Ethnic profiling, politicisation escalating insecurity in Nigeria — Prof. Siddique

Professor Abubakar Siddique Mohammed is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria. He is also the Director of the Centre for Democratic Development Research and Training (CEDDERT), Zaria. In this interview with Daily Trust he, among others, identified ethnic profiling and politicisation of security issues as major factors aiding the escalation of security challenges in Nigeria. Excerpts

Insecurity keeps escalating in Nigeria; where is the country getting it wrong?

There are so many factors. In fact, seven years ago, after conducting research in Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara, we organised a workshop in Arewa House, Kaduna. We said that insecurity, if not checked, based on what we have seen in the field, will develop into maleic cancer. In other words, it will go around the country. The bandits we encountered were getting emboldened. At that time, if you read Nigerian newspapers, the talk was about farmers-herders conflict. This is what the papers were reporting, and we said something was not adding up. So, we decided to go to the field on our own. We were horrified by what we saw. We realised that it was not a farmers-herders conflict. A superior force has emerged in the Northwest, which was subjugating both the farmer and the herder. You can’t continue talking about farmer-herder conflict when the farmer is running for dear life so also the herder. In the case of the herder, he has lost his cattle through cattle rustling. In the case of the farmer, he has been forced to leave his farm. How then do you talk about farmer-herder conflict? So, there was something much more serious than that. In fact, at the time we were doing our work, the bandits issued letters to district heads and emirs, especially in Zamfara, instructing them to tell their people not to go to the farm.

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Before then, at a village known as ‘Yar Galadima on a market day and in broad daylight, bandits attacked the town and killed 140 people and this is only the official figure. So, the thing was escalating over time. The rural rich have been pulverised, because bandits were attacking them and actually dispossessing them of whatever they had, and in most cases, their children and wives were raped in their presence. That was what was happening. In large parts of Zamfara, bandits have taken over. We came back and went to Birnin Gwari in Kaduna State. Bandits will block the road and confiscate whatever traders had. When the traders began using the banks, the two banks in the area were set ablaze, forcing people to move with money. The same thing was happening in Katsina State. So, we said that these things are getting out of control. Unless action is taken, there is the tendency for it to spread to other parts of Nigeria. Our fear is what is happening now.

Many are of the view that it was the herder-farmer conflict that degenerated to what we are witnessing now?

Of course, there is farmer-herder conflict in parts of the Northwest, but there is generalisation. If you read the newspapers, people talk about Jihadists coming to Nigeria. I don’t know what they meant by that. What is happening in the Northeast and Northwest are two different things. In the Northeast, we have people that are well trained with an ideology and an outcome that is expected. In the Northwest, there isn’t anyone group with an ideology of capturing Nigeria. So, there is world of difference between the two. Secondly, if you look at the Jihad of Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio, it was a well-organised war against the existing state structure at that time. This is not what is happening now, because there is no one group striving to impose any ideology or religion on any part of the Northwest, for example. These are criminals and they have to be treated as such. It is unfortunate that kidnapping and banditry have spread to different parts of the country. Again, there is the issue of generalisation. If you take what is happening in the Southwest, for example, most of the herders are from that locality. Those in the Zamfara area are not the ones you see in Southwest or those in Kaduna. The herders were born there and they speak Yoruba.

I remember in 1977, as a youth corps member, at Ayaturo, we met some Fulani pastoralists. We spoke Hausa to them; they didn’t understand Hausa. My colleague, who is Fulani, talked to them in Fulfude, they didn’t understand Fulfulde. They speak only Yoruba. So, there are problems between them and the farmers, as you have in different parts of the world. It is therefore mischief to generalise the problem, as the media are doing.

Because the majority of the bandits are Fulani, then we tend to say that every Fulani is a bandit. This is wrong because we can’t say every armed robber is Igbo or every ritualist is Yoruba. They are insignificant in number when compared to the whole population. The few are criminals and they should be treated as such rather than generalising that every Fulani is a bandit or kidnapper, which is leading to ethnic profiling. Before the recent development, kidnapping was only known in the Southeast, but nobody said all Igbos were kidnappers. Ritual killings were generalised in the Southwest, but nobody said every Yoruba was a ritualist.

