Nigerians have daily lamented the grave costs of insecurity for several years now.The Federal Government has kept up the argument that the situation is not as bad as it sounds. Others say that, indeed, the situation is much worse than it appears. Last week, the Global Rights organisation, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO), which devotes its resources to the study and documentation of mass atrocities and their casualties across the world, released its 2020 report. In the report which looked into the last 30 months in Nigeria, Global Rights found that between 2018 and June 2020, not less than 6,982 Nigerians were killed in violent incidents that ranged from gang clashes through extra-judicial killings, killings by terrorists, Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), killings by Fulani herders and kidnappers.
Giving a breakdown of the casualties year by year, the Global Rights observed that in 2018, a total of 3,428 persons were killed, a figure that diminished only slightly in 2019 when the figures went down to 3,186 of which 2,705 were civilians whereas 481 were security agents. The report recalled some of the more gruesome and sensational events, like the Zabarmari massacre where Boko Haram slaughtered in cold blood more than 70 rice farmers who were harvesting their produce on the pretext that the farmers had divulged information on them to Nigerian troops.
Nor can Nigerians forget the massacre at Aunno, where Boko Haram terrorists killed 30 travellers on the spot in Maiduguri. It is also impossible to forget the depredations of the herdsmen in Ukpabi, Nimbo in Enugu State where the herders burnt the town and killed more than 50 persons.
Global Rights also recorded that more than 1,000 children were killed within the period of its study and that the highest number of state casualties come from Borno State, the epicenter of the Boko Haram war, followed by Zamfara State. It recorded the killing of 366 persons in Kaduna State. On the whole, the Global Rights said that between two and three million people were displaced within the period, most of them are now camped in internally displaced persons camps and that 33,130 of them came from Katsina State.
As shocking and frightful as the Global Rights figures would appear to be, they seem understated given the daily, unrelenting catalogue of killings, and massacres and communal killings from Kaduna State to Borno to Ebonyi, Cross River and Rivers states. Not a day passes without one bloody incident or another. At times, it would be the bandits or the kidnappers. The criminals have become so depraved, and they now collect huge ransom and still murder their captive. The situation has become so hopeless and Nigerians express their helplessness in the face of these unspeakable crimes.
Some national highways are now abandoned to kidnappers because they are far too dangerous to be used at certain times of the day, to say nothing of the night. The cacophony of voices of distress that the service chiefs should be changed eventually got to the President Muhammadu Buhari, a man not known to act under pressure, who thought that the change may not be the panacea. The new service chiefs are less than a month on their beats and it is too early to assess whether the new helmsmen would make a difference. A few rustlings have been heard against Boko Haram, but Nigerians are still disconsolate that five and a half years after Buhari, an experienced Nigerian general and a former division commander became president; it is considered a letdown that Boko Haram is still a threat to the Nigerian state.
The anxiety of Nigerians on the worsening security situation has reached a crescendo and the president appears to have reached his wits end. The Kaduna-Abuja Highway is thought to have been lost to kidnappers and bandits. Almost everyone in the Southern part of Nigeria believes that herdsmen are responsible for most of the kidnappings in the regions and until they are compelled to leave the forests, kidnapping is not going to subsist. Nigeria, for three consecutive years, has been recorded as the most terrorised country in the world. Everyone wants the government to do something, change the security architecture, a fancy phrase that means different things to different people. But we must do things that make sense. The regional security arrangements like the Amotekun have a great deal of support and other regions should be encouraged to set up similar security units. Everyone is agreed that community policing will go a long way to address the rising insecurity. It would enable the natives control the forests and prevent their being used as hostage detention centres and ransom redemption sites.