AS an experienced military man, how do you describe the situation in Nigeria? Should we just learn to live with it?
We should not learn to live with it. We can’t live with something like this. The first responsibility of a government is self-preservation. It must be able to secure itself in power before it can protect the citizens, protect the country’s territorial integrity and work on improving the general living condition of the people. This responsibility is an onerous one, especially in a country like ours, where the Boko Haram-induced sense of insecurity that used to be localised to the North-East is now spreading like wildfire through the rest of the country. We are no longer dealing with just an unconventional warfare waged by a sophisticated enemy that isn’t afraid to die and that is fuelled, in part, by a twisted but murderous religious ideology and the almost limitless supply of arms, ammunition and fighters through our porous borders. We are now also dealing with indiscriminate kidnap-for-ransom. And these kidnapping do not occur just in the cities or deserted rural roads, they now occur on highways in the clear view of other commuters. To describe our security situation as frightening is to understate the situation in the country. Certainly, these are very challenging times for the government.
We marked 10 years of Book Haram insurgency recently. Is it possible to defeat them? What have we done correctly?
It is possible to defeat Boko Haram. But we must define what we mean by “defeat.” If we are expecting to defeat Boko Haram in the strict military interpretation of vanquish or surrender, we will not get it. Boko Haram is not your traditional state actor – a country with a structured armed forces whose physical Command and Control headquarters, as well as personnel can be overrun, cut off from the fighting force (in the military parlance of cutting off the head of a snake) and forcing surrender. Boko Haram has no uniform and our intelligence entities do not appear to know the people in its chain of command or their locations; otherwise we would have gone after them. Boko Haram is largely an ideology, much like al Qaeda, the Islamic State (IS) and other similar groups. What the Buhari government has done correctly include, first, the changing of guard at the helms of the military and security forces in the country. That served to inject new blood, new spirit and new ideas into the fight. I believe it is time to again reinvigorate the leadership of those same entities with the replacement of those leaders. I am not asking that anybody should be retired when they still have more to offer. But I can tell you that these are high-tempo, high-profile positions that can quickly cause a person to experience burn-out in a very short time. Three years is a very long time to perform at the peak of one’s capabilities when the country is essentially at war. Complacency will set in.
The other thing that the government has done very well is the plugging of the corruption spigot in the entities that were responsible for the prosecution of the war against Boko Haram and the re-direction of hitherto stolen funds to the welfare of our troops and the provision of the much needed material to our tips of the spears on the battlefields. That, clearly, instantly improved the morale of the brave men and women fighting to protect us. You cannot underestimate the level of adrenalin rush a soldier experiences when he or she is well-kitted for a mission, armed with weapons that are superior to those of the enemies and the knowledge that should death come, the country will care for the loved ones left behind.
But much still needs to be done, even in the area of providing much-needed supplies for those doing the fighting. Much needs to be done in the area of the welfare of the troops, particularly the junior ones. And quite a lot needs to be done in the areas of training for the particular kind of war that we are fighting with Boko Haram. I hope we will revamp our military intelligence structures to re-position our country in such a way that we can prosecute full spectrum, intelligence-driven military conflicts. No serious country goes to war “blind” these days; not even the world’s super powers. We must know a lot about our enemies long before we have to fight them. And that involves intelligence – especially Human Intelligence. But to a limited extent, because of our obvious technological handicap, it also includes signal intelligence and imagery intelligence. I believe with the right alliances with other countries, we can be assisted in those areas. But as far as human intelligence, there is no reason we can’t develop that even better than the super powers. And that is the most critical of all Intelligence types. These are not things that can be done overnight or in four years. And these are not things that have finite end-dates or finish-points. These are dynamic things that must constantly be tweaked to meet changing threats. My understanding is that the Buhari government has embarked on some of these overhauls. Maybe we will start to see the dividends in his second term. Or maybe it will be during the administration of his successor.
There is a spotlight on the Yoruba land in terms of insecurity: armed robbery, banditry and kidnapping. Should we entirely blame herdsmen for this?
