Insecurity in Nigeria: Winning strategies to defeating the enemies within

The problem of insecurity is not peculiar to Nigeria alone as many nations of the world be they developing or advanced nation’s have at one point in their history dealt with the menace of insecurity.

However, what has been most disturbing in the Nigerian situation is the alleged support and collusion by many folks in the host communities with bandits, kidnappers and terrorists including the continued deterioration of the security situation over time. We are at such a low point security wise now that a new attitude of acceptance is gradually been created because of the degree of ineptitude and incompetence by successive governments in crafting and implementing the right policies and the failures of our society to take a principled stand against lawlessness and criminality without yielding to the “Oga Abeg” moniker, a popular refrain by Nigerians when they seek to avoid accountability for their actions. While many factors are responsible for nation’s current state of insecurity, most of the reasons are well conversed, so this article will not reharsh them, rather it will focus on how we meet the challenges of the moment and restore peace and security to our fatherland.

The Nigerian Army along with the Nigerian Police Force and other security services, have done a Herculean job in trying to combat the menace of insecurity in our land given the constraints, though frequent cases of large-scale kidnappings and violence still exist in sections of the country. It is now a well-established position among experts that traditional military organizations are not equipped to fight insurgencies because of operational challenges, constitutional rights constraints, and the guerilla tactics employed by insurgents a fact that was borne out by the American military experiences during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. However, to effectively combat and defeat the Boko Haram insurgency, end kidnappings, neutralize the bandits and restore peace to Nigeria, we must rethink our strategies and draw some lessons learned from the current efforts. In developing the new winning strategy, we must be cognizant of the fact that any efforts at defeating these enemies within must be a bottom-up approach, meaning that it must win the hearts and minds of people in the affected communities and enlist their help in intelligence gathering and identification of these kidnappers, bandits and terrorists and local collaborators to enable security services liquidate them. Furthermore, given technological advancements in information technology and surveillance, we must deploy drones and unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAV) to the theater of conflict to better aid in monitoring and deploying surgical strikes by our security forces against the enemy combatants.

There are those who advocate for the creation of state police as the only vehicle to seriously fight these crimes and insecurity at the state level. While I do not share this school of thought, I do endorse localizing crime fighting by recruiting locals into a civilian army of informants, a fighting force that can also aid in the collection of actionable intelligence, including reforming the Nigerian Police Force and implementing community policing which is distinct from state police and far more effective in addressing the security challenges. Also embedding agents and informants in all communities and making sure that police officers are from and or live in communities they serve. We need reservoirs of informants and agents deployed especially to the troubled regions who will collect information and data for processing by the national counterterrorism center in collaboration with other security agencies.
The trajectory of the war to restore peace and security in Nigeria will be on the upswing if we do the following:

1. Reorient and re-purpose the national counterterrorism center to prioritize human intelligence and recruit one million agents across the country, while prioritizing zone of insurgency.
2. Deploy the drones and Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAV) for surveillance and precision strikes against enemy targets.
3. Setup and deploy a readily accessible national Biometric Database for crime fighting
4. Recruits should serve in their communities to help gather actionable intelligence which are key to effective targeting and response by the security services.
5. Stand up a people’s militia with non-uniformed military and intelligence embeds to help coordinate the fighting force. This is critical as defeating this enemy requires us to adapt to their asymmetrical tactics and think like them.
6. Pass death penalty legislation for terrorism, kidnapping and banditry.
7. Prosecute as collaborators and seek the death penalty for spouses and adult children of terrorists, kidnappers and bandits.
8. End with immediate effect the unconditional forgiveness of terrorists and bandits as it promotes more criminality.
9. Guaranty amnesty from prosecution only for all insurgents, terrorists and bandits who lay down their arms and provide intelligence that leads to possible arrests of criminals after passage of the proposed terrorism and miscellaneous crimes reforms legislation.
10. Pass legislation to create special courts for terrorism, kidnappings and banditry or use military tribunals and exclude privileges of appeal to the Supreme Court.
11. Launch a public awareness campaign through the National Orientation Agency (NOA) as part of crime fighting efforts soliciting help from the public.
12. Create a special council with autonomy to prosecute these crimes.

Nigerians must as a matter of necessity get rid of the begging culture that has come to define us and insist on accountability, so that those who violate our laws are prosecuted to the fullest extent permitted by our laws and not cuddled or offered forgiveness without atonement. It is my strong belief and hope that if these recommendations are adopted and executed, the enemies within will be defeated and peace and tranquility will be restored to our beloved people and country.

Nosa Osaikhuiwu is a U.S. based service delivery manager, a certified project manager with expertise in process improvements, change management and elimination of waste, fraud and abuse.