KADUNA: Causes of Nigerian security crisis
AREWA AGENDA – The growing infamy of Kaduna as the most terrorised state in Nigeria in recent times despite the heavy presence of the military and police in the state is raising concerns in the security community.
The security situation does not reflect the fact that Kaduna has some of the most critical military and police establishments in the country.
While most states have one military base, a police command and a few other security outfits each, Kaduna has at least 15 military establishments.
These include:
- the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA),
- Nigerian Army School of Artillery (NASA),
- Nigerian Air Force Institute of Technology,
- the Nigerian Army School of Military Police,
- a depot of the Nigerian Army and a training centre for soldiers.
The existence of these establishments has earned the historical capital of Northern Nigeria the nickname – The Garrison City.
Terrorists’ activities have wrapped the state in fear and anxiety.
In 2021, bandits killed 1,192 people in the state and kidnapped 3,348 others, according to a report by a Lagos-based geopolitical advisory outfit, SBM Intelligence. Deaths from insecurity in the state in 2020 were three times higher than those recorded in the Northeast states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa battling terrorism.
Terrorists almost daily attack public and private institutions, schools and communities with impunity. In August 2021, they attacked the country’s foremost military training institution, the NDA in Kaduna city, five months after an attack on Kaduna Airport’s FAAN Quarters.
Nigerians wondering how a state with so many elite military agencies, with both intimidating artillery weapons and infantry personnel with global battlefield medals, is battered by bandits. The answer is that the bandits are emboldened by government’s lack of political will to frontally engage them, weak engagement, and exclusionary or sluggish response to intelligence. The situation is compounded by the expansion of the security crisis across the North-west region and mismanagement of military equipment and personnel.
Attacks in Kaduna corridors could have been averted if Nigeria has an active intelligence response network and there is collaboration, rather than rivalry, among the intelligence and security agencies.
If the obvious lack of actionable intelligence is properly addressed among all the security and intelligence agencies and the military, then insecurity would have been solved 50 percent.
The response to the crisis in Kaduna has been impeded by rising insecurity in virtually all parts of Nigeria.
The state security response to the rising insecurity in the region is compromised by the decade-long war with Boko Haram in the north-east, deteriorating security in the Niger Delta, farmer-herder conflicts in north-central and southern Nigeria, and the secessionist activities among other forms of criminality across the south-east.
In fact, the Nigerian military services are on active deployment in no fewer than 30 states of the federation, tackling internal security threats that ordinarily should have been left to the police to contain.
With security forces stretched, terror groups have been able to operate with little resistance in the northwest – Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto and the neighbouring Niger. The area’s porosity and large land mass makes room for easy penetration, security experts said.
Kaduna continued to be a hotbed for insecurity despite heavy military presence partly due to the ease to attack and escape to other equally hotbed states of Niger, Kastina or Zamfara.
Kaduna’s security crisis revolves around three threats.
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The first relates to the farmer-herder conflict that involves growing tensions over access to land and its use between communities. The intensifying farmer-herder conflict in Kaduna can be traced to an expansion of primarily pastoralist militia groups and a proliferation of small arms in North West Nigeria. Attacks from pastoralist militias seeking grazing pastures for their herds have provoked reprisal attacks by community vigilante groups seeking to protect their farms, leading to further retaliation by the militias. This cycle of conflict has accelerated as pastureland has become scarcer due to population pressures and environmental degradation across northern Nigeria. As herders search farther afield for grazing land, farmers and their settlements are also expanding into new areas to sow their crops. This expansion has rapidly increased competition over shrinking land resources in Kaduna State. Both sides in Kaduna’s farmer-herder clashes increasingly use small arms smuggled into North West Nigeria by gun importers who sell and distribute them through illicit markets. The relative ease by which weapons are accessed has encouraged both farmers and herders to arm themselves, deepening the cycle of violence in Kaduna.
The second threat comes from armed gangs engaged in criminal activities, including kidnapping for ransom, arms dealing, cattle rustling, and highway robbery. Organized criminal gangs have exploited the absence of a robust security presence by ambushing travelers on highways, abducting persons for ransom, rustling cattle from pastoralists, and imposing fines and taxes in the form of “harvest fees” on local farmers. These activities further exacerbate tensions between farmers and herders, which the gangs aggravate through the buying and selling of weapons on black markets that they control.
The final threat is from violent extremism. This threat reemerged in 2020 when Ansaru, a militant Islamist group thought to be defunct, carried out an elaborate ambush, followed by a series of other attacks.
Military operations in 2016 and early 2017 expelled some criminal groups operating in Kaduna. However, these campaigns were not sustained long enough to hold the territory. This enabled the criminal gangs to reorganize and return.
The combination of a limited security presence and a 40 percent unemployment rate in Kaduna State facilitates recruitment by criminal groups. With nearly 44 percent of residents living below the national poverty line, Kaduna’s poverty headcount ratio is three times higher than Anambra’s in South East Nigeria and ten times higher than in Lagos.
Ansaru’s Reemergence. Following 7 years of inactivity, the militant Islamist group, Ansaru, staged a complex ambush in January 2020 targeting the convoy of the Emir of Potiskum and killing dozens of Nigerian soldiers. Ansaru has since claimed several attacks that have occurred primarily in northern Kaduna. However, distinguishing these attacks from those of other criminal groups has proved to be challenging. Ansaru’s resurgence appears linked to the group’s ability to tap grievances stemming from Kaduna’s worsening insecurity and socioeconomic conditions. Ansaru’s ideological campaign casts democratic rule as corrupt and incompatible with Islam, while offering weapons and economic opportunities to recruit members. The extremist group appears to have had particular success recruiting among Fulani. Efforts of the group to expand from Kaduna into neighboring states and its ability to target Nigerian soldiers underscore the broader security threat Ansaru poses to the region.
For over 3 decades, communities in the southern part Kaduna State, Nigeria (which are predominantly Christian) have witnessed incessant violence that has claimed thousands of innocent lives and displaced many more from their homes and villages.
These attacks are being committed by Muslim Fulani herdsmen against people in these predominately Christian parts of Kaduna State. Their ultimate goal is to kill and forcibly displace the over 30 indigenous ethnic groups in southern Kaduna so that they can seize ownership of their lands to use as grazing reserves for their cattle and establish economic and political dominance in the region.
Source: Robert Lansing Institute