So, we have to identify the criminals and deal with them according to the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is as simple as that. Another problem is what is happening in the Southeast where some of their elites are glorifying ethnic militias. These militias go about killing people of Northern extraction, especially Fulani. This cannot be acceptable in any society.

Is government part of the problem?

Insecurity in the North, especially, has many immediate and remote causes. However, some major forces seem to be responsible for its eruption and intensification after 2011. One major factor was the decision of the Zamfara State government to clear large forests and cattle grazing reserves in its part of the Kuyanbana forest and Gidan Jaja areas of Maru and Zurmi Local Governments for farming. The policy resulted in the dislocation of many Fulani hamlets between Dansadau area and Maradun to Zurmi axes.

The Fulani hamlets in these areas have existed for over 500 years. It is interesting to note that the Maradun area is famous for its position in the middle of Zamfara. Long before this policy of evicting pastoralists from their ancestral lands, injustices contrived by corrupt district heads in collaboration with farmers, corrupt police and corrupt judges had subjected the Fulani cattle herders in these areas to serial extortions. Over the years, these created an embittered group of dispossessed Fulani of dubious social and economic identities.

These marginalised Fulani became suspects and ready scapegoats once a crime is committed. This delicate situation was compounded by the absence of basic transport and communication infrastructure in the conflict areas, where the presence of the state is extremely minimal. As the conflict intensified, neutral groups among the Fulani became the targets of attack by the Fulani bandits, in attempts to recruit them forcefully into the cause. They were also viewed with suspicion by the Hausa community.

In some cases, these neutral Fulani were also occasionally attacked by the vigilante groups. Because this situation was not properly handled by the state, it morphed into generalised banditry in Zamfara, which spilled over into the neighboring states of Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto and other areas. The second issue is that, while people are talking about the modernisation of the livestock sector, they

should know that this cannot happen overnight. The cattle routes, for example, have been there even before the creation of Nigeria. Muhammad Bello, the Sultan of Sokoto, foresaw that unless something is done, there will be a conflict between the farmers and herders and the idea of creating cattle parts came up. Farmers will have their lands to farm and the herders will have their routes to graze.

The British colonial administration came and even expanded it. However, these routes were gradually taken over. There is also the politicisation of the whole issue by the politicians. In doing so, they elicited the support of a section of the Nigerian press that ethicise the whole issue and it is now out of control. Now, the government should ensure that some of these cattle parts are recovered. Some of these parts were taken and nothing is happening there. People have taken and fenced them because they have power and money. In fact, these types of people were the ones that introduced violence into the whole system, because they armed their guards. While we pursue the modernization of the livestock sector, we have to take into consideration that we can’t ask people to move from one lifestyle to the other overnight. This will cause chaos.

Are you alluding to state failure as a factor in the present security situation in Nigeria?

The perceived failure of the local and state authorities to arrest the situation led members of the communities in those areas to resort to self-help on law enforcement. The existing recognised vigilante groups became very active. Note also that the Northwest is known for its high poverty rate and high population of the unemployed in this country, vulnerable to crime. The inadequate law enforcement infrastructure led to the emergence of self-help groups, the vigilante or Yan Banga, who took it upon themselves to search for robbery suspects after every armed robbery operation. This took them to villages and Fulani settlements or hamlets, where they often made indiscriminate arrests. Lives were occasionally lost. In some cases cattle too.

Are you saying that the foregoing led to the escalation of the problem?

As I said before, about seven years ago, the insecurity was more pronounced and limited to Zamfara; areas around Dansadau, Dangulbi and other areas in the Maru local government, parts of Shinkafi, Zurmi etcetera. Dansadau is close to Birnin Gwari in Kaduna State and Sabuwa in Katsina State. Whatever happens in terms of insecurity in one of these areas tends to affect the others. From the fieldwork we undertook; it became clear to us that there was the need for a holistic approach in tackling the menace of insecurity. There is no doubt about the fact that the governors of the affected states are very active. Our conclusion after the study was that concerted efforts must be taken simultaneously to reverse the trend otherwise the problem would continue to escalate.

