make Nigeria safe for everybody. That, in actual fact, is his main assignment, not the chest-beating context of his declaration. In the past few weeks, there has been a worsening of the security situation in the country: 24 students were abducted from Government Girls Comprehensive Senior Secondary School, in Maga, Kebbi State, and their Vice Principal, Mr Hassan Makuku was killed; in Eruku, Kwara State, Christian worshippers in a Christ Apostolic Church were attacked on 18 November, and 38 of them were abducted by kidnappers, who had been lying in wait in the bush.
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The kidnappers eventually asked for a ransom of ₦100 million per person, making a total of ₦3.8 billion. While Nigerians, the authorities, and the security agencies were still dealing with this, over 303 students were abducted from the St. Mary’s Catholic School in Niger State. What Nigerians experience today is worse than whatever they had ever seen previously. In 2014, the abduction of Chibok girls came in at a figure of 276. On 19 February, 2018, an additional 110 school girls were abducted by the Boko Haram from the Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi, in Yobe State. Nearly all of them were freed, five died, but Leah Sharibu remains in captivity till today. She was the only Christian among them. Over 80 Chibok girls are also still in captivity. The situation has worsened. The over 303 children kidnapped in Niger State constitute the highest number recorded so far.
President Tinubu was quick to say that all the 38 kidnapped Christ Apostolic Church members of Eruku have now been rescued. How? Was ransom paid? Did the Federal Government, the Kwara State government or the affected families negotiate with the kidnappers? If so, where are the kidnappers? Were they arrested or did the Nigerian State enter into a deal with them in order to put a red lipstick on an already sticky matter? The Nigerian people should not be denied their right to know, no matter how happy it was to secure the return of the abducted persons, and the spectacle of seeing the church members showing up for service and sermon, on Sunday, 23 November, in a courageous re-affirmation of the eschatological principle that the whole enterprise of Christianity is to give hope in this life and the life after, the Lord Jesus Christ having washed away all the sins of the faithful in an act of eternal salvation and redemption.
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President Tinubu also boasted that 50 or 51 of the abducted Niger State children have been rescued. In other accounts, it is said that the children escaped on their own; about 253 of them and 12 of their teachers are still in difficult circumstances. There have been similar reports of abductions in Borno and parts of the North-West. There is an escalation and it looks ugly. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not create the problem. He inherited it. We have been grappling with insecurity in Nigeria since 2009, and even before then, creating a pattern that throws up the ineffectuality of the Nigerian State, and the utter devaluation, degradation, and the meaninglessness of Nigerian lives. Successive administrations have claimed to be working on the problem, but the tragedy festers.
Nigeria needs to be set on a different path of renewal, reform and survival. The latest that we have heard is the promise by President Tinubu that Nigeria will become a place of safety under his watch. This is not the time for rhetoric. This is the time for visible, measurable action, not propaganda. As part of new things to come, the President has now directed that about 30,000 more policemen should be recruited. We need more than that. Nigeria does not meet the UN ratio of one policeman per 450 people.
The trigger, as it were for the current frenzy, is the re-designation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” by the Trump administration in the United States, on 31 October. President Trump says the United States will storm Nigeria with “guns a-blazing.” Twice, he has called Nigeria a “disgraced country.” Once, he has said that Nigerians see everything as a joke. He has also asked the House of Representatives to look into the matter, and the Committee on African Affairs has held a well-advertised Congressional hearing. To bring guns a-blazing to Nigeria, to withdraw aid and impose sanctions, the end-game implications of Nigeria’s re-designation as “a country of particular concern”, Trump would need the approval of Congress. The main grouse is that there is Christian genocide in Nigeria. Trump and his team, die-hard Conservatives and Christian evangelicals, have turned themselves into defenders of the Christian faith. They want to save Christians in Nigeria. The insult got so bad that even rap artiste, Nicki Minaj, a Trinidadian bimbo, was given a platform at a United Nations event to speak about Nigeria. She condemned us, Anaconda-style. It is instructive that the US Congress is split on the matter, and that the Nigerian government is asking for co-operation and collaboration to address a problem that is at best global.
Besides, there is much hypocrisy in President Trump’s exertions. Christians are being persecuted in other parts of the world: North Korea, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, China, Sudan, Iran, Syria, and Pakistan. Why Nigeria? There has been a number of conspiracy theories in this regard, but much light was thrown up in the presentation at the US Congress, by Ms Oge Onubogu, who sounded a note of warning about the danger of the single story, a narrow narrative, the complexity of the Nigerian situation and its oversimplification. Ms Onubogu was not necessarily speaking as a Nigerian, but as a subject area expert. She is a senior Fellow and Director of the Africa Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, she worked in a related capacity at the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) and at the Wilson Centre, with practical, field experience of security and conflict issues across African states. Rep Pramila Jayapal asked: “Can you tell me under what authority the US military strikes inside of Nigeria?” Congresswoman Sara Jacobs concluded that Trump is “reckless.”
