A revelation by the Chief of Defence Staff, Lucky Irabor, that 80 per cent of Nigeria’s Armed Forces personnel are currently deployed in all the 36 states of the federation performing police duties underscores the country’s grossly anomalous security architecture. The trend undermines the security institutions and civil institutions and puts the country’s fragile democracy at risk. The President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), should act fast to save all three from irredeemable damage.

Some analysts fear that severe havoc has already been done. “I’m looking forward to a day when all of us, soldiers, would come back to barracks and engage in core military duties – defending the territorial integrity of our nation,” Irabor stated at the 21st Century Chronicle roundtable. “Today, close to 70 to 80 per cent of our troops ‘are’ on the field all year round, and I think we must begin to reshape it.” That task is urgent.

Alarmingly, the vogue exposes officers to politics. It weakens the civilian law enforcement agencies, and it weakens the military institution itself by diverting personnel, resources and focus from its primary duty of territorial defence.

The military, unlike the police, is not trained for law enforcement, and its interaction with the civil population should ideally be minimal. In the North-East, where a full-scale insurgency is underway, and a state of emergency declared, military deployment is necessary and justified. Having troops deployed everywhere else engaged in and often, taking the lead in routine law enforcement duties is not. The anomaly has become the norm; with disastrous consequences.

The Chief of Naval Staff, Awwal Gambo, admits that the Nigerian Navy, which has the primary role of securing the country’s waterways from piracy and other related external threats, is distracted. “In the North-Central, we have about 100 men to combat banditry, kidnapping, and all the issues relating to insecurity,” he said. Meanwhile, Nigeria-bound vessels are the most attacked in the Gulf of Guinea.

Nearly 23 years after military rule ended, short-sightedly, successive administrations have failed to restrict the military to its primary functions. In Lagos State, the OP MESA, a combined team of the police, the Nigerian Air Force, the NN and the Nigerian Army, undertakes operations that are completely civil in nature. Outrageously, reports say there are about 26 OP MESA units across the country.

The roles of the Armed Forces in a democracy, as spelt out in a NATO document, are to defend the country, provide humanitarian aid in times of disasters and accidents. Everywhere, the military is also a standby force when disorder overwhelms the civilian law enforcement forces. A distinguishing element in a democracy is that at all times, the military is subordinate to civilian authority and oversight. Even when deployed in internal security operations, military units are under the overall direction of the police. This is dangerously reversed in Nigeria, where once out of their barracks, soldiers elevate themselves above the law, treat civilians and police with contempt and act with violent impunity.

Section 217(2) of the 1999 Constitution clearly outlines the duties of the military: defending Nigeria from external aggression; maintaining its territorial integrity and securing its borders from violation on land, sea, or air; suppressing insurrection and acting in aid of civil authorities to restore order when called upon to do so by the President, “but subject to such conditions as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly; and performance of such other functions as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly.”

NASS should immediately rise to its constitutional role to stop this dangerous practice. The military is trained for warfare, not for civil matters. Inevitably, friction, violence and human rights abuses have ensued. Massacres have occurred, notably in Odi, Rivers State, and in Zaki Biam, Benue State. Politics has crept in and generally, the military is overstretched. Training and exercises, essential for any effective military, have suffered.

Soldiers have no business pursuing online fraud suspects, enforcing dress codes, controlling traffic, raiding or guarding private homes. These interventions demean the institution and promote indiscipline. Thus unleashed, soldiers have become bullies, inflicting gross human rights abuses on civilians.

Wrongly deployed during the #EndSARS protests of 2020, soldiers opened fire on unarmed youth demonstrators at the Lekki toll plaza, killing many. Nigeria’s leaders should learn from the country’s sad history. The first coup of January 1966 was influenced by the undue interjection of the military in civilian affairs. Soldiers tasted politics when they were drafted to quell protests in the Middle Belt and the violence that accompanied the rigged October 1965 elections in the defunct Western Region. Imprudently, soldiers are today still routinely deployed for elections.

A ruling by the Federal High Court, later affirmed by the Court of Appeal that the military has no role in elections, has been ignored.

In the 2019 governorship and House of Assembly elections in Rivers State, the Independent National Electoral Commission accused soldiers of invading collation centres in Okrika and Ikwerre, snatching the result sheets. Ominously, the Chief of Army Staff, Farouk Yahaya, has already promised to provide internal security in the 2023 elections. When will this aberration end? India, with its population of over 1.2 billion and its own internal security challenges, does not deploy the military for elections. Rather, its Central Armed Police Forces comprising police and other paramilitary services provide internal security.

Truly, Nigeria faces existential challenges of insurgency, banditry, armed robbery, militancy and terrorism countrywide. But ironically, it does not have enough police officers. Over 70 per cent of the officers are attached to VIPs and unauthorised persons. Additionally, it is short-handed and the workforce poorly trained, ills that render the Force so ineffective. With about 370,000 personnel for a population of 211 million, it cannot meet the United Nations recommendation of 340:100,000 police-to-citizen ratio.

The single police force format strips the states and localities of the powers to police their own territories. Irrationally, during the futile ongoing constitutional amendment exercise, state police was rejected by the federal lawmakers.

The Federal Government must therefore embark on urgent police reforms, recruit and equip the needed number of personnel. The military should face its core duty of protecting the nation’s territorial integrity. The ‘doctrine of necessity’ should be immediately invoked to allow for state police to ensure effective protection of lives and property, the primary function of governance.

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