20022021 - INSECURITY Give us state police now - Govs

20—SATURDAY Vanguard, FEBRUARY 20, 2021
They won’t face reality. They won’t
accept facts.
In the North, the chickens are
coming home to roost.
The northern elite are the most shortsighted
and selfish in Africa. The breed of
the Aminu Kanos and the Sarduanas have
gone extinct. The preoccupation of the bulk
of North’s political leadership, a rapacious,
self-conceited bunch masquerading as
politicians, political mercenaries is
political conquests rather than
development. How could anyone run a
parched ground like Yobe and sleep well,
let alone have time for national politics?
I know politicians in the south and
elsewhere in the country are not better, but
the south’s situation is not as stark as the
North’s. In not resisting westernization, the
south’s culture has masked the equally
gaping southern political leadership
deficiencies. The south has fairly good
literacy levels. The south has no good
healthcare and public schools but the south
has teachers and exports doctors to the West.
The south could yet crumble, but the North
is already in tatters.
That’s why the continuing somnolence of
the North’s public has become tragic.
For so long northern governors competed
for farcical righteousness. They competed
to institute the sharia. Sharia is good. But
the adoption of religious
fanaticism as state policy
by politicians to hoodwink
the people and win
elections was costly
charlatanism. They got
the votes but didn’t give
them education and jobs.
All they did was legitimize
extremism, encourage
more children to embrace
the Almajiri system, and
indirectly bolster the idea
that western education is
corruption. The governors
watched and frolicked in
Abuja as school
enrollment figures
plummeted.
Zamafara, the erstwhile
throne of righteousness, is
now tired of sharia.
Where is the
wealth of millions
of children born in
the wild to
herdsmen, born
into the servitude
and perpetually
slavery of roaming
thousands of
miles with cattle to
earn crumbs?
Zamfara directly
negotiates with outlaws.
Some days ago, Mr
Matawalle, the Governor
of Zamfara, in a blatant
display of empathy for
bandits, literally justified
banditry. He said some of the bandits were
not criminals. They were wronged people
who took to assault rifles and RPGs to fight
for justice the way they knew best. This is
the same Zamfara where people lost their
limbs for petty theft. The same Zamfara
where a former deputy governor placed a
The North and its political
ostriches
fatwa—kill on sight order— on a
Nigerian journalist for alleged
defamation. In today’s Zamfara, the
governor now sympathies with
insurgents, terrorists. That is the story
of the North.
Quota system, federal character, and
differential cut-off marks can only do
so much. They can fetch a few unmerited
positions which the occupants would use
to fatten their egos and pockets. They
can’t create jobs and healthcare for
impoverished millions who live
miserably, threatened by a burgeoning
desert.
The North’s elite is
culpable. The North has
experienced a frightening
population explosion.
Everybody knows that the
pace of population
growth in the North has
far outstripped the
country’s economic
growth. But desperate to
retain a hold on power,
the northern elite love the
skyrocketing population
numbers. So they have
failed to initiate any
population control
measures. They have no
hospitals. They have no
schools. They have no
teachers, yet they will do
nothing to check the
burst.
Children who are
unschooled and
unsheltered will
invariably end up streets
urchins and intensify
societal decay. They
know. Yet, in the face of that ticking
bomb, we are often reminded that every
child comes with his own wealth. Where
is the wealth of millions of children born
in the wild to herdsmen, born into the
servitude and perpetually slavery of
roaming thousands of miles with cattle
to earn crumbs?
The chickens are back to roost. We will
reap what we have sown.
Before our eyes, banditry has seized
the North. Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara,
and Niger. Taraba, Benue, Plateau have
had their stories. The Northeast is
already desolate; the northwest is falling
apart. Rather than hold village
meetings every day,
weep together to find
lasting solutions to
these problems, the
northern elite have
their eyes on 2023 and
A b u j a
calculations. Sometimes
I wonder if we shouldn’t
just surrender
sovereignty to the
European Union so
that our local
politicians can
concentrate on being
local government
chairmen.