But when at the same time you listen to Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the Catholic Diocese of Makurdi, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Evangelist Reverend Ezekiel Dachomo of the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN), the complexity of the Nigerian situation is presented in more graphic terms. Meanwhile, Sheikh Gumi says terrorists must be protected, and that Christians in the Middle Belt are burying empty coffins for purposes of propaganda. What exactly does he mean by that? Closer to the truth is the observation that all persons of faith – Christians, Muslims and animists – are under threat in Nigeria. There is conflict and disaffection because the Nigerian government has failed its own people. It is not outsiders who will solve Nigeria’s problems, but Nigerians themselves. Outsiders may help, but to rebuild this country will require the commitment of everyone on the basis of unity, equity and justice. Those who are beating the drums of war do not realise that no country easily survives a religious war without deadly atrocities.
Nigeria needs to be set on a different path of renewal, reform and survival. The latest that we have heard is the promise by President Tinubu that Nigeria will become a place of safety under his watch. This is not the time for rhetoric. This is the time for visible, measurable action, not propaganda. As part of new things to come, the President has now directed that about 30,000 more policemen should be recruited. We need more than that. Nigeria does not meet the UN ratio of one policeman per 450 people. The existing number of about 371,000 policemen does not meet the national need. Besides, having more policemen is not enough. There has to be a complete overhaul of the present system in terms of attitude, ethics and orientation. The President directed that policemen should be withdrawn from VIP protection duties. About a third of Nigerian policemen are actively on duty serving so-called important personalities. This is an aspect of police duty that has been thoroughly abused. In the midst of the collapse of everything important, Nigerian policemen have been reduced to bag-carriers for the wives of rich persons, escorts for persons parading dubious wealth, houseboys for side chicks spotting Brazilian bums, and yes men to the privileged class. It is easy to hire a policeman in Nigeria once the pay is right.
Political will is missing. The politics of expediency frustrates the attempt to make Nigeria a safe place, either for children or adults. The Tinubu administration must resolve to fight criminality. Nigerian bandits are too bold. They challenge the Nigerian State. They act with impunity. They are emboldened by the payment of ransom and the sad spectacle of members of the legislature and government, arranging meetings with them and making deals.
President Tinubu is the first sitting head of state and head of government to issue a directive that this must stop and the police must return to their core duty of protecting lives and property. The average Nigerian police man is not going to like this. It won’t be so easy to change the houseboy orientation of the Nigerian policeman. Carrying bags and running errands for rich wives and husbands, and the nouveaux riche, is a far more profitable and established police engagement. It is far better than being asked to stand at hotspots to look out for criminals.
The Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps has now been tasked with the assignment of VIP protection. The Civil Defence is a para-military institution. Its men and women would require training and re-training. The entire civil defence system has to be reformed and upgraded, and the welfare of the officials must be prioritised. There would have been no need for VIP protection by the way, if Nigeria had been made a true place of safety. No Nigerian life should be more important than the other. In an attempt to be seen to be doing something, President Tinubu has taken some steps to give us the impression that he is actually doing something, but these measures do not go far enough. What Nigeria needs is not ad hoc, temporary responses but a far more comprehensive response to the security threats in the land, and a proper articulation and understating of government’s responsibility.
Trump’s constant heckling, irritating as it may seem, should be seen as a wake-up call and a call to action. He is looking for a Nobel Peace Prize, and he thinks he can add Nigeria to his credentials. We have a problem to solve. The extant practice of allowing military officers and policemen to retire after 35 years of service or upon the attainment of 60 years of age should be reviewed. Those who are already in retirement but are still strong enough to serve, and there must be many of them, should be recalled to service. They have the experience, the know-how, and the institutional memory that can help in a time of crisis. Nigeria is one of the few countries that I know that deliberately throws away its people of knowledge. We have adopted the same approach to tackle insecurity for decades: things only get worse. Over three years ago, the United States, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and our own Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) provided the names of terrorism sponsors in Nigeria. We did nothing. We reported nothing. It is time to think out of the box. Policemen may be distracted, but our soldiers who have been mobilised in civil aid, to do police work, are overburdened and over-stretched.
Political will is missing. The politics of expediency frustrates the attempt to make Nigeria a safe place, either for children or adults. The Tinubu administration must resolve to fight criminality. Nigerian bandits are too bold. They challenge the Nigerian State. They act with impunity. They are emboldened by the payment of ransom and the sad spectacle of members of the legislature and government, arranging meetings with them and making deals. These are criminals who do not deserve the attention we give to them, the deals that communities strike with them, and the adoration that they receive. Any politician or government official who sits with terrorists to discuss any deal, should be treated as a terrorist, and brought to book along with his accomplices under the laws of the land. It is the Nigerian government that should go “guns-blazing” not Trump, not the US, not anyone else!
Reuben Abati, a former presidential spokesperson, writes from Lagos.
