By Abu Shekara
He said what many believed he should have said years ago; especially when he was the Governor of Sokoto State. On the issue of banditry for instance, many of us who were close to him, had desperately needed Aminu Waziri Tambuwal to take the buck where it exactly stops: Fighting bandits, bush to bush, trench after trench is exclusively the duty of the Commander-in-Chief, not the state governors.
Yet, he declined to point to the fact and thus, took a lot of flack for the situation because even as an opposition governor, he felt it was not proper not wish to politicise insecurity, even though his political foes in Sokoto State, who belonged to the ruling party he opposed at national level, took advantage and blamed him for every life lost to gun men and every single person they displaced.
During the 2023 election campaigns, the angst and desperation in IDP camps were deflected on Tambuwal and his party, the PDP, with the President and his APC a safe, obscure distance away.
Now, Senator Tambuwal has opened up on the matter. There is very little governors can do about banditry. He told Channels TV in the interview that governors are helpless to do anything beyond providing logistics and financial support to security agencies.
That is the frustrating situation for second-tier or sub national governments, whose capability to fight the criminals is completely weakened by the fact that they cannot command security chiefs in their states.
It is natural to expect the leader of the opposition in a state to seize on a menace like insecurity for political capital, especially in Sokoto, a state that is at the moment, being overrun on all sides by bandits. But Tambuwal seems to maintain the stand that the lives of the people should not be the subject of partisan debate.
Unlike Tambuwal, the current Governor of Zamfara State, Dauda Lawal Dare has not held back on who is actually to blame on the insecurity situation that has engulfed the Northwest and the Northcentral regions.
Governors, he recently said, know the exact location of bandit kingpins, any time, any day and could eliminate the criminals “in two weeks”, if only they give command to the security forces.
This convergence of opinion is coincidental but it puts the issue of insecurity in the proper perspective the affected parts of the country ought to have viewed it all along.
It should mark a departure from the parochial attitude of confining banditry to the local politics of the affected states, where no one holds the power to effectively deal with the situation.
Senator Tambuwal and Governor Dare have set the tone for discussion on insecurity in the Northwest and North Central and pointed to the right direction as to where the sole responsibility lies for reversing the ugly trend. Simply put, fighting insecurity in the form of armed banditry is the exclusive preserve of the President, Commander-in-Chief.
An understanding of the fact will bring the local partisan and other ill-informed disputes and recriminations to an end and unite energies within the ravaged areas towards withstanding the situation.
The fact remains that, while the capability of governors and the communities under them to combat banditry is limited, common purpose among them will make for a united front against the menace.
Similarly, even though the war on banditry is constitutionally the exclusive obligation of the Federal Government, the necessity of enabling states to play a bigger role in the campaign is becoming more apparent and consequently, the need for devolving a part of the enabling power to the subnational governments. This makes the creation of state police a salient issue that should be brought to the fore of the national discourse on insecurity.
Incidentally, the issue was also raised in the Tambuwal Channels TV interview, in which the Senator reiterated his consistent support for the institution of a police force by State Governments.
This coincided with President Tinubu’s declaration in favour of the same policy, when a delegation of elders of Katsina State raised the issue of banditry during a recent courtesy call on him at the Villa.
Interestingly, the confluence of views comes from across partisan sides by two individuals, who obviously have no personal agendas to foster through the exploitation of state police.
The outfits, Tambuwal pointed out, would have indigenous personnel, whose familiarity with their areas of operation, would enhance their efficiency in preventing and fighting banditry and other forms of crime.
Already, states in the South have instituted fairly effective joint security outfits that have similar functions to those of the Nigeria Police, short of the power to prosecute suspects and offenders.
In the North on the other hand, governments have confined themselves to the establishment of individual glorified vigilante groups, whose efficiency is limited by their localised scope and varying low levels of logistic capacities.
In the absence of inter-state synergy, the thinly-spread federal troops are left to a game of hide and seek with bandits and hostage takers, who evade the military by simply moving camps between the borderless forests of the North.
Thus, while some communities in Kogi, Niger and Kaduna States are heaving a sigh of relief, either due to successful military operations or shaky reconciliations with bandits, Sokoto and Zamfara States are presently being invaded by an influx of terrorists.
The recent sound bites from Senator Tambuwal, Governor Dauda Dare and President Tinubu, though isolated, coincide to bring out three salient facts about insecurity in Northern Nigeria: fighting the menace is essentially the duty of the President but states can be constitutionally empowered to play a more effective role and all parties in the affected states should shun divisive local antagonies and close ranks to bring the devastating situation to an end.
Shekara, a former Deputy Editor of the Leadership newspaper, wrote in from Arkila, Sokoto.
