Perphaps, nothing best captures President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s inheritance of the toxic space called
Nigeria from former President Muhammadu Buhari, then the mess in the security and economic spheres.
With a naira swap policy that left much poorer and an energy insufficiency on the one hand, Boko Haram terrorists in the North East, the bandits of the North West and Niger State, the herders/farmers clashes of Benue and Plateau and criminality in Kogi and Nasarawa states in North Central, the IPoB separatist of the South East, the crude oil thieves of the South-South and the ritual killings-for-fame-and-money in the South West on the other hand, Nigeria appears to be a country in the throes of economic and security doom.
Whereas farming activities are hampered by the terrorists creating food security challenges, the IPoB separatists of the South East are destroying the economy of that region with its illegally-mandated sit-at-home Mondays, and the crude oil thieves of the Niger Delta continue to reduce Nigeria’s production output thereby reducing foreign exchange earnings, Tinubu’s work is laid bare before him. Doom looms! Undaunted, however, President Tinubu, this report will reveal, is set to confront the symbiotic challenges of the economy and security with a multi-pronged approach that is expected to create a secure environment which will drive economic growth and also ensure political stability.
This report is a painstaking treatise on how Nigeria got to this point and what President Tinubu plans to do to salvage the situation.
July 2014. Nothing best captures the shambolic security situation in Nigeria today than the lack of trust, in-fighting and activities of fifth columnists within the security sector, leading to the gruesome killing of one Major Timothy Fambiya, nine years ago.
His story is known to some top military commanders of that era because the operation in which he took part was both strategic and very sensitive. Fambiya is a native of Gwoza in Yobe State. Intel extracted from and some made available by detained members of Boko Haram (members of the Jama’atu Ahliss-Sunnah Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, (western education is evil) suggested that their leader at that time, the now late Abubakar Shekau, was hiding somewhere around the hills in Gwoza.
Top military commanders brain-stormed and after hours of thinking out how to approach the battle, an action plan was hatched. But because of the hilly nature of some parts of Gwoza and the need to be very dexterous in prosecuting the operation, someone with a good knowledge of the area needed to be part of or lead the operation.
Enter Major Fambiya, a young man who was on a course at Nigeria’s Command and Staff College, Jaji, in far away Kaduna. Words got to him that Shekau may be hiding around the hills of Gwoza but the top commanders were hamstrung in proceeding.
According to a General who was in the know at that time, “That was how Fambiya came into the picture. Because he was very familiar with the topography of this town, he volunteered to be part of the operation. The idea was to capture Shekau alive. Unfortunately, as in some of our operations, we believe some people from within, even among the officer corps, may have leaked the information to the terrorists. Mind you, it was from this battle that the story of Shekau’s rumoured killing in 2014, filtered out.
There were conflicting reports that he was injured during the gun battle and that he died but was quickly buried. Other reports claimed that he fled with gunshot injuries to neighbouring Cameroun. These tales turned out to be false. Vanguard gathered that it was during this battle that Fambiya was shot in the head from behind.” The General then lamented that “in Fambiya’s death, Nigeria lost one of her best Special Forces officers”.
The source charged that
“we suspect that Major Fambiya may have been killed by one of his men because he was shot in the head from behind. Though we have no concrete proof of that, the incident raised the question as to how the terrorists have been able to infiltrate the military because of some people who seem to share their ideological slant. It also raised the issue of trust”. All these happened in July 2014.
Fast forward to 2022/2023.
Famed for his military prowess and stature as a disengaged General of the Nigerian Army as well as being a former military leader, Muhammadu Buhari campaigned on the promise to end insurgency and return normalcy to the security space in 2015. Nigerians believed him. Unfortunately, the aftermath of Buhari’s eight-year rule presents a poisoned security space and an economy bleeding on all fronts, with its attendant cyclical misfortunes for the masses. In the area of security, whereas there were flashes of successes recorded in dealing with terrorists and separatists, Nigeria is worse today than Buhari met it in 2015. Beyond the Boko Haram group cornered to the North East in 2015, other deadlier forms of terrorism emerged under Buhari’s watch.
Bandits sprang up in the North West, Nasarawa and Niger States; criminal herders ran rampage across swaths of farmlands, killing and forcing residents to flee their ancestral homes and farmlands; Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPoB, waxed stronger in their deadly activities, even creating an Eastern Security Network, ESN, which waged war against the state and its fellow Igbos considered agents of the Federal Government of Nigeria. Crude oil theft assumed a new life of its own and became a very thriving business such that stolen crude accounted for more output than Nigeria’s production quota from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. One of the worst revelations of ineptitude under Buhari’s watch in the bleeding crude space was the story of the three million barrel-capacity (MT) Heroic Idun, a very large crude carrier, VLCC. It was on August 7, 2022, that Equatorial Guinea forces arrested the vessel and the crew on board after it fled from Nigeria’s Akpo oilfield when its activities were reportedly uncovered by operatives of the Nigerian Navy. In November 2022, the VLCC was brought back to Nigeria for further investigations. It was believed that the vessel had in its bowels stolen crude. On January 10, 2023, the 26-men crew and the vessel were reportedly charged to a Federal High Court in Port Harcourt, after which they pleaded guilty and agreed to enter into a plea bargain with the country. The scandal of Heroic Idun and the outcry from members of the public forced Nigeria’s NNPCL to enter into a multi-billion naira contract with a non-state actor to monitor pipelines – in a country where its military had not been disbanded.
