By Is’haq Modibbo Kawu
Early this week, Nigerian newspapers carried on their covers the picture of local vigilantes in Borno State allegedly preparing to enter the dreaded Sambisa forest. They were ostensibly ready not only to rescue the Chibok girls, but to also confront Boko Haram insurgents.

They carried local weapons, a few pump action guns and were “fortified” with an assortment of charms! The motley group reminded me of the Kamajor hunters enlisted in the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone, that Nigerian soldiers commanded by the late General Maxwell Khobe, eventually untangled.

They also reminded me of childhood in Ilorin, during dry seasons, when local hunters accompanied by their mongrel dogs hunted for “bush meat”. Local vigilantes reflect deep-seated communal ethos of self-defense, hacking back to old days of pre-colonial warfare. People transport themselves to idealised versions of their past when confronted with overwhelming crisis of modernity.

SOLDIERS ON GUARD ON POST OFFICE ROAD IN MAIDUGURI

The appearance of local vigilantes also reflects the depth of crisis of national defense today in Nigeria. That picture is an expression of frustration in communities engulfed by the insurgency; they are prepared for self-help because the Nigerian state and its armed forces seem unable to guarantee their safety and security.

Self-help seemed to have received a boost, following the report last week, that local residents in the town of Rann, in Kala-Balge local government of Borno engaged about 300 Boko Haram insurgents and killed about 200 of them. The story in the media was that: “The people in Rann and environs used traditional fighting equipment and charms to repel the attacks (by Boko Haram)”, and BOOM, it has created a copycat effect!

This is the sorry pass we have arrived at in our country. It is a reflection of the state of our armed forces; and I say that, not to demoralise our very heroic combatants who have made tremendous sacrifices contending with the challenge of the Boko Haram insurgency.

A very dangerous dimension was introduced recently, when troops of the 7 Division of the Nigerian Army in Maiduguri, opened fire on the car of the General Officer Commanding, GOC, Major General Ahmed Mohammed.

The soldiers were reported to have been angry over the killing of 12 of their colleagues in an ambush by insurgents on their way back from the north of Borno. Soldiers blamed the lack of adequate fighting equipment for their death. DAILY TRUST of Thursday, May 15, 2014, quoted an officer, who said: “The 101 Battalion has severally complained that they lack kits, including fragmented jacket.

They repeatedly complained that they don’t have support weapons, they don’t have helmets, boots and basic things for survival like water”. The report also quoted another “credible source”, that the soldiers were angry over their inferior firepower compared to Boko Haram, as well as over delayed allowances.

How did we get to the dangerous pass, whereby soldiers will be confessing that: “It is not that we don’t know how to fight but we don’t have the equipment to fight.

We always run for our lives whenever the terrorists come because they have superior weapons; it is difficult to confront them?” Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, to quote Shakespeare! As I noted on this page last week, Nigeria has appropriated almost N3 trillion, in the past few years, for the purposes of defense.

So how come our troops are so badly provisioned in terms of basic equipment, body armour and night vision equipment? Why did even President Goodluck Jonathan confess about the inadequacies which our valiant fighting men and women face? Related to this is the way some sections of the international community who have accepted to help us with the effort to free the Chibok girls, have been doubting the ability or willingness of our forces to engage the insurgency.

While it is true that the Nigerian Army had historically been trained to fight conventional wars and enemies, not the asymmetrical war against an insurgency, it is also true that there seems to be a serious problem in the manner we have responded to the challenge posed by asymmetrical insurgency war. Looking in, from outside as an observer, there is an impression that strategic and tactical thinking were not quickly adapted to the new challenge while the provisioning and morale of forces suffered.

The Nigerian Army has also suffered a high attrition rate amongst its officer corps, with forcible retirements of highly trained and experienced officers, to ensure the promotion of favoured officers. Surely, we cannot continue to lose our best-trained officers to retirements just to satisfy nepotistic elevations of favoured officers; in the long run, as we are discovering with the Boko Harm insurgency, it is the army that suffers.

Yet, this has not always been the situation with our fighting men and and women. I can say, without ambiguity, that we have always possessed some of the best soldiers on earth. It is not for nothing that we have always been some of the greatest suppliers of troops to peace-keeping operations around the world.

We can teach other armies around the world how to effectively keep the peace. In the course of my work as a journalist, I have reported from Darfur. I went on a Route Assessment Patrol with the Nigerian Army in South Darfur.

