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Prevention is better than cure is a popular saying and it informs my view of how our nation should tackle its security challenges. My concerns, expressed in this regard, have been on this page over the years and they cover the military as well as the police. My focus was basically on the nation’s security architecture and the operational approaches of the different armed forces; neither has been exactly what the nation should have, and I stated so. Contrary to submissions in some quarters though, I have never thought the nation’s armed forces are incapable. Rather, I believe the structure and the political condition under which they operate in our federal arrangement constrain their ability to deliver to potential.
I conclude that these constraints are largely responsible over the years for the operational focus of the armed forces that are deficient in the aspect of deterrence, or more precisely prevention of attacks. Improving the capacity of the security forces to prevent attacks is my focus here. Sometimes, it comes across as alarming the ease with which attacks happen on communities, military bases, public facilities, and individuals, which one should think are preventable. Concerning attacks on military bases, the reasons vary, and I witnessed on one occasion how a base commander heatedly interfaced with his officers on the aspect of their preparedness. I won’t state more on that. Even after attacks took place the kind of response that could mitigate the impacts of specific incidents was lacking. A classic case was the April 2014 Boko Haram attack on a school in Borno State.
Over two hundred students were abducted and transported across our territory. Nothing was done to stop such a large movement of people. I understood some folks in the executive branch were telling the President at the time that that was just another ruse by the opposition party in Borno State, that “those northerners” just wanted to embarrass him. And like that hundreds of Nigerians disappeared. The 2014 incident shows one aspect where the political condition comes into play, where the political leadership is steeped in divisive pettiness rather than presenting a common front that makes all Nigerians have this sense of being Nigerians. Other attacks have since happened in other states across the far north where students and people in communities were carted away and successfully hidden in our territory.
Some attacks are not preventable, if there is no previous information on them. But many are preventable, if there is an emphasis on intelligence gathering and the armed forces are configured to prevent rather than react. Reaction to incidents by combat forces is what has been prevalent in this clime. I believe this is not unconnected with the nation’s security architecture and the nature of the policy focus of the political leadership. The pattern over the years has been about issuing “marching orders” after each attack and this is basically reactionary. How about issuing marching orders to the armed forces to get them to be more preventive in approach? Issuing marching orders after attacks has disadvantages. Rank and file might just sit back and expect attacks to happen, knowing that with such orders huge release of more resources for operations would happen.
One other likely fallout is that in such a situation all other institutional arrangements within the armed forces targeted at non-kinetic preventive measures are either relaxed or abandoned. Marching orders issued by successive political leaderships sometimes include instructing the top echelon of the armed forces to relocate to troubled areas. Quietly these officers later return to Abuja, and soon another attack follows where they have just left or at another location. A new marching order is then issued. The cycle needs to be broken. At least the need to issue marching orders should be brought to the barest minimum. And there is a way they make this happen in other climes.
I took note the other time when the United States Army’s Provost Marshal General, Brig. Gen. Sarah Albrycht, asserted that “prevention is protection”. She said the Army was placing more emphasis on preventive approach in its activities. The approach provides more comprehensive and holistic prevention programmes, tools, and resources to military commanders and communities. To her, a primary prevention approach enables the Army to better support commanders’ efforts to combat and discourage detrimental conduct, enhance readiness, and improve Army culture through integrated prevention activities. Here, Army military police contribute to and enable the Army’s overall prevention efforts through the Army Crime Prevention Programme. The programme seeks to protect people, property, and infrastructure.
The programme also broadens the military police’s focus from responding to crime, disorder, and other harmful conditions to partnering with commanders and community members to prevent crime from occurring. According to Albrycht, its success revolves around the application of military police intelligence assessments and stakeholder data to identify crime conducive conditions promoting criminal opportunities. Others are the co-design of strategies and measures to resolve the underlying conditions, as well as the implementation, assessment, and evolution of solutions until the desired crime prevention effects and outcomes are achieved. There is a National Crime Prevention Month campaign during which various crime prevention materials are shared to educate leaders, soldiers, and community members on best practices they can employ to prevent crime and enhance personal safety.
There is an emphasis on visible deterrence including patrols, access control, emergency response, surveillance through the use of technology, incident reporting, and de-escalation techniques. They all contribute to the US Army’s effort to ensure that prevention translates into protection for people and the country. In Nigeria, there is no doubt that the security outfits have important roles to play in securing communities and the nation in general. In a situation where criminal armed attacks happen in one part, the armed forces go there because they have a “marching order” and shortly after another attack takes place in another part like random fire what should the nation do? Over the years, security forces have moved here and there to combat the menace of different criminal groups. One has been expecting this pattern to change for a while; that is, one expects that those in authority must have noticed and should have an approach that focuses on being steps ahead of insurgents and other armed groups. It has not happened since 2014.
Being steps ahead of criminal non-state actors is not something the nation’s combat forces alone can do. It requires the involvement of intelligence agencies, such as the National Intelligence Agency and the Department of State Services. With their eyes on every corner of the country using technology, we should not be talking about ungoverned spaces here. The job of the intelligence community is to snoop; what goes on in ungoverned spaces is their job to see, hear, analyse and make available for the armed forces and the police to use for proactive, preventive purposes. But the spate of attacks the nation witnesses with the regular marching orders issued does not make this appear to be the case, and it is concerning.
I don’t expect the combat forces to be able to effect needed changes in this regard by themselves. They cannot because they are not even configured to so do. They have a mandate. But the nation’s security architecture and the political condition are not conducive for them to operate in a preventive, rather than reactionary manner. Leaders at every level in the armed forces are cautious of proactive moves that the political leadership may question. The uniformed men are used to being ordered first before they act, even when such action is within their mandate. It has been the pattern for years.
So, who can remove the hurdles that the Nigerian combat forces face in this regard? The political leadership. There is a need to change the narrative of how our security outfits operate, and I think the current administration can do that. I believe President Bola Tinubu, by virtue of being in favour of the creation of state police for grassroots reach, understood this point and would want to make a difference here. Strengthening aspects that enable security outfits to proactively prevent armed group attacks on communities, a crucial aspect of the non-kinetic approach to mitigating criminal acts is where the President can intervene. One outcome will be a reduction in issuing marching orders to the uniformed men, no doubt.
