Quick one about Nigeria’s security history

Both the Nigerian Army and recently the Nigerian Police have a habit of disobedience and mutiny. It’s the reason why Police Inspector Generals since Musiliu Smith have ordered patrols off highways when they come into office, only to find those orders disobeyed.

But too many of our people don’t understand why our security services tend to behave like armies of occupation, rather than being placed there to protect and serve the people. There is a historical reason for it, so let’s talk about that…

On 16 December 1929, a man was killed around Opobo in the Aba Division of Southern Nigeria. His name was Aromasodu Alimi, and he was Yoruba by ethnicity, the only official male casualty of what the colonial authorities branded as the Aba Women’s Riot. He was a policeman.

You see, the anti-taxation protests, which the colonial authorities branded a riot in order to delegitimise, had raged for a month and half, and initially, the Niger Coast Constabulary was asked to put it down, but they failed to.

You can read a brief history of Nigeria’s police to see how the units were initially locally organised until 1930. That local organisation was ended after the Aba Women’s affair.

But why did this end?

You see, as it should be with a normal police force, the bulk of the men in the Aba area were drawn from around. They knew those women, so they could not shoot them as the colonial authorities demanded, so to put down the protest, Alimi and his crew were drafted in from Lagos. Coming from another part of the young country, Alimi and his crew did not speak the local language in Aba, did not understand the women’s complaints, did not feel a sense of kinship with them, and thus had no problem with shooting them.

This was noted by the colonial authorities, and subsequently, the police was centralised and they increasingly began to post policemen outside their regions of origin, in a bid to “know the country better”. They learned that from the reaction to the Amritsar Massacre in India, and the real reason was to have a reserve of armed men who did not feel a sense of kinship with the local population, and would thus have no issues brutally suppressing any dissent.

Unfortunately, at “independence” in 1960, the Nigerian government continued that practice, thus when the Tiv revolted against the NPC in 1964, the bulk of the officers who led the federal response were Igbo officers, Anuforo, Obienu, Onwutuegwu…

The Ugep Massacre was perpetrated by mostly Northern soldiers. The Bakolori Massacre was conducted by mostly Yoruba mobile policemen. The Maitatsine Affair, which was seen by many as a Kanuri uprising, was brutally put down by mainly Fulani officers led by Haliru Akilu. The Odi Massacre was supervised by mostly Middle Belt officers.

You can even see it in how both the Niger Delta insurgency and the Boko Haram insurgency have been tackled. Forget the paranoia about mainly Southern officers being sent to their deaths against Boko Haram, the historical fact is that Nigeria’s security architecture, as a first move, sends soldiers or anti-riot policemen to places they are not familiar, so they can be more “effective”.

But our internal security stresses have over time shown that this is not working. As we speak, the army is in 35 of 36 states. There is no way you can define that as a security architecture that is working.

The thing is, things like the Ogun Unrest brought about by the Wuhan Virus actually offer us an opportunity to rethink things such as our security architecture. It appears to me that local vigilante is getting a handle on the problem, better in some places than in others.

That is similar to how the CJTF has been of immense help in the fight against Boko Haram. Local knowledge is vital. Simply bringing in an army of occupation to fight the Ogun Unrest will result in more atrocities against the long-suffering people of Nigeria.