The minister of
defense, in a veiled jab,
called us cowards. In
their days, he said, they
used to stand up to
violent criminals. Their
days were the
Maitasine days, I
guess. But now, he has
suggested, we must not
sheepishly surrender to
bandits. He urged us to confront
insurgents with RPGs with bare hands.
Please forgive the minister. He is out of
touch. When he tried to recant, he said
he wanted us to be courageous. He
moves around courageously with armed
security guards. It’s not his fault.
Honestly, the courage missing in the
North is not that which can lead to a
bloodbath when bandits who seek to
dine with governors and collect bags of
ransoms come to abduct school
children. The courage missing is that
needed to confront the governors and hold
them accountable.
The ordinary people in the North are easily
seduced by the political conquests of their
leaders rather than developmental
projects. They are delirious when their
leaders win federal appointments and
become big men. The courage they need is
the courage to force accountability. The
courage to prioritize their reality—poverty,
illiteracy, and misery—above the vanity of
their selfish leaders’ ego diameter.
But that courage will come. I know the
North’s masses have the innate capacity, the
effervescent temperament to turn around
quickly and chase away political ineptitude
overnight. But they are still slumberous. The
spark they need will come quicker if regional
autonomy is granted. The stark pictures of
the regions, juxtaposed side by side, in a
restructured federation, will rouse fury. When
powers are devolved and resource control
ceded to the regions, a healthy rivalry will
ensue. The people of the North will see their
potentials and see their nightmarish decline
in 3D.
Today, any governor can hide under the
federal government. After
restructuring, the federal
government will be so thin
and so naked it can not
conceal anybody’s
ineptitude. Some healthy
regional rivalry had
begun in the first republic.
When regional
governments return,
Rather than hold
village meetings
every day, weep
together to find
lasting solutions to
these problems, the
northern elite have
their eyes on 2023
and
calculations.
Abuja
Northeast youths’
migration to Lagos to
become okada riders
alongside literal refugees
from Niger Republic will
become visible.
While we have an obese
Abuja, the northern
political elite can live in
abject self-deceit. Aminu
Kano was worried about
the poor. He mingled with
them and made them his
preoccupation. Today
besides a man like Gov
Zulum and El Rufai,
perhaps, many other
governors do not
understand the depth of the problem. They
do good talks, pay lip service to development,
and sleep well. They are not shocked by the
data that has the core north in the
neighborhood of a wretched
Afghanistan. When regional restructuring
and resource control forces the truth on the
North, it will see the lies and rise. It will find
the Aminu Kanos and it will recover lost
grounds.
The North thirsts for the naked truth, but
its leaders are soothing it with clothed lies.
Surprisingly, the Nigerian Chief of
Defence Staff (CDS) is often seen as an
officer who has been merely kicked
upstairs to make way for, sayan Army, Air or
Naval Chief of Staff. In fact, there were
murmurs of disaffection when former President
Shehu Shagari appointed Nigeria’s first Chief
of Defence Staff, Lt. General Alani Akinrinade,
in 1981, during the Second Republic, from
Army Chief, to be the apex military coordinator,
and appointed Gen. Inua Wushishi as his
successor.
The recently dropped Chief of Army Staff, Lt.
Gen. Yusuf Buratai, for all his failures, was
decidedly more than a decorative flower vase,
while he occupied that office. He forgot one
important thing; that he was not the Chief of
Defence Staff; General Abayomi Gabriel
Olonisakin was.
Please, dear Gen. Leo Eluonye Onyenuchea
Irabor, as CDS, there is a terrible sore that your
predecessors have allowed to fester; reforming
the character of the average military man or
woman for the concept of honour; a keen sense
of ethical conduct: INTEGRITY, to take root.
In the US, it is easy to guess who is a soldier;
because of their behaviour, punctuality, sense
of duty towards others, their readiness to defend
the underdog, respect for the rule of law and
those in authority over them, esprit de corps (a
feeling of pride and mutual loyalty shared by
the members of a group) and elevated sense of
integrity. Here esprit de corps is exhibited only
in a mob attack against a civilian.
