There are no other ways to contain the rising influence of non-state armed groups than the Nigerian State re-asserting itself. Canvassing this position is Prof Chris Kwaja, peace academic and a Special Envoy to Plateau State governor, Barrister Caleb Mutfwang.
Prof Kwaja who was speaking at symposium on the nexus between rural insecurity, banditry and the spread of violent extremism in Nigeria in Abuja stressed how the failure of the state to provide and protect the citizens breeds discontent which, in turn, creates the gap which organised criminal groups are filling through recruitment of citizens who have been compelled to gullibility.
The symposium convened by the African Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS) also had Senator Abdulaziz Yar’adua, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Army who spoke separately on the “current security challenge in Nigeria”, as well as the “dynamics of banditry and violent extremism” in the country.
Prof Kwaja equally argued how failure to develop the rural areas account for the rising spate of poverty and unemployment across the rural communities. Compounded by the absence of effective policing across the rural areas, a regime of criminal groups sustaining a siege on communities siege has become regular and even routine, he said. “The pathway here is to strengthen the architecture for community policing and security, invest in rural livelihoods and growth related programmes, as well as support community level structures for public safety, dialogue and the management of conflicts”, argued Kwaja.
Nobody, he said, should underrate the capacity of criminal groups to understand the gaps and to exploit them, said Prof Kwaja who insists that the evidence of their ability to easily recruit young and gullible persons who see the state as either useless or not responsive now exist everywhere.
He is drawing attention to how growing urban crimes have compounded the crisis by compelling state security apparatus to concentrate more on the urban areas, the dwelling space of the elite. Moreover, state response to insecurity has been no more than the deployment of the military and other security agencies, most times disconnected from any agenda to deal with social provisioning issues around livelihoods that address inequality, unemployment and poverty.
He makes the case for increasing the agency of citizens in demanding accountability from the state on the one hand and investment in rural economies in ways that address insecurity impacting negatively on farming, livestock, mining and petty trading in the rural areas.
