Amnesty International – Nigeria is on an infographic warpath against security agencies with a table of abduction of school girls that suggests that security provisioning is on a Leave of Absence. Amnesty’s comprehensive list of the same thing happening over and over again leaves the average reader with the inference of a country where the provision of safety is either not quite on the agenda or where security and insecurity have become indistinguishable.
Amnesty International in Nigeria might have thus come to the conclusion that security practices could lead to insecurity. That is the basic argument of the Paris or International Political Sociology argument in critical security studies.
There have been no reaction from the security agencies to Amnesty’s most recent infographics but the military has, hitherto, not always taken kindly to Amnesty’s standpoint analysis. It is debatable if the problem can be reduced to a one of who is right or wrong as long as mass abduction of those who should not suffer such fate at all continue to do so.
A full house of the National security establishment in Nigeria
Critics have been pondering why mass abductions occur without any shootout, hot pursuit or reversal of fortune against the bandits or terrorists. Of course, terrorists and bandits aim to embarrass state capacity by making it a laughing stock as far as provision of safety to the most vulnerable groups in the society such as women, children, girls and the aged is concerned. So, they go extra miles in planning such exercises with little chance of failure.
However, terrorists do not operate only in Nigeria. How come they get bloody nose elsewhere in much of such operations but seemingly not so in Nigeria. Hint that it is not that so in Nigeria is the regularity of such abductions as shown by Amnesty International. Why is the reaction time, from a common sense view, is usually too wide between mass abduction and any reaction from security? Should any mass abduction have been possible after Chibok? Is it a crisis of underdevelopment in that much of the Nigerian space remains empty as opposed to where there has been successful modernisation as in the Middle East or much of Asia? General Chris Musa, the Chief of Defence Staff, complained about difficulty in accessing arms even when the military has the money to pay. Could that be part of the problem in a decade plus counter-insurgency operation? Is it possible that the number would be five times Amnesty International’s number if security agencies were not good in bursting more than we know?
The Federal Government makes the whole thing even more embarrassing by putting out a story each time it occurs in which the president is reported as directing security agencies to rescue the victims. Implied in that chicanery is the suggestion that otherwise, the security agencies would not worry so much about rescuing the victims.
Whichever is the case, there is a problem with so many successful mass abductions of any set of people but more so school girls. It is part of what is taking Nigeria’s image down the hill and only confidence restoring performance can unmake the image.
