Dr. Kabir Adamu, a Security Risk Management and Intelligence Specialist gives explains why the military offensive in Zamfara and other states will not entirely wipe out banditry, while suggesting the way forward.
21st CENTURY CHRONICLE: The military recently commenced a heavy clampdown against bandits starting from Zamfara State, as an expert on security matters, what are your expectations from the ongoing offensive; do we expect an end to the menace?
Dr. Kabir Adamu: Military offensive alone cannot solve the problem, for the simple reason that banditry is a symptom of some challenges within the community. As long as we don’t address those challenges there is no amount of military operations that can end the crisis. The banditry culminated from a number of factors among which is socio economic grievances. Some of them have their cattle rustled and as a result decided to become lawless. Now what aided them to become lawless are a couple of other things. Number one, they have access to weapons; so weapon proliferation is one driver that needs to be addressed; drug addiction is another driver, issues around Nigeria’s justice system that are weak and ineffective and failing to arrest and punish offenders also need to be improved upon.
I talk about cattle rustling, those who stole these cattle are never arrested and punished. In fact, when their cattle are stolen and they go to the security agencies to report, the tide turns against them and they are extorted; some of them are arrested and kept in detention. You can imagine your property was stolen, you reported and instead of security agencies to help you recover them, you are being extorted by them. Even the judiciary has a share in the entire blame, because there are judges who were highly involved in it. I know of instances where the case will get to courts and corrupt judges will turn against the herder and extort them. That also is part of the drivers. There is also the poor social system that does not encourage people to do the right thing or neglect the value system. By value system, I’m talking about the family, religious institution, and even the media that does not understand the issues but unfortunately painted it in a manner that escalates the violence.
Yes, military action is required to contain the trend, but it is not sufficient to holistically address the problem. Then we must also talk about border cooperation, Zamfara has borders with some states within Nigeria and then in certain other places, they have borders with countries and the big forests where the bandits hide cut across these states and countries. So no matter the military action you launch, if you don’t lock the border and prevent them from running to these other states and countries, they will return after the operation. The military action is not sustainable really and you can’t continue for long. They will do the bombardment and stop and the bandits will regroup; so we need to address the root causes that I have identified here.
Beyond blocking the borders, experts have suggested the dialogue option which some state governments also tried but failed to get the desired impact. What do you think happened along the line?
In the first place, I’m not in tune with the dialogue option, at least not in the way some state governments handled it. However, I’m advocating that we disaggregate the challenge. I believe that there are three components to the challenge; the first are the militia who are associated with farmers/herders violence. As controversial as this sound, both sides – the farmers and herders’ sides have militias and each of the militia is armed. I’m of the view that we can engage the two militias and arrive at some kind of amnesty but they must be made to first surrender their weapons. The other two components are the bandits and hardened criminals. I’m not in support of amnesty for them, they must be made to face the full consequences of the law so that it can serve as a deterrent to those who want to take the law into their own hands.
Zamfara State in the past sacked and suspended traditional rulers and even a local government chairman over alleged links with banditry; what is your take on this?
We have to remember that when this government in Zamfara came on board, it set up a committee to look into this and the committee did an indepth investigation and submitted its report. The report, among other things, recommended the suspension of some traditional rulers. Yes, it is likely that there may be some of them who either supported or out of necessity, kept quiet and allowed these bandits to operate because if they don’t allow them, they are going to kill them and their families as well as their subjects. Where you are unable to provide protection for a community and their leader keeps quiet for certain reasons because clearly the responsibility to protect him and his community members lies on the government, you can’t just hold him liable if an attack happens. Like I said, it is the responsibility of the government to protect the people, and where the government failed to do so, then it will be very unfair to accuse traditional rulers of colluding with bandits because attacks happened in their domains.
Many have queried the inability of the state government to implement or what a certain element referred to as “selective implementation” of the report; why do you think the government is foot-dragging on the matter and what’s the implication of this?
Political correctness never allows us to solve certain problems. A lot of times, political correctness stops political leaders from acting and if we want to end this, then we need to put such aside and do what is right. In mentioning the drivers of insecurity, I mentioned that the weak ineffective criminal justice system that is failing to punish offenders is one of them. A committee was set up, it came up with a report and now it’s not being implemented for the simple reason that someone feels it is going to affect certain political bigwigs within the environment.
