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Sectarian Violence in Jos and National Security
- By Business World
- Published February 8th, 2010
- Comment & Analysis
- Unrated
“THERE has been very conflicting reports from different media and different sources and to have a clear picture we have to send the team. So, any statement I am going to make now will be presumptuous. Let them come back and we will have a fair assessment of the situation that will form the basis of the statement we are going to make. At the moment, the military had moved in concert with the police to normalize the situation” - General Sarki Mukhtar, National Security Adviser, part of the statement made shortly after the emergency security meeting with the Vice President at the wake of the latest Jos crisis.
Introduction
It has become obvious that perhaps the greatest security threats to the sovereignty of the Nigerian State are not the traditional state actors or the well-known militant insurgents from the Niger Delta but with equal strength religious fundamentalism more domiciled and prevalent in the northern part of the country. Religious sectarianism is a tinder box that threatens to explode at unpredictable moments. The history of religious crisis in the northern part of the country lends credence to this assertion. Therefore, there is no justification whatsoever for the boastful claims and abuses often associated with certain political quarters who like to blame others for their woes while ignoring the dangerous acts going on in their domains. No ethnic group in the country has monopoly of crimes and acts detrimental to national security.
Without doubt, general economic crisis in the country contribute to the recurrent occurrence and fueling of religious crisis in the country especially in the northern part of the country. But this has become the social clichés that does not enlighten us too much. We need to move beyond these frontiers of knowledge to improve our epistemologies of these matters.
Indeed, Boko Haram, Kala-kato uprising, Abdulmutallab-type of incipient terrorism, et al, must be viewed within the same dialectical continuum of the growing homeland insecurity, political instability (despite the claims and beliefs to the contrary), gradual economic meltdown, infrastructural decadence (etc) in the country. All of these threats, especially sectarian violence produce adverse social effects that undermine the sovereignty, democratic governance and stability, well-being and security of the country and the citizens. The potential for sectarian violence to destroy social mores and peaceful co-existence among people of diverse backgrounds and produce lawlessness and dysfunctional behaviors in the society has a direct bearing on the political process.
Therefore the recurrent sectarian crisis in the northern part of the country should no longer be considered essentially as a short term episodic affair peculiar to the region or a low-level law enforcement effort. Rather, it should be regarded as a long term intra-national conflict situation (in the case of Jos, the settler-indigene conflict over land encroachment, occupation, etc) involving Clausewitz’s multiple “forgotten” political, economic, social and psychological dimensions of strategy formulations.
But more significant in this scenario is the nexus between homeland security and political stability as fundamentals to democratic stability, survival and hegemony. Indeed, the earlier we recognize this nexus the better. In other words, effective homeland security system, as well as good governance, is a factor in the matrix of political stability. For democracy to survive in Nigeria, it must be seen to retain the hegemonic ability to permanently suppress and/or contain all centripetal forces threatening to dismember the polity. The basic causal linkage between homeland insecurity and political instability and the overall threat to the national security should be the cognitive bedrock of of national security policy formulation in general.
Unless thinking and actions are reoriented to deal with these realities, the twin-problem of homeland insecurity and political instability will end up in situation totally detrimental to the overall national security policy objectives.
Unfortunately, the tendency has been to take a business-as-usual, ad hoc, and piece-meal “crisis management” or “crisis control” approach rather than a comprehensive proactive approach to the achievement of overall national security objectives. The opening statement quoted above typify this approach which does not help us much. It is not a proactive mind at work at all. Rather, it is a mindset operating in the conventional bureaucratic mental grooves. This dysfunctional approach is obviously failing to reconcile the aspirations of peaceful co-existence along ethnic, religious lines shared by the ordinary people of the country. It is over a year now that three separate panels of investigation were set up in Jos consequent upon the November 2008 eruption of mayhem in that city that claimed hundreds of lives and destruction of properties and disruption of social equilibrium. The federal government set up its own panel, while the state government and the
State House of Assembly equally set up their own panels respectively. None of the panels has submitted its official report to their respective principals. What happened? Now we have to pay the supreme price of further loss of lives and destruction of properties for the long delay in delivering official reports that could have been utilized as tool or mechanism for conflict resolution in the divided city.
What has therefore become indubitably clear is that this piece-meal panel of investigation approach is probably not working despite their high-sounding recommendations. This poses a great intellectual challenge for the security and intelligence community including strategic think-tanks such Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, National Defence College, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, National Think Tank, as well as concerned NGOs and last but not the least, the media (etc) to aggressive and innovative data-collection techniques to close knowledge gap related to transference of violence from various parts of the country to another, to integrate their different analytical efforts into a coherent whole at understanding this unwholesome phenomenon of violence in Jos and its environ, and finally helping to fashion a comprehensive strategy for peace among the various warring groups.
Cycle of violence
There has been a cycle of violence in Jos and the Middle Belt in general which is necessary to be scientifically understood from historical and sociological (or generally holistic) perspectives. We must trace the origin of this violence typology, what fuels it from time to time, who are benefiting from it and what can be done to stop this violence regime. Jos has always been a political tinder-box, a flash-point, ever ready to explode over geopolitical fundamentals such as nationalism, Tiv-Junkun ethnic not-so-cordial relationship, pre and post-election violence, bad governance, settler-indigene conflictual relationship, inter-religious sectarian conflicts, economic pressures of unemployment and joblessness, etc.
