By Sylvester Odion Akhaine

Good morning, Mr President. Welcome from my old neighbourhood, Windsor. I lived in Egham, Surrey, during my doctoral studies. In those days, I took pleasure wandering around the woods of Windsor. I am not concerned with your visit to the UK. If anything, it was “Eko for show”, the derisive epithet for my Alma Mater, the University of Lagos. What bothers me is the speculated “defence pact” with Britain. Please, do not take us back to the early 1960s into a battle that our forebears fought and won. The British did not win the battle against the Irish Republican Army through a kinetic approach. It was through an honest web of diplomacy. That is a story for another day.

Today, my focus is on the endless insurgency in the country, the killing of our soldiers as a result of betrayal by those trusted with the affairs of the country. The presence of fifth columnists and Trojan horses in our security forces constitutes one of the major impediments to winning the war against the terrorists in our country. Sheik Gumi’s interview with DR Television bears it all: that the government and its agencies, after all, are the enemy of the country. I have elected to reproduce it below:
Interlocutor: “Hello, sir. Well, a lot of people have seen you in clips and pictures with this terrorist, where you know where they are, you’ve communicated with them, you’ve even (gone) as far as negotiating with them, you know. So a lot of people believe that since you have this knowledge about all this, is it that the government does not have the power or the equipment to know where these terrorists are to tackle insecurity?”

Gumi: “The government knows every terrorist by name and by location. I don’t go alone. I don’t go to the terrorist alone, I call the police, I call the security, everybody. I will go to the Emirs of that place. And if I went to one terrorist, I went even with women with me, to the bush, you didn’t see it because the camera was not concentrating on it. I don’t go alone.”

The above transcript says it all. The Nigerian state has all the Intel for a mop-up operation. The government has not denied it. The question is, why has the government not acted? Whose interests are the bandits serving? We have seen how actionable intelligence has been undermined in the Benue and Kwara killings. Who is stalling and allowing the terrorists to gain the upper hand and create a security dilemma for the country? Why are the security forces being turned into a meat grinder? It saddens me to see our gallant men and women being brought home in the Nigerian flag-draped caskets for interment.

Reportedly, in one single operation, about 40 of our officers and soldiers were killed by the terrorists in the northeast. This number is upped by other recent incidents.

A certain Oto Drama summarised the fate of our gallant soldiers thus: “The recent slaughter of over 100 soldiers in the North-East and the metastasising terror in Kwara and Ondo are not merely ‘security lapses.’ They are the bloody dividends of a security architecture that has transformed the war on terror into a flourishing enterprise—a Transactional Frontier where sovereignty is bartered for budget and lives are traded for mineral rights.” Along the same trajectory of betrayal, a humogouous USD 7.6 million was reportedly paid out as ransom to secure the release of abductees in Niger state by your government that claims no “ransom policy”. Mr President, if we truly want to build Nigeria, we must stop living a lie.

Where there is a will, there is always a way. Solutions to our predicament are not far-fetched. Discerning minds have advised the resort to high-tech to overcome the insurgents, such as AI-driven National Cybernetic Grid, Automated Thermal Geotagging (ATG) that allows real-time digital signatures to mass movements and autonomous response, and   Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), nanobots that can detect the chemical signature of explosives, the heat of AK-47 barrels, and even the unique acoustic vibrations of motorcycle convoys.

These, combined with a fleet of High-Altitude Long-Endurance drones, must maintain a 24/7 “kill zone” over identified terrorist enclaves across the hotbeds. With a defence budget of approximately N5.4 trillion, these are feasible. What is often disregarded in the whole equation is the will of the communities at the receiving end of the ongoing bloody enterprise to defend themselves. If allowed to bear arms, they can vanquish the roving bands of terrorists across our country. As you can see, Mr President, solutions are not unlikely. Those minding the affairs of our country are the problem. The buck stops at your table. Without the political will, without putting the national interest above the self, we cannot overcome this nightmare.

Professor Akhaine lectures at the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University.
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