Most of the affected areas have few policemen. So, how can these few policemen confront between 200 and 300 tough and heavily armed bandits? People in the affected areas are now living at the mercy of the Almighty God. Before we started our fieldwork, we had to visit the Emir of Birnin Gwari for advice on how to get to Birnin Gwari. He also linked us up with some people there who assisted us. The banditry has since expanded to Abuja-Kaduna road. Some of the people kidnapped and released said that while the negotiation for ransom was going on, the bandits were receiving orders from their bosses in Zamfara. The banditry has also spread to areas that were spared in the past. A few years back, we cautioned that the fight against banditry had to be decisive right from the beginning because it has the tendency to escalate. This is what we are witnessing now.

Was there no political will to implement your advice?

The insecurity we are witnessing now doesn’t need a touch-and-go approach. It needs a consistent approach. If you go to some of the areas affected by the banditry, there is virtually no state presence. If you go to local government secretariats, you won’t see anybody. There are very few policemen in those areas. So, the only people you see are the traditional rulers and the local Malams (Islamic clerics), as managers of misfortune. They are the only ones that manage the people. When people are traumatised, the only people they can go to are these two. A traditional ruler hasn’t the capacity to deal with the generalised insecurity in those areas. The only thing he would do is to calm them and promise to send messages to the state capital and often nothing comes out.

Informants were said to be the architects of the most recent kidnapping incidents?

Yes, some people are being accused of being informants of the bandits. However, there is nothing the members of the local communities can do, because they are not armed. When this thing started, the vigilantes decided to deal with the situation. Many of them were not trained. So, they were hard on the local criminals.

Do you see the rising insecurity as an act of sabotage?

At a point, before this banditry got out of control, in one of our seminars, we argued that the insecurity situation can be capitalised upon by some unscrupulous politicians to advance their interests. Why did we say so? We found that in Zamfara, the bandits were treated mildly. The government had contact with them. Some people were arrested and the bandits demanded they be released. The governor then ordered for their release. For some reasons, the bandits treated the then governor and his cohorts with contempt. There was a time when the former governor initiated dialogue with them; the deputy governor was mandated to lead the dialogue. A gangster, Buharin Daji, kept the deputy governor waiting for hours at the venue chosen for the commencement of the dialogue. Later the bandit declined to turn up. He sent a message that he wasn’t going to show up. He did this because of the way they were treating the bandits.

In the areas the bandits’ control, they can determine who wins elections. This is because the people there are helpless; so they have to abide by the bandits’ dictates. Failure to do so could invite severe consequences. It seems to me that at a point, some politicians thought they could control the situation and use the bandits for their political ends but it got out of control. They are now helpless.

What are the motivations of the insecurity bedeviling Nigeria, especially banditry and kidnapping?

More people from other parts of Nigeria have joined this banditry because it is lucrative. At the time we started our research, a superior force had emerged in the areas we studied subjugating both the pastoralists and the farmers. Cattle rustling were rampant in the area until they rustled all the cattle. They ask farmers not to go to farms. Those who dared them were killed. The bandits are expanding their activities using the money they are making from their criminal activities. When they seized all the cattle and stopped farmers from going to the farm, they moved to another stage, which is kidnapping. They kidnap and demand for ransom. Quite often they are on drugs. They kill at will in order to instill fear in people.

They now target schools, because they want attention, money and prominence. Families pay ransom to save the lives of their loved ones. Government does the same thing to be relieved of pressure from many quarters, especially if students are involved. So, the real motivation is, banditry is an easy way of making money. Can you imagine somebody getting millions of Naira within a short period of time? Banditry and kidnapping are seen by some unemployed youths ravaged by poverty as the easiest way of moving out of poverty. Serious efforts have to be made by our governments to fight poverty if we want to get out of this problem.

What is the economic impact of the banditry?

