When to barbecue the vulture, By Wole Olaoye

To put an end to all this nonsense, the authorities first have to agree that, among other things, anyone who takes up arms against Nigerians or against the country is a terrorist, no matter under what guise. All terrorists, no matter where they originated from or are based, are equal. Any non-authorised civilian group carrying weapons should be treated as terrorists. After all these years, there shouldn’t be anything like “repentant terrorists” anymore. Any terrorist that hasn’t repented by now does not deserve to live.

Fiction writer, James Hadley Chase, famously titled one of his popular novels, “The Vulture Is A Patient Bird.” That title often reminds me of the Yoruba anecdote which denounces the carnivorous bird as a cheat because it feeds on human carrion but man cannot (would not) feed on it. Thus, the vulture prospers from man’s misery without any risk of a backlash or revenge.

I don’t know of any culture where a vulture is part of the menu. There are too many cultural taboos hanging around the ‘Dracula-hooded’ birds. They feed on carrion. Carry disease-bearing pathogens. Their relatively tasteless meat in comparison to chicken, cooks forever and is never tender. They are classified with evil or apocalyptic evocations in many cultures. 

Human Vultures 

Those are the vultures in the animal kingdom. In our real human world, we also have human vultures whose menace we grudgingly acknowledge but still tolerate under a barrage of excuses. Enter Boko Haram, ISWAP, cattle rustlers, armed herdsmen, Unknown Gunmen and other rogue elements who have totally demystified the government’s claim of exclusively controlling the means of coercion!

If the principal aim of the government is to protect its people and maintain order and stability, the Nigerian government has failed spectacularly in the last 15 years. Swathes of Nigerian territory are under the control of criminals. The government and its security forces continue to lie about the severity of the situation. 

Over the years, instead of a frontal attack on the problem, the government and its security agencies were pussy-footing under a number of convenient excuses. The political elite in the affected northern states started playing ethnic and religious cards. When the government decided to end the embarrassment once and for all, the move was sabotaged through blackmail and a campaign to turn the people of the region against the government, as if the fight against terrorism was an anti-North agenda. 

Foreign terrorists were recruited to add an even deadlier dimension to the terrorists’ capabilities. Issues of the expansionist ambitions of some of the bandits which, in the last 10 years, have tried to colonise the Middle Belt region were quickly dismissed as farmers/herders clashes. Historical carryovers, such as unacknowledged unfinished ethnic wars, were dismissed as non-existent. 

When the illegal mining of minerals in the North was a small-scale affair being run by the locals underground, it did not attract the level of organised violence that it currently enjoys with the involvement of the traditional and political elite. Now mining gangs have their own private armies. The government claims to be in charge of granting mining concessions but we all know that the bandits run the roost in many areas.

Enough of the shameless excuses! There is really no big deal about fighting terrorism if you have the will. Granted that we have lost a lot of ground in the years of complete lethargy, it is never too late to reclaim our space and rid the land of terrorism completely, once and for all. And I truly mean once and for all!

In the South where bandits come disguised as herdsmen and routinely waylay motorists on inter-state highways, the government continues to deny what is obvious. Even in cases where the locals have adduced evidence of some of the terrorists being foreigners, the government continues to tell the convenient lie of herders and farmers being at loggerheads. That lapse has led to the generalisation in the South that all terrorists operating from the forests are Fulani.

Because of all these acts of omission or commission, as the case may be, we watched from the gallery of nonchalance as terrorism became a lucrative industry, especially after bandits in many states of the North started collecting taxes and protection levies from the people. Up till now, there are parts of the North where farmers have to pay terrorists to access their farms safely. In those places, the government is a distant memory. 

The new fad is for the terrorists to issue video recordings of their domination of rural communities and their dispensation of their warped notion of justice — ranging from public floggings to more serious forms of physical torture. Some have even been turbaned by emirs! They are entrenched. They are the de facto government.

Government Abdication 

It used to be embarrassing to those in government. Now, it seems that even the people have come to terms with the reality of Boko Haram and the other terrorists controlling territories outside the purview of the Nigerian constitution. We have, through a mixture of neglect, subterfuge and incompetence, legitimised terrorism, insurgency, hostage taking and allied crimes.

Enough of the shameless excuses! There is really no big deal about fighting terrorism if you have the will. Granted that we have lost a lot of ground in the years of complete lethargy, it is never too late to reclaim our space and rid the land of terrorism completely, once and for all. And I truly mean once and for all!

Granted that security is a specialised subject with its own esoterica and technicalities, I wager that what we have before us does not exclusively deserve the formal or conventional wisdom of the usual ‘experts’ and their textbook analyses and fixations. If a band of largely illiterate brigands can outwit and overwhelm our entire security agencies, it is time we weaponise our collective cerebral muscle and deploy the same accordingly. We must out-think them!

We have heard, ad nauseam, about the introduction of ‘non-kinetic’ tactics in the fight against terror. New terms are being introduced daily by the growing army of ‘security experts’ doing the rounds on national television regularly. Nobody — least of all the terrorists — is impressed by all the technical jargon. 

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Nigerians don’t care whatever tactics you deploy to rid the country of terrorists. All they want is for their government to live up to what it claims to be — an authority in charge. If a government cannot protect its people from any kind of aggression, then it has lost its reason for being called a government.

Between July 2023 and June 2024, kidnapping alone accounted for 1,056 deaths in 1,130 reported incidents. According to the research document, “Economics of Nigeria’s Kidnap Industry”, Zamfara State recorded 1,639 kidnap victims and 146 civilian deaths, with about N1.048 billion being deployed as ransom nationally.

Just Do It!

To put an end to all this nonsense, the authorities first have to agree that, among other things, anyone who takes up arms against Nigerians or against the country is a terrorist, no matter under what guise. All terrorists, no matter where they originated from or are based, are equal. Any non-authorised civilian group carrying weapons should be treated as terrorists. After all these years, there shouldn’t be anything like “repentant terrorists” anymore. Any terrorist that hasn’t repented by now does not deserve to live.

Government should map out the territories currently being controlled by terrorists. Security contractors should then be contracted with specific targets, deliverables, expected outcomes and mutually agreed Standard Operating Procedures. Security contractors should concentrate on taking out terrorist kingpins remotely through drones and other digital devices, while our police and armed forces are adequately armed to mop them up. With the lion’s share of the 2024 budget allocated to defence and security, we ought to be able to finance this without any problem. State policing is imperative.

The reason for the current spate of insecurity is that the government is not yet ready to stamp it out. When those in government are sufficiently conscientised to end the scam, we will all breathe easy; but not a moment before then.

If Providence grants the collective invocations of Nigerians, the government will regain its consciousness and declare that all birds of prey are equal; that what is good for the hawk is good for the abominable vulture. 

Forget the taboo. We shall barbecue the vulture!

Wole Olaoye is a Public Relations consultant and veteran journalist. He can be reached on wole.olaoye@gmail.com, Twitter: @wole_olaoye; Instagram: woleola2021.