Gbenro Adesina
In the face of recent gruesome challenges to Nigeria’s security, there has been attempts by interest groups to form civilian security outfits called vigilantes. The aim is to assist the Nigeria Police and other formal security agencies in Nigeria to stem the tide of terrorism and banditry. It is no more a news that Nigeria’s national security is already compromised. And the combined efforts of all the Armed Forces, both in hardware reactive duty, intelligence and logistics have become too overwhelmed and possibly demoralized by the guerilla and non conventional attack strategies of the insurgents. From the abduction of almost 300 girls from Chibok and similar crime in the abduction of Dapchi school boys, with the daily kidnaps for random and killings of crop farmers to the crime of cattle rustling, the nation is in her worst moment of distressed security.
Consequently, there have been public debates on the way out. Apparently, one of such recommendations in public view is for the National Assembly to Legislate the “Bills for an Enabling Act” of the vigilante informal security outfits into law, so that they would have constitutional backing to practice as formal security agencies to revive and strengthen the failing security architecture of the country.
But, ironically, all the vigilante bills that were passed into law by the 8th National Assembly were never assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari. Yet, the problem of insecurity in the nation worsens daily. It is such that both civilians and the Armed Forces are being killed daily by the sophisticated terrorists.
Now, Prof. Nelson Fashina of the Department of English, University of Ibadan (UI), a super vigilante cop, National Commander and a distinguished scholar was invited by the Nigerian Army to deliver the Lecture on behalf of all the entire structured and core vigilante informal security groups in Nigeria: to address the kernel of vigilante relevance to national security. Thus, the Lecture titled “The Role of ‘Vigilante’ in National Security!”, which became seminal was explosive in its fearless chronicle of the achievements and failures of the security agencies in tackling the country’s national insecurity problem.
In his paper, Fashina argued for the inextricable relevance of the vigilantes in securing the nation’s ungoverned and security porous spaces – the forests and bushes as hideouts for the Boko Haram bandits. He explained that the total population of the regular security personnel in Nigeria is not enough to combat and conquer the terrorists. Therefore, he appealed to the Nigerian Army as the parent-security agency and to the Nigeria Police and all its extended Police family, to support the National Assembly in the bid to enable a legislation of the well disciplined, well structured, patriotic and nationalized set of CAC incorporated vigilantes as a formal security agency.
He made scholarly and sociological distinctions between two types of vigilantes. First, “Ethnic Militia Vigilantes” (Negative Vigilantes) who are subversive of national unity and of the Government, and who are criminals of electoral violence in Nigeria. Secondly, CAC incorporated vigilante groups whose data base are with the Nigeria Police and the NSCDC. He argued that category two vigilantes are the patriotic volunteer/informal security groups who have been assisting the Police in crime detection, prevention, report, and arrest, and that they have also been successfully assisting the Military in the Joint Task Force operations against the Boko Haram guerillas in the Northeast and other terrorist afflicted regions in Nigeria.
Essentially, Fashina argued that Boko Haram being driven by religious, socio-economic and and political ideologies of subversion cannot be overcome with physical counter-insurgency strategies. Rather, he called for psychological, logical, and social orientation strategies to divest the Boko Haram enemies’ minds from their wrong affiliations with inhuman, ungodly and false indoctrinations. He said that crisis is an endemic part of any society that arises from grievances against the State, especially in capitalist societies.
The erudite scholar averred that conscious attempts should be made by the Federal and state government to reduce the gap of socio-economic inequalities, as a giant step to reducing crime and criminalities. He talked about the need for massive creation of employment through the establishment of a new security agency from the vigilantes, especially the Vigilante Group of Nigeria (VGN) and the Hunters Group of Nigeria (HGN), because the HGN has no internal leadership crisis and their personnel are well disciplined and ready to undertake formal national security assignment of policing the forest, the bushes and the schools, being the spaces yet to be secured. He said the aim and objectives of the HGN do not duplicate duties of the Nigeria Police or the Civil Defense.
According to him, the VGN was the oldest and most structured group whose Bill was passed by the 8th National Assembly, but the Bill has not been assented to by the President, calling for a synergy between VGN and the HGN in the realization of the nation’s noble objective in national security. He appealed to the already existing government security agencies to eschew what he called the “co-wife” pattern of unhealthy rivalry and jealousy against the personnel of the standing and well structured informal vigilante security groups that are assisting them in crime control on voluntary and pro-bono basis.
Fasina rounded off by advising the Vigilante groups to comply to the strictures of lawful ethics in their conduct and assisting roles in aid of both Police and Military duties.
