We cannot ignore General Musa’s warning about subverts behind insecurity in the country

It is as though we are a nation in a trance. The spate of abductions has stunned the country, with its citizens wondering if this is now a nightmarish normal. But a context came from the lips of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Christopher Musa, who blamed it on elements in the country who want to bring down the government.

This is a grave statement if it is made by anybody in the polity, it is ominously weightier because it was Nigeria’s first soldier who uttered it. He said the bad eggs among us want to “cause rancour and mayhem,” and are targeting underdevelopment. What it implies without much elucidation is that Nigeria is not just battling hordes of criminals who kidnap persons, loot, murder and destroy. The hoodlums are committing crimes of subversion. It means they are political.

We do not believe General Musa is flippant, and he uttered those words with a sense of gravity and urgency. It is therefore important for the nation and its intelligence forces to be at work to ferret out all those who have hands in these waves of violence. It has started by releasing some names behind terror in our country.

For a country just out of the turmoil of an election season, it implies the bitterness of the past year that involved tribal and religious reverberations and personal baiting has not abated. It has been converted into a spasm of revenge by taking a toll on innocent boys and girls in schools, helpless old men and women in remote, apparently ungoverned spaces and markets and highways. It is a set of dedicated hoodlums with riches and political motives weaponising jobless youths and making them rich through plunder.

President Bola Tinubu has been warning that there are persons who are fighting the state, and the top military officer only reinforced what the president might have been saying when he spoke of corruption and smugglers fighting back.

Yet, the situation is dire and calls for the government to summon its imagination and resources to tackle this present danger. Only recently, Kaduna State has been in the crosshairs of fear and trembling. The rapidity of the incidents is so staggering, it is hard for citizens to keep pace of events and numbers. While we thought the Chibok girls macabre plot was the limit, the number is now beaten by the kidnap of 287 students, not in Borno but in Kaduna. We witnessed a few years ago when, in defiance of the then President Muhammadu Buhari, the goons whisked boys into the forest for long hours of trekking. We also witnessed recently over 80 persons kidnapped after the 287 agony from Buda community in Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State. In Sokoto, 16 Koranic pupils were abducted while in Borno, many women were ferreted away from an Internally Displaced Persons’ camp.

General Musa has reiterated the efforts of the military to stop this crimson plot. But it must be said that the rapine and swagger of this goons will not have been so bad if the communities helped the army. These criminals are not ghosts. They eat, and therefore they have cooks, suppliers of food stuff. They drink water, and so they either buy them or go to streams or enjoy the facilities of borehole. They cannot acquire all these themselves without the help of society. When they kidnapped hundreds of children, they must have crossed hamlets and villages. Their motorcycles were not soundless and the communities are not earless.

Yet for them to thrive in such communities, is a failure on two fronts. One is the lack of civic input and commitment to the safety of the communities, especially in the north. Two, we must stress that the

Department of State Services (DSS) ought to step up its game. It is obvious that it requires an overhaul.

If the army is looking overwhelmed, it is because the key inputs of intelligence and civic cooperation are lacking. Perhaps hence the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, announced that the Federal Government is weighing the option of enlisting the help of the United States and other unnamed countries to tackle this existential problem.

“We’re aware that it is not just the U.S. that has offered to help,” he said. “Other countries have also offered to support Nigeria. But what we can tell you is that the government is still reviewing these offers and the position of government will be made known.”

This is not a time for bitterness but for all to work together for the Nigerian commonwealth. If the economy is in the process of repair, it does not pay us for some to exploit for discontent and subversion.

If the U.S. and other nations would help, we must prioritise the use of technology. Warfare today is less about brawn but brains, less about men in boots but the software of intelligence, especially artificial intelligence. That is what can upend the foes in the land.

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