•General Ishola Williams (retd.)
Former commandant of Army Signals, commander of Training and Doctrine, and Chief of Defence Training and Planning, General Ishola Williams (retd.), speaks on the upsurge in banditry and terror attacks in Nigeria, their attendant consequences and solutions, reports Sunday PUNCH. Excerpts:
Nigeria is witnessing a resurgence in terrorist attacks. It appears the bandits are also becoming more emboldened and daring daily. What do you think is responsible for this?
I don’t call the attackers terrorists because there is no terrorism in Nigeria. This is because the attackers, who are collecting ransom as kidnappers and threatening villagers to pay certain amounts of money, have gone beyond the stage of terrorism. They are now at a particular stage where they can claim any part of the North and stay there. Bello Turji (the notorious bandit kingpin) said one important thing. He said, “The military knows where I am. Come and attack me.” After that, he said, “Okay, since you don’t want to come, I am coming.” So, where in the world can you see that? All the military could say is, “Oh, we will deal with him.” But nothing has happened up until now. And the man is confident. In fact, let us go back to what Sheikh Gumi told everybody. He said the military intelligence and the security agencies know where the bandits are. Even the northern governors have said the security agencies are in collusion with the bandits. So, is anybody serious about bringing the security situation to an end? Are they serious?
That is one side. Look at the South-West, for example. Do you have the same problem in the South-West as in the North? No! Though there is kidnapping here and there once in a while, but Amotekun is doing a good job.
When you have situations like these, it means our security intelligence is not working as it should. If not, we would have to believe Gumi, who said our security agencies know where the bandits are and their locations in the forest. If that is the case, what we need to look at now are the challenges that the military and security agencies face in their efforts to kick the bandits out of the forest. We could say they need weapons, but as far as I am concerned, the military has no excuse at all with respect to delivering on their task because the Federal Government has done its best in providing them with sophisticated weapons in the past. Even up till today, the new president is still buying them weapons and force multipliers.
However, another vital question is, do they know how to use the weapons in such a way to withstand and deal with the bandits and insurgents? Secondly, are the military able to maintain the weapons so that they can keep working and remain usable? Thirdly, are the soldiers really serious about tackling the bandits and insurgents? Do they have the will to face the bandits and defeat them? For me, if they don’t have the will, it simply means they are useless. So, we need to question the will of the soldiers. The will to fight is weak. For instance, if you are a boxer fighting an opponent, if you don’t have the will to defeat the opponent, you will not beat him. You will not do your job properly if you don’t have the will to do it. You may have the skills of a journalist, but if you don’t have the will, you won’t be able to do your job properly.
Are you saying Nigerian soldiers don’t have the will to fight the bandits?
Yes, that is what I am saying. The generals need to find out whether the soldiers have the will. But what is very important is that the military is doing the job of the mobile police. The mobile police was created separately from the regular police, with a different uniform and training, to carry guns like soldiers and fight bandits, kidnappers, and insurgents. That was why the mobile police was created.
When the mobile police cannot do the job, the military is expected to support them, not to take over. But what we have seen is that the Nigerian police are confusing the job of policing with that of paramilitary policing, and that is a very big problem for the country.
Therefore, you must separate paramilitary policing from ordinary policing. Policing should be at the state and local levels, not at the national level. This means you need to divide the Nigeria Police Force into a crime intelligence and criminal investigation agency. Also, there should be the National Paramilitary Force, which will now be the mobile police. They will be a separate agency and have a commander-general like the Customs and Immigration. Once they become a separate agency, they will have a clear focus. That means that the Inspector General of Police will be in charge of maintaining standards, training, monitoring, evaluation, and feedback on state policing. So, the existing Nigeria Police Force that you have now will disappear.
You said the mobile police are the ones to fight the terrorists. What then is the duty of the soldiers if they are not to combat terrorism and banditry?
No. The army, world over, was not created to fight terrorism. It is the job of the paramilitary police. The army, navy, and air force are established to defend the country against invasion from the air, sea, and land—essentially to protect territorial integrity. They are not meant to address terrorism within the country. But if it has reached the state we are now, the army should not take over from the paramilitary police. They are only to support them. For instance, if someone invades Nigeria from outside, the Nigerian military should bear that responsibility because that is what they were created for. The military is also expected to help in situations where all members of the hospital services have gone on strike and we are in a dangerous situation. You can draft the military medical corps to take over because it is an emergency. What you will also discover is that the police also have their hospitals, so they, too, can join to help, while the government sorts out the strike with the Nigerian Medical Association. These are the jobs of the military: defend the territory called Nigeria and assist the government in emergencies and disasters.
Don’t forget, the Civil Defence was also established to handle disasters and emergencies, as well as protect government infrastructure like oil pipelines and the grid system from sabotage. But we have confused the whole structure; that is why we keep saying that the Federal Government should review the security architecture of Nigeria, but they don’t listen. We have enough agencies. State police should be part of the review.