I was with our soldiers in Juba, South Sudan; I saw our troops in action manning the mixed zone between government and rebel troops in Ivory Coast and I was equally pleasantly surprised to see our soldiers in Western Sahara.

These are examples that filled me with patriotic pride, encountering Nigerian forces abroad. They were professional and they provided leadership to the armies of other African countries.

The Boko Haram insurgency has sapped the morale of our forces largely because of the way things have been handled by officialdom. We need our troops to be taken to the highest levels of professionalism; with the best provisions in terms of equipment, combat gear, allowances and rotation from scenes of engagement.

The enemy we face today, as a result of internal contradictions and external factors, continues to evolve; similarly, we must protect our borders and be capable of projecting force in our West African neighbourhood, as we did with ECOMOG and earlier in Chad, in the 1980s.

And given the difficult job they do, Nigerians must recognise their sacrifices and give them support. Our armed forces are some of the best of our national institutions!

National conference 2014: Caucuses, posturing and friendships

I returned home a few minutes to midnight on Tuesday. I normally write my column between midnight and five am, Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. I had a pretty crowded day today, attending different meetings: the Kwara State Group; the Northern Delegation and a host of other engagements in between.

The re-commencement of plenary after three weeks of committee work should re-kindle the posturing by different groups around the fault lines that define the Nigerian psyche and space.

From the commencement of the National Conference, I have tried to be as engaged as possible in the process, while enjoying the imperative of an accompanying doppelganger that assists me to look in, like a detached observer, on the process that I am very much a part of! It is that doppelganger that I employ as scribbler of the reflections that I have been doing since the commencement of the National Conference.

The resumption of plenary, after the close quarters battles in the different committees, has given a fresh impetus to re-engagement with shop-worn posturing that seem made for the Nigerian public space. Nigerian elites are so suspicious of themselves, that the nation-building agenda is held ransom to the paralysing fears of what might be happening on the other side of our various fault lines.

There are many issues that we posture about, that ordinarily then get sorted out when we allow dialogue and reason to arbitrate our fears.

The three weeks of committee work enabled me participate at close quarters in a collective endeavour that was not without the drama, the hot air, the angst, the suspicion and assumption and also the brilliant insight, the grudging acceptance of a superior logic, developing respect for each other, commencement of friendly rapport and finally a tremendous team spirit and consensus building.

By the end of the three weeks of work in the Committee on Political Parties and Electoral Matters, we had literally become a genuine Nigerian family! There was not a single committee member who wanted the work to end. The mutual respect we had built was also enveloped in the ability of members to share a joke and when the need arose, to also check excessive overflow of emotions.

Iyorchia Ayu co-chaired the committee with Ken Nnamani; both were former presidents of Nigeria’s Senate and they brought to their role the experience of having presided over the often fractious body that reflects very much the Nigerian condition.

In close quarters, we could engage the humanity of ex-governors like Segun Osoba and Achike Udenwa; there was the effusive radicalism of Nasir Kura, who came from a civil society background; measured against the mature calmness of a Professor Nur Alkali or the seriousness of General Alani Akinrinade (he supplied kolanuts and bitter kola everyday!); and the all-round ability to give of themselves of Prof.

Femi Mimiko, Festus Okoye, Ezinne Okoroafor, Sola Ebiseni and Remi Olatubora. A moment of hearty laughter was generously enjoyed at Sani Zorro’s expense, yet he never failed to excellently defend the media. It was, therefore, a fitting finale that committee members, on Tuesday night, had dinner together as a measure of the mutual respect which flowed out of the serious work that we did together for three weeks.

I have come out of the experience of  committee work reinforced in my belief that Nigerians really want to share the space of citizenship together; but they want a country built on justice and mutual respect for the aspirations of all its components. The elite groups must learn the tolerance to accept that it in the nature of diversity that we cannot always agree with each other.

But even deeply felt disagreements cannot necessarily vitiate the content of the other person’s patriotism. It is a lesson that I believe will underline the posturing that we will have to deal with as we resume plenary again this week.

People will ventilate their angst with venom but in the long run, I do hope we will pull back from entrenched positions to the middle ground of realism that can help to provide the platform for us to begin to build an inclusive society.

Let us see how the next few weeks pan out. Be assured that my beloved doppelganger continues to accompany this reporter.