Policy Recommendations To Those Steering The Ship Of The State: How To End Banditry And Kidnapping In Northern Nigeria -By Abdullahi Hassan

Insecurity has been define as a feeling of inadequacy (not being good enough) and uncertainty. It produces anxiety about your goals, relationships, and ability to handle certain situations.

Everybody deals with insecurity from time to time. It can appear in all areas of life and come from a variety of causes. It might stem from a traumatic event, patterns of previous experience, social conditioning (learning rules by observing others), or local environments such as school, work, or home.

It can also stem from general instability. People who experience unpredictable upsets in daily life are more likely to feel insecure about ordinary resources and routines.

Understanding the nature of insecurities can help you manage your own and offer others the support they need.

It is really sad the once one of the most peaceful region is now home ground to kidnapper’s, bandits and also herdsmen militancy has become a key security concern across the Northwestern region of Nigeria. The region which used to be the bastion of security and stability, has been hit hard by all menace of security challenges.
In spite of government efforts, the security situation in Nigeria is deteriorating.

The recent abductions of schoolboys in Kankara community, Katsina State, in Kagara Niger State, in Jangebe Zamfara State and also in Kaduna State are more examples of the wretched state of security in the country.

The rising insecurity in the northwest, vicious attacks on local communities and kidnapping of people by criminal groups in the region is being described by state officials as banditry. However, further evidence suggests that the government is simplifying the dynamics.

As Oluwole Ojewale stated: Terrorism thinly disguised as banditry; The groups terrorizing northwest Nigeria are known to deploy sophisticated weapons in their operations; again, often due to the porous Nigeria-Niger border and subsequent arms trafficking. The illicit proliferation of weapons exerts a considerable impact on peace and security and increases the incidence of terrorists’ activities in the region.

Poor governance, poverty, and climate change-fragility nexus. In many instances, the rising incidents of violent attacks are symptoms of weak, exclusionary, or exploitative governance systems in Nigeria. And also on many instances the authority show less concern for the victims.

David Levithan once said; What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.

Compounding factors include weak institutional capacity within the police; extreme inequality, poverty, unemployment; and citizens’ alienation from the government. Indeed, five of the country’s 10 poorest states—Sokoto, Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Jigawa—are in the northwest region. Evidence suggests that population explosion, poor governance, and high incidence of poverty could render many unemployed youths more vulnerable to recruitment by terror groups in the region.

Furthermore, terrorists and criminals appear to be emboldened given the federal government’s weakening engagement.
Controversial peace agreements between some state governments and criminal groups. In an attempt to stop these attacks, and due to larger failures on the part of the federal government, the state governments of Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara initiated direct negotiations with these criminal groups.

As part of these negotiations, the governors offered the criminal groups amnesties and other incentives to end violent attacks. Some have even agreed to release all arrested persons from such groups in exchange for hostages. So far, these agreements have failed for a number of reasons:
First, these criminal groups lack central command and a common goal, so it has been difficult to bring them all to a common negotiation. Moreover, agreements made with one group are not binding on others.

Second, the dialogues excluded the local communities that bear the brunt of violence and expect the state to deliver forms of compensation, justice, and protection as a condition for durable peace. Collapsed negotiations have led to renewed attacks by the criminal groups, while the farmers and vigilantes acting on their behalf have also remained completely unaccountable.

Beyond these negotiations is the problem that the state governments have no capacity to enforce the agreements and are barely equipped to address many of the underlying causes of insecurity, including shrinking space for grazing and porous borders.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS:

The policy solutions for the security challenges plaguing the northwestern states of Nigeria include:

~ The President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces must immediately order the rejigging and strengthened in terms of intelligence gathering, manpower, and welfare of the general security architecture across the nation.

~ The Inspector General of Police must cut reasonably the number of police men attached to the so-called VIP’s, and immediately assign them to all the vulnerable tertiary, secondary and primary schools across the nation.

~ The President should as matter of necessity order the massive recruitment of the youths into the various law enforcement agencies and immediately deployed them to their Indigenous locality, because they are those that know the inner and outer of their various locality and those terrorising their localities.

~ The President should order the Inspector General of Police to sack or retire commissioner of police in any state where there have been repeated cases of senseless killings since the country is not at war with any foreign nation.

~The president should instruct Ministry of communication to immediately track, trace and stop all communication access the insurgents are utilising to propagate and boldly taking responsibility of their evil action against the Nigerian state.

~ The amnesty granted and the ransom given to repented Boko Haram members and bandits, should be immediately suspended and those evil doer’s should be publicly tried in a national emergency court and sent to the hangman’s for crime against the Nigerian state.

~ Commissioners of police should immediately sack or retire Area commander’s, DPO’s in region’s where killings of innocent life’s go on unabated above a particular threshold.

~ The president should sack the Inspector General of Police even if it means appointing an IGP every week if he cannot steer the ship of the department diligently.

~ The president should declare a state of emergency for months as the Constitution permits and appoint a well-trained soldierly administrators to deal with these evil doer’s in any state find duty bond.

~ The president should instruct the DSS, NIA, NDI to help the police in fishing out all those behind these banditry, kidnapping and massive killingy of innocent people across the nation.

~ Strategic investments in human and infrastructural development. Such investments can work to solve the long-term, underlying challenges created by poor governance and deepening poverty that feed such insecurity.

~ Improved law enforcement. Furthermore, the federal government must prioritize law enforcement solutions in curtailing rising insecurity in the northwest. Policing is critical to intelligence gathering in identifying and tracking the cells of criminal groups in the states and aiding community response to insecurity.

~ The political parties, religious organization’s, civil societies and all stakeholders across the nation must stop the blame game, and work together to put Nigeria first, then politics secondary.

~ The president should immediately sack and replace the national security adviser if he cannot think outside the box to profer solutions to the deteriorating security challenges hitting hard our nation.

~ Collaboration with neighbors. Another effort toward border security is the creation of a bilateral joint task force between Nigeria and Niger to serve as a trans-border security force resourced and managed through the immigration and custom services of both countries. The joint task force should be matched with immediate and precise action to prevent wide-scale terrorist and bandit movements across the borders.

~ Also ideological war. Religious leaders must as matter of urgency embark on Idealogical orientation, and educate the vulnerable youths on negative consequences of Boko Haram ideology, kidnapping and killings of innocent life’s.

~Better supported border security and stamping down on corruption. The federal government must collaborate with state governments to address the immediate challenge of border porosity. Concerted efforts to recruit, train, and post adequately equipped customs and immigration personnel to the region can boost surveillance and stem the tide of the free flow of arms into the country. Moreover, addressing corruption here is pivotal, because border patrol is a major racket for security forces and government officials. The ongoing military response must also be sustained through strategic coordination with the counterterrorism unit of the Nigerian police force, while the recent introduction of drone surveillance and anti-banditry bombardment is maintained.

Abdullahi Hassan
Department of Political Science and International Studies.
A.B.U-Zaria Nigeria
300L Student
Phone number: 09038781859