The Crime Intelligence and Criminal Investigation Agency will help the state police in tackling problems that appear to be beyond their capacity. Also, if there are cross-border attacks and issues like kidnapping, rioting, and certain extreme violence that the state police can’t handle, the National Paramilitary Forces can then come in. So, while you are fighting Boko Haram, you must find a way to solve the problem politically. The two must go side-by-side. But we haven’t seen that in most cases.
Take, for example, the case of the South East. On the political side, everybody has kept quiet. Residents and policemen are being killed daily. All it needs is a political solution. But everybody has kept quiet on that side. And people will keep dying if care is not taken. Yet, the governors will tell you that they are finding a solution. We are simply behaving like people who cannot change.
But some observers have said the sophistication of the Boko Haram terrorists may be too much for the mobile police to handle. Is that correct?
What sophistication? Do they have aircraft? Should we invite the US Army to come and fight them, just like Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso? They believe that Russians can fight for them. But when the Russians were dying in Mali, the Malian government pulled back. Remember that Jonathan got some South Africans to come and fight Boko Haram. But Buhari came and withdrew them. That’s why I said we need to investigate whether the soldiers have the will to fight. Moreover, if the National Intelligence Agency, the Defence Intelligence Agency, and the Department of State Services cannot find where the Boko Haram terrorists are getting money from, the government should close them. Is Boko Haram getting money from heaven? Also, if the people in the terrorised communities do not support them, they will get them out. So, we need to find out why the people are backing the terrorists.
I have told people for the past 15 years that Boko Haram is not interested in the southern parts of Nigeria. They are interested only in Borno State, not in Yobe or Adamawa. They just want to take over Borno State. So, anybody that is telling you they are interested in other places is not telling the truth.
What do you think is stopping the government from considering a political solution to end the lingering terrorism?
How will I know when I am not Bola Tinubu or a member of the National Assembly? Mind you, these politicians will not listen to any other person outside the corridors of power. But take for instance, I think if you negotiate with South-East governors, release Nnamdi Kanu to them, and ask them to take care of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, they will take responsibility if anything should happen after that. What then do you call that? Isn’t it a political solution? Won’t all the killings, attacks, and sit-at-home affairs stop? It took them a long time to get Simon Ekpa arrested in Finland.
In light of this, how do you advise the northern governors, especially those whose states are under the heavy grip of bandits and terrorists?
They are not serious. If they cannot take care of Almajiri, can they take care of the terrorists? If you go to most parts of the North, you will see those children loitering about the whole place. The governors couldn’t take care of that. Don’t forget that there was a case of a governor who negotiated with a terrorist leader. Apart from that, Bello Turji was turbaned. Or didn’t you see the picture of him being turbaned with an emir? But how many emirs have been caught in the North by the governors for colluding with the terrorists? And how many of them have been taken to court? Yet people are being killed daily across the states. The governors are simply not serious.
Are you advising the governors to negotiate with the terrorists?
They don’t need to negotiate. Weren’t the Northern governors against state police? Yet they went behind the scenes to form local vigilance and hunter groups. You must be a stupid person to ask hunters to go and fight terrorists. And those people are not terrorists because there is no terrorism in Nigeria. They are bandits and kidnappers. Terrorists don’t gather together in a forest and issue threats to people. One even threatened some northern residents recently, asking them to gather N173m. But the question is: where do they keep this money? Who deposits this money in the bank for them? Who is checking and overseeing their transactions? A governor in this country once said the security agencies are colluding with the bandits. Gumi says we know where the bandits are. So, what more do you want? Gumi even said he had led the security agencies to where the bandits were. And that’s why the DSS cannot arrest him because they know he is telling the truth.
What is your advice to residents of the northern states where bandits demand millions of naira and threaten to attack if the money is not paid?
Those people are in a hopeless situation because the government cannot help them. The security agencies, too, cannot help, because some officers have been caught collecting money from the bandits. So, who is going to help who? Once in a while, the Air Force will come and say they have killed so many bandits. But at the end of the day, you discover that they have only killed civilians. The Chief of Defence Staff granted an interview to Al Jazeera recently in which he was asking the UN to help us find out where Boko Haram was getting their money and resources. What he is simply saying is that we have a useless intelligence system. Some people have even said the problem is between the Fulanis and the Hausa people. If that is so, why then should soldiers be fighting? Isn’t that a political issue? God made human beings to have brains, and it is the brains they use in creating problems. But they can use the same brains to find solutions to the problems. So, if there is a problem and people do not find solutions to it, it means they are selfish.
Will it be correct to say that some northern politicians are colluding with the bandits and terrorists?
In a way, yes, because the governors do hold meetings but have not been able to find a solution to the problem. They have held different meetings. But what are they talking about when the whole solution is very straightforward? There is a political problem. And our troops keep dying because the people have refused to take political steps. For me, the governors can find political solutions to the rising banditry and kidnapping. They can if they want to.