Introduction
It has become obvious that perhaps the greatest security threats to the sovereignty of the Nigerian State are not the traditional state actors or the well-known militant insurgents from the Niger Delta but with equal strength religious fundamentalism more domiciled and prevalent in the northern part of the country. Religious sectarianism is a tinder box that threatens to explode at unpredictable moments. The history of religious crisis in the northern part of the country lends credence to this assertion. Therefore, there is no justification whatsoever for the boastful claims and abuses often associated with certain political quarters who like to blame others for their woes while ignoring the dangerous acts going on in their domains. No ethnic group in the country has monopoly of crimes and acts detrimental to national security.
Without doubt, general economic crisis in the country contribute to the recurrent occurrence and fueling of religious crisis in the country especially in the northern part of the country. But this has become the social clichés that does not enlighten us too much. We need to move beyond these frontiers of knowledge to improve our epistemologies of these matters.
Indeed, Boko Haram, Kala-kato uprising, Abdulmutallab-type of incipient terrorism, et al, must be viewed within the same dialectical continuum of the growing homeland insecurity, political instability (despite the claims and beliefs to the contrary), gradual economic meltdown, infrastructural decadence (etc) in the country. All of these threats, especially sectarian violence produce adverse social effects that undermine the sovereignty, democratic governance and stability, well-being and security of the country and the citizens. The potential for sectarian violence to destroy social mores and peaceful co-existence among people of diverse backgrounds and produce lawlessness and dysfunctional behaviors in the society has a direct bearing on the political process.
Therefore the recurrent sectarian crisis in the northern part of the country should no longer be considered essentially as a short term episodic affair peculiar to the region or a low-level law enforcement effort. Rather, it should be regarded as a long term intra-national conflict situation (in the case of Jos, the settler-indigene conflict over land encroachment, occupation, etc) involving Clausewitz’s multiple “forgotten” political, economic, social and psychological dimensions of strategy formulations.
But more significant in this scenario is the nexus between homeland security and political stability as fundamentals to democratic stability, survival and hegemony. Indeed, the earlier we recognize this nexus the better. In other words, effective homeland security system, as well as good governance, is a factor in the matrix of political stability. For democracy to survive in Nigeria, it must be seen to retain the hegemonic ability to permanently suppress and/or contain all centripetal forces threatening to dismember the polity. The basic causal linkage between homeland insecurity and political instability and the overall threat to the national security should be the cognitive bedrock of of national security policy formulation in general.
Unless thinking and actions are reoriented to deal with these realities, the twin-problem of homeland insecurity and political instability will end up in situation totally detrimental to the overall national security policy objectives.
Unfortunately, the tendency has been to take a business-as-usual, ad hoc, and piece-meal “crisis management” or “crisis control” approach rather than a comprehensive proactive approach to the achievement of overall national security objectives. The opening statement quoted above typify this approach which does not help us much. It is not a proactive mind at work at all. Rather, it is a mindset operating in the conventional bureaucratic mental grooves. This dysfunctional approach is obviously failing to reconcile the aspirations of peaceful co-existence along ethnic, religious lines shared by the ordinary people of the country. It is over a year now that three separate panels of investigation were set up in Jos consequent upon the November 2008 eruption of mayhem in that city that claimed hundreds of lives and destruction of properties and disruption of social equilibrium. The federal government set up its own panel, while the state government and the
State House of Assembly equally set up their own panels respectively. None of the panels has submitted its official report to their respective principals. What happened? Now we have to pay the supreme price of further loss of lives and destruction of properties for the long delay in delivering official reports that could have been utilized as tool or mechanism for conflict resolution in the divided city.
What has therefore become indubitably clear is that this piece-meal panel of investigation approach is probably not working despite their high-sounding recommendations. This poses a great intellectual challenge for the security and intelligence community including strategic think-tanks such Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, National Defence College, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, National Think Tank, as well as concerned NGOs and last but not the least, the media (etc) to aggressive and innovative data-collection techniques to close knowledge gap related to transference of violence from various parts of the country to another, to integrate their different analytical efforts into a coherent whole at understanding this unwholesome phenomenon of violence in Jos and its environ, and finally helping to fashion a comprehensive strategy for peace among the various warring groups.
Cycle of violence
There has been a cycle of violence in Jos and the Middle Belt in general which is necessary to be scientifically understood from historical and sociological (or generally holistic) perspectives. We must trace the origin of this violence typology, what fuels it from time to time, who are benefiting from it and what can be done to stop this violence regime. Jos has always been a political tinder-box, a flash-point, ever ready to explode over geopolitical fundamentals such as nationalism, Tiv-Junkun ethnic not-so-cordial relationship, pre and post-election violence, bad governance, settler-indigene conflictual relationship, inter-religious sectarian conflicts, economic pressures of unemployment and joblessness, etc.
