– Text of an address delivered by Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi, at the launch of a training program organized by the Army’s 2nd Mechanized Division HQ in Oyo State, on September 26, 2012.
1. Permit me the opportunity to appreciate Almighty God for the opportunity of being here today. I also want to extend my appreciation to men of the Nigerian Armed Forces, especially officers and men of the Nigerian Army 2nd Mechanized Division, whose quest for the betterment of society led to the organization of this training programme. Finding solutions to the problems that bedevil us is not strictly a deft wielding of our brawn and weaponry but a meticulous mental exercise in an atmosphere of intellectual brainstorming. One of such exercises is what the Nigerian Army has organized today.
2. The issue of national security had always been a matter for intellectual discourse. Indeed, the Nigerian Army has undergone a commendable metamorphosis. From the days of its forebears in the colonial and immediate post-colonial administrations, through its perception as a group of people who merely fought wars, to its perception as an instrument of national unity and down to its current role as a deterrent group, the Nigerian military has really come of age.
3. Today, the Nigerian military has left those purely war-and-prevention roles it used to be perceived as performing, to becoming an intellectual hub for administration and strategic thinking in the country. Since the expiration of the Nigerian civil war, military intellectuals have broadened the scope of military intellectualism. This led to the establishment of the Command and Staff College, Jaji; National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru; the Training and Doctrine Command, Minna, as well as the upgrading of the Nigerian Defence Academy into a degree-awarding institution. Many Political Science Departments of Nigerian universities have also awarded Masters degrees to our military men in Strategic Studies. These were all done to sharpen military intellectuals’ horizon, as well as prepare the force for the great challenges of an insecure nation and its borders.
4. The Nigerian military of today has emerged from the historical trajectory of post-colonial Nigeria into one that is essential in the course of building a virile and strong nation. The major challenge of the Nigerian armed forces today is to think in strategic terms towards confronting the current security challenges of the Nigerian nationhood.
5. A time there was when the Nigerian military apparatchik was concerned about formulating adequate defence policy for the nation. Since the end of the civil war when the task of fighting territorial enemies ceased, the military has had to confront greater challenges of maintaining strategic and tactical doctrines. In the process, questions have been raised on what actually constitutes national security. Is it the security of the Command in Chief of the Armed Forces or that of his cabinet? Or does it lie in ensuring that there are no divisions and clashes within the borders of the nation as to warrant insecurity?
6. In the 90s, getting an adequate definition of what Nigeria’s national security was became the major challenge of Nigerian military intellectuals. At what point could the country be said to be secure? Or put differently, where could the military establishment look forward to in anticipation of national insecurity?
7. This engendered so many answers. For instance, some military intellectuals submitted that national security is not essentially about the absence of war or violence within the borders of the nation. According to them, there is the need to factor in historical and socio-political domestic environment as very germane to the discussion of national security. Therefore, geo-strategic considerations like internal socio-political environment have a lot to do in the decision of national security. What this means is that if a domestic environment is characterized by political contradictions, ethnic rivalry and clashes, the national security of such a nation is greatly threatened.
8. Since the late 1990s and down to 2000s, the challenge of maintaining internal peace had become a strong headache of national security intellectuals. First came the ethnic militia group agitations in the Niger Delta who threatened oil installations, asking for a great share in the oil that is produced on their lands. This led to very violent agitations that threatened the survival of the Nigerian federation. It became clear to all and sundry that, to be free from this insecurity, Nigeria had to placate the Niger Delta agitators who abducted expatriate oil workers and burst oil installations at will.
9. President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (God bless his soul) decided that for Nigeria to get a national breather from the national insecurity caused by these agitators, there was the need to engage them in an atmosphere of cordiality. He thus declared amnesty for the violent agitators and thereafter established a Niger Delta Ministry to placate them. Today, the violence of the Niger Delta, which threatened Nigeria’s national security, has abated considerably, leaving the country with a new wave of insecurity which needs all the mental and intellectual permutations that the military apparatchik can muster to free the country of its hold.
10. The challenge today is that of a violent uprising among a group of Islamic irredentists who initially claimed to be fighting a war of attrition against Western education. Later revelations have come to peg the agitations of these Islamic sectists, called Boko Haram, within the confines of religion and politics.
11. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s national security challenge for the Nigerian military is the threat of the Boko Haram sect which has killed hundreds of Nigerians in suicide bombings. A decade or so back, a Nigerian national security could never have anticipated that a day would come when an unsecured environment, borne largely from the violence of religious fundamentalists, would agitate the mind of the military.
12. Having found ourselves at this intersection, the challenge today is how to formulate an adequate strategic military might that will contain the onslaught of terror that has berthed on our frontiers. How do we contain these alien forces not native to Nigerian consciousness where recruits of a terrorist group prefer to sacrifice themselves in the service of whatever ideological stand they hold?
13. Before now, the typical Nigerian’s reaction to terrorist suicide bombings was that it could never happen on our land, taking into consideration an average Nigerian’s love of life and preference for suffering and smiling (apology to Fela Anikulapo Kuti) at the expense of laying his life down for group or ideological martyrdom.
14. Events in the last few years have proven the above belief obsolete. In our very before, our people have chosen to strap round themselves fuses of explosives with which they blow themselves and their victims into pieces. How does a military, in search of an adequate definition of national security, react to this gruesome development?
15. Contemporary security challenges in Nigeria have put Nigeria almost in the same bracket with Afghanistan, Iraq and other violence-prone countries of the world. How do we address and combat this menace without fooling ourselves in the process? These are the questions that military intellectuals must seek to answer and find solutions to.
16. Aside the underground efforts being made to block the channels and routes through which equipment and instruments of destruction are imported into the country by these evil characters, there is also the need for government to ensure that our national interests and values are clearly defined. It is in the definition of what constitute our core values as a people that we can find lasting solutions to the separatist inclinations of some of our people who take arms against the country. It is in the lack of identification of our core values that can be found the absence of patriotism among her nationals, to the extent of rising against Nigerian national interest.
17. Also, a time has come when Nigerian people must be made to undergo courses in security consciousness. The time of innocence for us as a people has gone and security consciousness must take over our innocence. In other words, we must by now begin to develop a security community which has its eyes on securing itself and members of its community.
18. The involvement of the military in this exercise cannot be over-emphasized. Developing the requisite capabilities by the Nigerian Army for combating contemporary security challenges is not basically about acquiring sophisticated weaponry. It is about attuning the minds of the people to the prevailing circumstances of our country where suicide bombers have polluted the peace of our hallowed nation. If we were taking some things for granted in the past, this is the time to interrogate every unusual configuration around us and sharpen our suspicion of every event that surround us. That is the challenge to us as individuals living in contemporary Nigeria.
19. It is a problem that can be solved by a triad of the people, the military and government as a whole. Government must begin to inculcate the core values of nationalism and patriotism in the minds of the people, as well as make the Nigerian society equitable. Through the provision of basic needs, provision of job opportunities for the teeming jobless people and allied existential comforts for her people, government would be re-instilling confidence into the people and thus re-nurturing their senses of patriotism.
20. It is in these that our people can begin to retrace their steps back into the core values of our nationhood. It is becoming obvious that challenges to national security would not come from our neighbours taking up arms and bayonets against us. It will come from disenchanted fellow nationals who do not see any reason to live in a Nigeria that makes them cry daily. The challenge, on the part of government, is to make our country one to be proud of. In this wise, we would be addressing headlong our national insecurity.
21. The Nigerian Army is playing leading role in the ongoing efforts at addressing security challenges nationwide and this is commendable. I must also commend your men for the courage displayed so far in combating these challenges. Some of them have had to make the supreme sacrifice for the rest of us to enjoy the relative peace we have today. We must not forget them in our prayers. On our part, we have tried to reduce the effect on the families by providing immediate support. We are ready to do more.
22. We are also committed to ensuring the safety of all residents of the state. As you are all aware, we have introduced the joint security patrol nick-named Operation Burst. I make bold to say that the tremendous success that has been made in this crime control outfit has percolated the length and breadth of the state. Let me restate our commitment to providing all within our powers to sustain the effort of this highly lauded outfit. Please feel free to bring to my notice any deficiencies in Operation Burst’s operations. My office is ready to do even more to sustain the peace that we currently enjoy in Oyo State.
23. I want to thank, once again, officers and men of the Nigerian Army 2nd Mechanized Division, for giving me this opportunity to address you today. We must not be tired of discussing our contemporary situation. In it lies solutions to the challenges of our existence.
24. Thank you all for listening