Dear General, the military and paramilitary
academies destroy the morale of youths
because the average soldier or policeman is
worse than the worst civilian in cutting corners,
in making the quick buck, in telling lies, in
smoking ganja, in disobeying traffic lights, in
lawlessness, what lesson has the military learnt
from the losses suffered in the hands of Boko
Haram? When USA, after fighting brilliantly
against Britain in the American War of
Independence, suffered disgraceful
losses in the War of 2012, it was time to rejig
Gen Leo Irabor: Ref
eform the
Militar
ary; coordinate
operations
its military. So, Captain Sylvanus Thayer
approached the Secretary of War, James
Monroe, in 1815, with his plan. After touring
Europe for two years, Thayer took charge at
West Point. The late American journalism
legend, Jenkin Lloyd Jones in an article titled
a MAN OF HONOUR, said that Thayer
“had been thinking about those intangibles
that separate merely clever fighters from
great leaders. He had been wondering why
military history was full of fools for whom
men would gladly die while abler men
couldn’t get a following. And he concluded
that perhaps the difference was honour and
truth and devotion to duty”.
From that day, the training at West Point
changed to bring about “Honour without
Supervision,” Thayer’s motto. Soon, all
other military academies copied the change
at West Point. Yet, we have soldiers who
suspect that their own commanders, at all
levels, have short-changed them. So, their
loyalty and devotion are shallow. Today in
American military academies, barracks and
parade grounds “honesty is raised almost
to a fetish” wrote Jenkins. And Thayer used
to say: “A cadet does not lie, cheat or steal”.
Not in Nigeria; here, even Service Chiefs
have been found guilty of embezzlement.
Soldiers sell arms to terrorists and betray
fellow soldiers. Troops suspect officers of
creaming off their rations or ammo.
The second reform is that you must
provide command. You must be a conductor
of the Nigerian military orchestra. The
bombing runs of the Air Force must be
coordinated with the actions of the ground
forces to cut off and decimate escaping
terrorists. The intelligence units must
become fruitful. In a symphony, the rising
volume of the brass, the increased speed of
the guitars and violins, the heightening
kpam kpam dim dim of the drums, the
crashing of the cymbals, the wailing of the
trumpets, and the baritone or soprano voice
or voices are all coordinated to give a
predetermined effect. So you must coordinate,
yes, provide command.
Esprit de corps is one of Henri Fayol’s 14
administrative principles. The principle states
that an organisation must make every effort to
maintain group cohesion in the organisation. It
notes that dividing your competition is a clever
tactic, but dividing your own team is a serious
error. But dear Gen Irabor, there appears to be a
terrible competition and mutual suspicion
between the different military arms.
You may have often read about what the Air
Force has done to nuetralise bandits or Boko
Haram insurgents, or what the Army itself has
done, but have seen relating to a heightened
collaboration among the various services? Also,
there appears to be little input from the
intelligence arms of the military, so insurgents
abduct school children and receive ransom
before they release them. This is a cause for shame
for often, we read or hear about instances or
accusations of collaborations between soldiers
and insurgents. Even military and political
leaders complain about villagers giving real time
intelligence to vandals to successfully ambush
troops. But those heartless criminals move from
their bases, carry out a campaign without the
police or the military getting any hint. If the
criminals could recruit and maintain
informants, why can’t the military?
In the 1991 Operation Desert Shield, General
H. Norman Schwarzkopf, was the actual
Commander-in-Chief, United States Central
Command, in the Middle East war theater. But
everyone knew who coordinated all operations;
sea, air and land; General Colin L. Powell,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - though
his job was really to advise the US President.
Today the world still talks about the Powel
Doctrine of war. Give us the Irabor Doctrine, and
may it consign Boko Haram and banditry into
history! You were Theatre Commander,
Operation Lafiya four years ago. So, you know
you have an urgent job to conclude.
God’s speed!