The apparent inability of our armed and security forces to defend the territorial integrity of Nigeria and protect its citizens from multifaceted security threats has prompted heightened calls for the engagement of foreign military contractors to help.

Highly ranked Senator, Ali Ndume (APC Borno South), whose constituency is the epicentre of the 16-year-old Boko Haram jihadist terrorism, made this call in a recent interview with News Central Television.

That our military, police, security agencies and Civil Defence are no longer able to defend our country is obvious. When Boko Haram started in 2009 in Maiduguri, Nigerians felt it was just another one of the sporadic upsurges of Islamic terrorism in the Maiduguri and Yola areas which were quickly quashed in the past.

Unfortunately, the armed forces and their apologists, after failing to arrest the Boko Haram jihadists, started claiming it was an “asymmetric warfare” which the Nigerian Army was not accustomed to. That argument has become untenable after 16 years of futilely battling Boko Haram. The Chief of Defence Staff, CDS, General Christopher Musa, is now putting the blame on villagers who offer the bandits and jihadists logistical support for pay.

If it were as simple as that, the question would still arise as to why the armed forces, police and security agencies have failed to combine efforts to break the supply lines, throw cordons around the bands of terrorists and neutralise them? With the advantage of military support systems, radars, better equipment and air cover, the fight against insecurity by the Nigerian Armed Forces we used to have, would have been a piece of cake.

Another queer factor which confirms that our insecurity is being fuelled by powerful vested interests is the failure of the Federal Government to designate the Fulani “herdsmen” militants a terrorist threat to Nigeria, despite its being much older than Boko Haram, having sprouted on the Plateau in 2001.

Fulani herdsmen were, back in 2014, ranked as the fourth “most murderous” by the World Terrorist Index. Yet, they are treated with kid gloves by military, police and security agencies despite their trails of massacres, kidnappings, rapes and occupation of indigenous communities.

We appear to be at our wit’s end over what to do with our intractable insecurity. It is time to look once again in the direction of military contractors. In 2014, the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan had engaged South African and Ukrainian mercenary contractors. They successfully stabilised the North-East enough for general elections to hold in virtually every ward in March 2015.

They were sent packing by the regime of President Muhammadu Buhari, and we went back to square one. Mercenaries are well trained, equipped and seasoned. They can do a job quickly and withdraw.

Let’s deploy them in the Benue-Plateau and the North-East.