Insecurity, especially banditry, has had a serious negative impact on economic activities in the areas affected. Mass migration of pastoralists fleeing the conflict has led to the disappearance of livestock markets especially for cattle in some areas.The District Head of Dan Gulbi, informed us that an estimated 500 heads of cattle were normally sold on market days before the conflict. However, with the escalation of the conflict not a single cow is brought to the market.

Indeed, over 90% of the pastoralists have deserted the areas we studied for dear life. Many have lost their cattle to the conflict. Bandits have scared away farmers from their lands. Those who defied the bandits and went to their farms were promptly shot. With the reduction of available cultivated farmlands, farm labour has dropped by 85% due to the unrest.

Are there ways that this disturbing trend can be addressed?

It would take time to deal with the situation. We don’t have enough manpower in the police to deal with the situation. We need to expand the Nigeria police. This would take time because it takes about a minimum of six months to train a good constable. Nigeria is one of the most under-police nations. We have about 370,000 police personnel. Some analysts dispute this figure. They opined that it is lower than this. Many are deployed to protect important personalities. So, they have been taken out of operation. You could see even construction sites are now being guarded by the police. The police are now largely used for regime protection. Given the generalised insecurity across the country, not only the police, even the Army and other security agencies are overstretched. So, the whole security architecture in Nigeria has to change. We have to also strengthen our intelligence gathering to nip crises in the bud. Intelligence gathering should not be left to security agencies alone. State authorities like local governments have to also gather intelligence and pass it on to the relevant authorities. But the local governments have been crippled and this is a serious problem. The areas where this banditry is rampant are the poorest in this country. Nobody would tell you that you can deal with insecurity by just relying on the security agencies. You need many doses of social intervention programmes.

The poor are becoming a critical reservoir from where the bandits recruit. When the poor realise that people are getting hundreds of millions through kidnapping, why can’t they get involved in it?

When I say we should deal with poverty, I don’t mean unstructured dishing out of money. There should be many social interventions that would take these youths out of poverty, idleness and unemployment. They should be engaged in productive activities so that they would not have time for mischief. A time has come for the creation of another force.  The police as we know them today would deal with the normal crimes that we know. We need a crack force by whichever name you call it, highly mobile, equipped and with new values to tackle the emerging serious and destabilizing security challenges.

The SARS, for example, can be expanded instead of scrapping it to form this force under a totally new command. They would be activated in situations the regular police are incapable of dealing with. An attempt was made to establish the National Guard but it was killed before it took off. We certainly need another force superior in terms of weaponry and rapidity to the regular police but not the Army, Air Force and the Navy. In short, a middle structure that will free the armed forces as presently constituted to concentrate on their traditional role of defending the territorial integrity of our country. It is disturbing that the bandits are more equipped than the police. Sometimes, the police recovered arms from bandits and use the arms to fight bandits. Indirectly, bandits are arming the police. Many of the structures that could have assisted in alerting the relevant agencies before the bandits take over our forests have become moribund. People have underestimated the role of local governments and traditional rulers in keeping the peace in our communities. All these structures have been thoroughly weakened. Therefore, the line of communication has been broken and all these things have to be factored into the solution. Again, all over the world, governments have think-tanks. They contact them for input in policy formulation and implementation. Sometime, these think-tanks are commissioned to carry out studies to assist the government in addressing challenges such as the ones we are facing in Nigeria today.

 You did not mention dialogue and move to use dogs by the Katsina State government to safeguard schools?

Yes, we need to separate the innocent Fulani from the criminals. This will also assist in dealing with the situation. On issue of dogs, dogs alone can’t give security. They can only alert the security and the students. If we don’t have enough security men, then it means we have to get the locals to assist in the security architecture. It means we have to change the laws, to allow people to hold guns. I don’t mean everybody to hold guns, but in every community, you have retired police or Army officers. So, the government should use them to train the local community on how to protect their communities. Students should also be trained on survival tactics. We can’t continue to close our schools, because even when the schools are open, the students are poorly trained. Only a few students who attended private schools are qualified to come to university. You can imagine the danger, if we continue to close our schools.