On the monetary and fiscal policy sides, the shambolic state of affairs caused President Tinubu to charge that the bleeding must stop. The hardship caused by Buhari’s Naira-swap policy will never be forgotten by Nigerians in a hurry. Then, there was the multi-trillion naira oil subsidy scandal that gulped so much of the country’s resources, leaving the country with scant funds for development. Add to these the debt overhang of over N80 trillion. What makes the situation all the more miserable is the worsening insecurity. Economic prosperity without security would not enjoy the benefit of sustainability.
As a first step, even before firing the Service Chiefs, President Tinubu held a closed-door meeting with the outgone operatives. At that meeting, according to the briefing by the former National Security Adviser, NSA, General Babagana Monguno, the president ordered them to ensure unity and stop the inter- and intra-agency discord ravaging the system.
President Tinubu’s charge came on the heels of reports that things had gone so bad in the security space that some service chiefs were not on talking terms with one another. Vanguard was made to understand that even in some of the services, envy and malice had grown into a cancerous lump, creating intra-agency frictions because some postings were no longer based on competence but sentiments.
To deal decisively with the mess, President Tinubu, Vanguard was told, engaged in wide consultations to get the best of the rest for the available slots in the services’ top jobs, leading to the appointments of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, National Security Adviser, NSA; Major General Christopher Musa, Chief of Defence Staff, CDS; Major General Taoreed Lagbaja, Chief of Army Staff; Rear Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, Chief of Naval Staff; Air Vice Marshal Hassan Abubakar, Chief of Air Staff; and Major General Emmanuel Undiandeye, Chief of Defence Intelligence – already acting while awaiting the confirmation of the National Assembly.
Vanguard was reliably informed that when Tinubu visited the magnificent edifice housing the Office of the NSA, ONSA, and the National Counter Terrorism Centre, NCTC, in Abuja, “the President could not but wonder aloud why terrorism was still a major threat to Nigeria’s economy and stability despite the huge sums committed to fighting an insurgency.”
A national security source told Vanguard that “what was very evident was the seeming mismatch between expenditure to curb terrorism and insurgency and the results that were cogent and verifiable. Part of the problem”, the source continued, “is that the will to fight had long been lost while the appetite to make money became the order of the day.
That is what fueled the intra- and inter-agency discord for which Mr President read the Riot Act when the NSA and Service Chiefs held their only meeting with him before they were given the boot. All that nonsense will stop because Nigerians should expect more shakeups.” Perhaps, corruption enjoyed a form of diarchy: whie the political class engaged in unbridled looting, some in the military created situations that caused so much funds to be allocated to tackle insecurity, funds which ended up in the pockets of some individuals – as the civilains were helping themselves, the military, too, marched on in the same direction.
Tinubu, according to some of those with whom he had consulted, has given the marching orders to his new security chiefs to be pragmatic and strategic in their onslaught against all forms of insecurity in the country. “From the NSA to the Service Chiefs, Mr. President has charged them to do everything it takes to secure Nigeria and he made it clear that this is not just mere verbalisation of intent but a call to concrete action. The rules of engagement would be such that whatever it would require from whichever jurisdictions to decimate those creating insecurity in the country would be applied.
Specific security threats will determine the superior engagement to be deployed”, another Aso Rock source disclosed.
Always harping on the nexus between security and economic stability, Vanguard was told that Tinubu believes that once the security chiefs deal decisively with insecurity, fiscal and monetary policies would enjoy the gravitas required within the context of contemporary realities, first, of Nigeria, and then with manifest connection to global economic developments, particularly about forex earnings.
This is why his public statement on the need to harmonise the exchange rate can not be overemphasised. Tied to the issue of forex is Nigeria’s earnings.
This is where the vexed issue of crude oil theft comes into the picture. “Already, Mr President has begun moves to ensure that our critical crude infrastructure is better protected for optimum delivery. The security chiefs are already engaged in a series of consultations to ensure that crude oil theft is brought to its barest minimum and eradicated in the long run. Once there is the security of the Nigerian space, investors would come in”, another Tinubu confidant told Vanguard.
The confidant explained that with what Tinubu plans to do with subsidy savings, Nigerians may not have to go through the present hardship for long, admitting that things are truly tough on the masses. But she was quick to add that Mr. President, too, “acknowledges this pain and that is why he is determined to ensure that all hands are on deck to demonstrate to Nigerians that he truly wants their hope renewed. Consultations are on with key players in the economic arena to see where quick interventions can be made.”
Indeed, some of the consultations are paying off. Just last weekend, scores of kidnapped persons were released by some bandits in some parts of the North West geo-political zone. Also, as part of verifiable developments in some North West states, some farmers are now beginning to return to their farms where possible as some of the willing bandits are said to be in fruitful talks with the government to sheath their swords. How sustainable this would be. remain to be seen in the days and weeks and months ahead.
But the division in the country remains a very knotty issue. With a mandate that is less than 37% of the total votes cast, and as the opposition Labour Party, LP, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, continue their petition against Tinubu’s victory, the President would need to reach out and is said to be reaching out to some leaders of the opposition.
Whereas there is no known contact between Tinubu and Atiku Babubakar of PDP and Peter Obi of LP, Vanguard was told that there are ongoing back-door consultations with some leaders of the opposition. Already, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP, has held talks with President Tinubu. For now, both men seem to be singing from the same hymn book.
Vanguard was made to understand that the buy-in of some opposition leaders would go a long way in creating an atmosphere of genuine national reconciliation, a sine qua non to political stability even as Nigerians battle daily realities of biting economic hardship. And as a Tinubu adviser put it, “The pain is real, but Nigerians will soon begin to smile”.
VANGUARD
