Community dwellers as fall guys in Nigeria’s insecurity conundrum

Increasingly, hapless Nigerians in obscure communities are bearing the brunt of insecurity in Nigeria.

Apart from the fact that they often fall victim of the attack of bandits, terrorists and kidnappers, they are also accused by government agencies of not providing the needed intelligence to the security agencies about the activities of the criminal elements that live amongst them.

These community people also fall victim of unintended attacks by the military that wants to smoke out the enemies.

This happens both in the Northern and Southern parts of the country.

While there have been casualties arising from military airstrikes in some places in the North West, there have been, allegedly, sustained attack on some communities in the South East as a result of the activities of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

Unverified reports have it that many Innocent citizens have paid the supreme price for what they knew not. Some community people have also had their houses raised on the suspicion that they harboured enemies of the state.

Some communities in the South-South are also suffering same fate.

In a video making the rounds on the social media, a highly-placed bishop raised the alarm over the alleged wanton destruction of people’s houses and maltreatment of innocent people in some communities in Imo State.

Fresh irreversible damage in Sokoto

A few days ago, an airstrike targeting an armed group in Northwestern state of Sokoto, Nigeria, mistakenly killed about 10 civilians

The villagers were killed on Christmas Day when the air force targeted a logistics base of the Lakurawa insurgent group in the Silame area of Sokoto State, Edward Buba, Nigerian defense spokesperson, told journalists at a press conference.

The Sokoto State government said the air force mistakenly shelled the villagers in the early hours of Wednesday in an attempt to dislodge the insurgents from the area.

However, on Friday, Buba said only that the Lakurawa insurgents were directly hit by munitions and that the civilians died from “secondary explosions.”

The Lakurawa insurgent group began infiltrating Nigeria following a wave of coups that disrupted Nigeria’s relations with neighboring Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, hurting their ability to cooperate on transnational threats.

It was gathered that the group, which initially gained local support by helping communities defend themselves against armed cattle rustlers, later sought to impose strict Islamic laws across border communities of the French-speaking countries.

Airstrikes on civilians happen frequently in the country. Last year, at least 85 civilians were killed when an army drone attack erroneously targeted a religious gathering in Northwest Nigeria.

Since 2017, some 400 civilians have been killed by such accidental strikes by the military, according to the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence security firm.

Before the Lakurawa insurgents, Nigeria had been battling Boko Haram in the Northeastern part of the country. Boko Haram launched an insurgency in 2009 to establish its radical interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in the region.

The group has since splintered into different factions, together accounting for the deaths of at least 35,000 people and the displacement of more than 2 million, as well as a humanitarian crisis with millions of people in dire need of foreign aid.

On December 5, 2023, an army drones struck Tudun Biri village in Nigeria. About 85 civilians were killed. The attack that night in Tudun Biri village of Kaduna State’s Igabi council area took place as Muslims gathered there to observe the holiday celebrating the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

At that time, the Kaduna Governor, Uba Sani said civilians were “mistakenly killed and many others were wounded” by a drone “targeting terrorists and bandits.”

The Amnesty International’s Nigeria office put the death toll at 120, citing reports of its workers and volunteers in the area.

The attack was one in the recent errant bombings of residents in Nigeria’s troubled regions; between February 2014, when a Nigerian military aircraft dropped a bomb on Daglun in Borno state killing 20 civilians, and September 2022, there were at least 14 documented incidences of such bombings in residential areas.

Community people blamed for attacks

The military and other security agencies have always blamed the people in communities for shielding dangerous elements. They said the attacks were not usually targeted at the innocent people, but to take out the bad elements.

The community people are accused of not cooperating with the relevant authorities by supplying intelligence that could be of help to the military.

A military personnel, Jonathan Temlor, a brigadier-general, speaking on a television programme recently disagreed with certain claim about institutional failure, saying that it was unfair to say there was institutional failure that may have resulted in unprofessional and unethical conducts by some military personnel.

According to him, there is no official approval for any military personnel to extort people, but there are bad elements. It is never an institutional thing.

“Corruption is endemic in society. It is all over the place. We have to begin the fight against corruption bottom up. It is not the policy of the military for its personnel to be corrupt,” Temlor said.

The Brigadier-General strongly believed that there was a collusion between the terrorists and the community people, which has made the fight against insecurity difficult.

“These terrorists have used the people as shield; they are known by the community people; they know their families; their houses, and everything about them,” he added.

He also said that there was need for collaboration in intelligence gathering between the security agencies and community people.

According to him, citizens are greatly involved in this intelligence and making them available to the appropriate quarters.

“Technology is good as it can spot the element, identify movements of people without telling whether they are terrorists or not; it is the community people that can tell whether such persons are terrorists or not because they live and operate among them. There must be actionable intelligence. Once there is connivance of community people with the terrorists, the military cannot be blamed. There are people who are loyal to their religion, ethnicity than they are to the country.

“These bandits live off the communities. They buy food, medicine, and fuel from the communities. There are bakeries that are providing them bread in large quantities.”

Critics kick

Auwal Rafsanjani, a civil rights activist and executive director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), alleged that all over the country, the military checkpoints have been converted into toll gates by personnel who intimidate and extort citizens, abandoning their primary duty of protecting lives and property.

He insisted said that there was an institutional failure in Nigeria, which, according to him has made the fight against banditry and terrorism very difficult. He also alleged that corruption and capital acquisition were driving the military and preventing them from carrying out their assignment the way it should be.

He was of the opinion that the hapless community people are unable to report bandits and terrorists in their midst for fear of losing their lives since there are no security agencies to protect them from such dangerous elements.

“There is high level extortion going on by the military. At the numerous checkpoints whether in the north or south, these personnel are only interested in what they get from motorists. They stop you and collect money, without even looking at what you are carrying in your boot or on your machine. They are not there to checkmate the activities of bandits or terrorists, but to extort. The checkpoints have provided them the opportunity to harass and extort Nigerians. It is an institutional failure,” Rafsanjani said.

Some other critics have said that it may not be easy for members of a community that have not seen a policeman of military personnel in their locality for a whole month to report the activities of bandits and terrorists.

“They are afraid that even if they report, they would be attacked, and nobody would protect them. We have heard and read about situations where people who reported to security agencies were later attacked because the bandits came after them and told them all that they said to their own consternation. So, such community people are not eager to speak out. It is a problem of trust deficit that seems to have grown about many things government,” Tunji Ade, a public affairs analyst, said.

According to Ade, “We read stories about bandits and terrorists taking over communities in some states of the North. We hear stories about these bandits levying the people before allowing them to farm and do their harvesting. If a community finds itself in such a situation, what would the people in such a community do? They are already under the control and government of the bandits; so, they cannot speak out, even though they are being oppressed. It is the government that is more powerful than that of the terrorists that can deliver them. Whereby, they are now, being accused of colluding with the terrorists, it simply means that they have been abandoned by the only hope they have. That is what is playing out in the North.”