President Buhari and the secessionists

President Buhari’s powerful interview with Arise TV early last month revealed clearly to all that the president is healthy, alert to the issues in the country and entirely in charge of his government. Above all, the interview showed the president as being fired up to go full throttle for the rest of his tenure. These, in turn, made nonsense of claims by some about his senility, or of a certain cabal in his government which rules on his behalf at its own behest; and dispelled any hopes, or fears, that the government will crumble at the feet of separatists, banditry and insurgency.

All of these were political victories of some sort for the president and his government. So it would come as a shock to many sober observers that the government deems a frontal and forceful attack on Biafra and Oduduwa separatists top of its agenda right now, as the arrest of the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu and the attempt for same on Sunday Igboho shows. For several reasons, that is an entirely unnecessary distraction the government can ill afford at this point and which therefore calls for caution.

First, the government may feel justified to have both Kanu and Igboho arrested and to answer for their crimes in court, as the Governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai’ explained in his interview with BBC Pidgin during the weekend. But the issues here are rather more political than legal. It is true that both men have formed armed groups and incited violent activities among their members, which is criminal and unacceptable. Still, there is nothing inherently wrong or treasonable in calling for and mobilising for an independent Biafra or Oduduwa republics, or whatever. It is simply free speech.

Second, there is an inherent contradiction in the government’s own approach to these issues. Just last week, the Niger Delta Avengers publicly threatened to resume attacks if their demands were not met. But the presidency could only reply in a conciliatory tone and promptly too. So, forcefully going after Kanu and Igboho now simply means that some armed groups and their leaders are more equal than others. It will send a dangerous signal that the more armed a group is, the more likely it is to successfully threaten or carry out violent activities without consequences.

This will incentivize other armed groups to stockpile even more arms. And it will give the Niger Delta militants, the most well-armed group in Nigeria, a free reign to continue to hold the country to ransom with incessant demands. This is a slippery slope to danger.

Third, the Nigerian state has not really learned any lessons from decades of engaging certain categories of citizen groups through the use of force. But the historical precedent is a clear warning. Removing the leader of such groups from the scene, by death or imprisonment, has not always silenced their groups in Nigeria. Instead, the groups have simply split into even more violent factions capable of overrunning the combined forces of our military. We have seen this before, twice in fact, in the past 25 years, in the case of the Niger Delta militants and Boko Haram.

Must we repeat the same mistakes all over again and on two different fronts at the same time? I hope not. You may think Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho are bad now and I will readily agree with you. But that’s because you know them now. And really, things have not yet gotten out of hand with either secessionist movement they represent. So if you now lock them up in prison, instead of simply neutralising them by persuasion, who knows whether the next persons to claim to take over the ‘mantle of the struggle’ from them will be out and out nutters? We have seen this before.

Fourth, neither Nnamdi Kanu nor Sunday Igboho is new in Nigerian politics. Both predate the current government and are very likely to outlast it. There is hardly much gain in this government wasting precious time and resources in a direct confrontation with something like that. It is true that agitations for Biafra and for Oduduwa more recently, have become far more strident under Buhari than during the government of any past president since 1999. But there are several reasons for this.

One, rather than just ignore them, as previous governments did, President Buhari himself created the impression that he is much bothered by them. Nnamdi Kanu was never more popular or taken seriously, than when he was first arrested by this government in 2017. The more government shows overt interest in such secessionist groups, the more attention is drawn to them and the more popular their leaders become. Moreover, while I cannot prove it, I feel quite certain that the recent call for the Oduduwa Republic, in particular, has more to do with the South West having a shot at the presidency in 2023 than anything else. No point using force against that either.

But the most important reason why separatist movements have grown bolder now than previously has to do with what you may call punching Buhari in the media. No Nigerian leader has ever had an easy ride in office, not even military heads of state, with all their power under an authoritarian regime. All past Nigerian leaders received far more criticism from the media and by implication the public than they were probably due. But there has been a qualitative shift in media criticism of Buhari.

The loudest sections of our media have simply conflated Buhari with Nigeria such that any attack on the country by anyone is celebrated and reinforced in the media as an attack on Buhari. When The Punch newspaper, for example, consistently refers to Buhari as Major-General, rather than as President, it is showing disrespect to the office, not the person. When our official media went to town shouting genocide or massacre last year, without any evidence, it is Nigeria, not just the government that is being exposed to external interference that no one knows what the consequences would be for us all. And many more examples abound.

Of course, Buhari is not Nigeria, and political opposition is not the same thing as madness. But this negative conflation of Buhari with the country has created a self-fulfilling environment that then emboldens and ennobles people like Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho to take up arms against the state. This, for me, is precisely how we arrived at where we are right now in Nigeria. So how does the government deal with the situation?

I would suggest leaving force—and the law is still the use of force—out of the equation. The governors of the South East have disowned Nnamdi Kanu and his antics. In a recent interview, Dr Chris Ngige provided an unmatched defence of Buhari’s record in the South East. Get all the high-level officials in the government from every part of the country to stand up for Nigeria among their own people and speak more frequently, more loudly and more persuasively than they now do. The most effective way to eliminate the threats posed by people like Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho is not to imprison them but to make their ideas irrelevant.