By Erasmus Ikhide
Under one week, the Nigerian military has made twin twitches of weak defense of its lagging responses to the sweeping terrorist attacks that have enveloped the country on an unprecedented scale, leading to mass slaughtering of hapless citizens and ill-equipped gallant military personnel alike.
What came from the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Olufemi Oluyede, to the Governor of Yobe State, Mai Mala Buni and knowingly so— that the “fire from the Sahel region will consume Nigeria if urgent steps are not taken—strikes the right chord with my earlier stance. Frighteningly, General Olufemi miffed thus: “We have no choice but to curtain insecurity, but if we don’t, at some point, we may not have a country to live in.”
There’s no retelling what the Nigerian Chief of Army Staff said: that the instability via conflict in the Sahel region poses a serious threat to Nigeria’s national security and territorial integrity. Now, the need for immediate and decisive measures to address the conflict in the Sahel without delay has to come with the basic strategies the military must undertake should not be lost on the altar of grandiose personal egos and vaulting ambitions.
I have expressed my concerns about the military’s evasiveness when Defence Headquarters said the deadly Benue and Plateau attackers are foreign Fulani herders. Yet, they are being pampered and allowed to move around with their cattle and weapons, destroy farms, burn houses and kill Nigerian citizens freely. What was the Defence Headquarters’ intention by describing them as herders instead of calling them invading and attacking terrorists?
The question is how long are we going to endure the bloodbath and agony from the invading Islamist Fulani terrorists? When will the military and President Bola Tinubu link the security and economic objectives and approach them in a manner that prioritises speed over political expediency, as opposed to the example set by Israel where the military has fuelled high-tech innovation and human-capital development?
Beyond recognising both threats, the APC administration and the military’s haphazard response to the security deficit is retrogressively appalling, to say the least. No doubt the military has suffered underinvestment in digitalisation, infrastructure and space technology that has dampened some of its ambitious policies, even though reported corruption is the major bane of the collapse of military architecture in critical defence subsectors.
To be sure, the current shocks have awoken the military to the need to rebuild its defence system and seek external help from technologically-advanced countries to curtail terrorism in the country. It is common knowledge that the current military leadership has severely resisted and kicked against sourcing for cooperation and assistance from well-endowed countries ready to assist Nigeria.
If a powerful nation like Russia could seek military help from North Korea, how about Nigeria with little developed military capacity and capability? In fact, North Korean soldiers have been fighting and assisting Russia in its conflict with Ukraine, specifically in the Kursk Oblast. Under President Goodluck Jonathan, Israeli Mossad was engaged to fight Boko Haram insurgents, and they almost succeeded in total decimation of the insurgents before President Muhammadu Buhari took over in 2015 and insecurity soared again to its highest height.
Such resistance bordered on foolishness and was akin to a man who failed to approach his neighbours to help douse the inferno ravaging his home. Strictly speaking, Nigerians have come to a firm conclusion that the reason for not seeking foreign mercenaries is not just for personal aggrandisement and self-glorification but to keep the nation aflame to attract more military budgets while the nation remained in the furnace of terrorism. If this is what the military is truly afraid of, it’s a matter of time before the country fades away under the very watch of President Tinubu.
If the ‘fire from the Sahel region’ is real, as the Chief of Army Staff told the world, then President Tinubu is constitutionally obligated to quench the inferno ravaging the country. The President must be reminded of his constitutional mandate to protect the lives and property of the citizens, regardless of his personal ambition for a second-term re-election bid.
President Tinubu needs to tell Nigerians whether or not it is due to political blackmail that he has not demonstrated sufficient anger against the killings by invading Islamist Fulani terrorists; or is he waiting until he wins the 2027 second-term presidential election before he takes action? I’m sure the president is aware that he will be leaving the nation to peril if he has to wait until 2027 before the terrorists from the Sahel are uprooted from Nigerian soil.
It’s left to be seen if the momentous brutality, the horrific carnage and the utmost cruel exertion on communities and villagers are worth Tinubu’s second term presidency. To put the nation and its people to the sword over his personal ambition and that of military oligarchs who refused foreign intervention is not a worthy legacy to leave behind as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Ikhide, a security expert, wrote via: ikhideluckyerasmus@gmail.com
