PUNCH
MANY years after Nigeria transited from military dictatorship to civilian rule, it is alarming that there are currently 50,000 soldiers involved in internal security operations around the country. The Chief of Army Staff, Taoreed Lagbaja, substantiated this aberration during an end-of-the-year event in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, saying, “Over 50,000 of our colleagues” are on duty in “difficult-to-access towns, villages, and hamlets across the country and beyond.” This makes a mockery of democracy.
The military is not trained for internal security duties but to protect the country’s territorial integrity and for warfare. It is wrong for the police to be playing second fiddle to the military in a democracy where subordination of the military to civilian control is a major plank. Therefore, President Bola Tinubu should genuinely kick-start a programme to gradually reduce the involvement of the military in policing.
Anchored on the pretext of the failures of the police, successive presidents since 1999 have morbidly relied on soldiers to secure Nigeria. This has seen soldiers engaging in routine patrols to manning checkpoints, and VIP guard duties, to election duties and securing social events.
Robed in fanciful tags like Operation Whirl Stroke, Operation Lafiya Dole, Operation Safe Haven and Operation Golden Dawn, soldiers have been undertaking counterinsurgency duties in the North-East since 2009. Troops are engaged in operations against bandits in the North-West, militants in the North-Central, violent separatist agitators in the South-East, oil thieves in the Niger Delta, and in patrols in the South-West.
Effectively, this ousts the power of the police, places the military above the police, and offends the spirit of constitutional government. It is another pungent sign of a failing state. It is also dangerous because the military, having tasted power in the past, should be made subordinate to civilian authority always.
The results of the deployment are mixed. The most immediate is that the military has the appearance of an occupying army. Apart from frequent human rights abuses, the security situation in Nigeria has deteriorated. The latest outrage featured the Christmas killings in Plateau State.