No, we should not blame these entirely on herdsmen who are mostly Fulani. Armed robbery has been around since time immemorial. And so are banditry and kidnapping. But there has lately been significant upsurge in kidnappings, especially those that are carried out for ransoms. And because persons believed to be of Fulani descent have been involved, one can excuse the scared populace for dumping the blame almost exclusively on the herdsmen. The truth is, it is difficult for Fulani, no matter their numerical strength, to effectively kidnap someone along the Ibadan – Ife express, or Lagos – Ibadan express, or in the areas around Igbeti or Lanlate, and collect ransoms without the active connivance of our own boys and men in those areas. I have heard stories of Yoruba people being arrested by vigilantes in the Igbeti area along with the Fulani folks with whom they collaborated to terrorize folks. Whoever is involved in these crimes, I think the quick dispensation of justice when they are arrested will serve as deterrence. I think this is an area where local governments can enlist the help of the traditional rulers that serve at the pleasure of the governor through the local government councils. Traditional rulers and other community leaders can be empowered (with, of course, some of the security votes that go to the governor) to traverse all areas under their domains and establish a monitoring and reporting system for all inhabitants, particularly new arrivals to the domains. This devolution of responsibility will assist the law enforcement agents when investigating all crimes; not just kidnapping in the rural communities.
Coming to Oyo State; will it be too early to assess the PDP administration of Governor Seyi Makinde?
Assessment is a continuous process in life. We assess all the time. Assessments need not be formal as in that of a student through tests and take-home assignments in the first few weeks of a six-year secondary school education. It can be through a spontaneous commentary on specific actions of government from Day 1. No, I do not believe it is too early to assess the performance of Governor Seyi Makinde. Some have suggested six months or even a one-year grace period. I don’t know where they got those arbitrary markers.
Six months is one-eighth of the life expectancy of the administration. You can’t wait six months to warn that the wholesale cancellation of school fees in secondary schools across the state is either a knee-jerk reaction to solving the issue of poverty in the land, or a shameless pandering to the populace when the governor had not even written a budget of his own, had no clear idea what the federal allocations for the next several months would be or both. The governor had not even taken a single step in improving the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) from where former Governor Abiola Ajimobi left it.
Supposing the global price of crude oil falls precipitously next month, and continues to fall like it did in the past, will Makinde then reintroduce school fees? Here’s what I thought he should have done to achieve the same goal – his goal, I assume, being the alleviation of the burden of school fees on the poor: set standard school fees that, if fully collected, could keep school running well; identify children whose parents (like you and I) can afford the fees and enforce the collection of those fees; then assist parents who can’t afford the fees through reduction, grants or completely free of charge school vouchers. I know it is a difficult thing to do. But it is the right thing to do. By making it free for everyone, he has made it free for you and I as well as millions of others who can afford it. Yet, we have public schools that have no roof, no ceiling, no water, no toilet, no desks, no libraries, no laboratories, no computers, etc. Public schools are the backbone of all leading countries. And that is an assessment of just one action he has taken so far. Do we want to wait six months for that? Do we wait six months for our already weak educational system to be further weakened? I don’t think so.
Even though the second term of President Buhari is just about three months old, there are already jostling for 2023 with the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el Rufai campaigning for the jettisoning of rotational presidency. How do you see and assess Senotor Bola Tinubu’s chances in 2023?
Governor el-Rufai is at liberty to say whatever he wants. If he wants to run, as is being rumoured, it’s a free country. But at the risk of being overly presumptuous (since Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has not declared his intention to vie for the presidency in 2023, and indeed nobody has), I will stick my neck out and ask: Who is better qualified than him to govern Nigeria in 2023? Who, in any political party in Nigeria, has demonstrated executive, legislative and political party organising prowess half as excellently as Tinubu in Nigeria? Who is more loyal to his political party than Tinubu? Who has political friends as far flung and widespread, cutting across parties, regions, nationalities, ethnicities, genders and professions than Tinubu in Nigeria today?
I hope we do not allow the enemies of Nigeria to deprive us of his wealth of experience. Those who are jealous of his achievements, those who have lost battles to him will seek to goad us into over-scrutinising him, so that we just may settle for another mediocre leader.
I will repeat here one last time, that nobody is without flaws. Tinubu, like you and I, has his own flaws too. I hope we (especially the Yoruba) do not nitpick him to political death. Who, among the national gladiators today, can boast of a better curriculum vitae than Tinubu? When it comes to Nigeria’s presidency, it is high time we sought the best in our midst. We have so many problems facing the country today. The Buhari administration is busy pulling us out of the morass that the PDP plunged us for 16 years. We need someone who can build on the success; not one to take us back to the precipice of a bottomless abyss.