I am a layman in the sphere of war. The closest I have ever come to guns was the sight I have of them in the hands of soldiers or policemen from afar.
But from my layman’s comfort zone, I feel that Nigeria will only suffice against this daring acts of banditry if an all-out war is launched and taken to the hideouts of these bandits to smoke them out so that we can have peace again. Fact is peace has eluded us and the future does not look good at all.
Why, for example, can’t the federal government mobilise 100,000 soldiers, policemen, civil defence operatives and plain cloth undercover agents, arm them to teeth, mobilise our entire air assets, take over the bushes in the North West and within a specified timeline decapitate whatever is left of these bloodthirsty vampires?
Or alternatively, conscript at least 100 of our able body but jobless young men from each local government in Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger states into the Armed forces, train them in the art of gorilla warfare, deploy them to their localities to function under the supervision of a national command and unleash them on these ragamuffins and watch them deal with the situation in so short a time.
At the end of the operation, you either co-opt them into the regular security forces or get them gainfully employed under a joint arrangement between the Federal, state and local governments, disarm them and enjoy peace.
The argument put forward by Kaduna state Governor Nasir El-rufai seems to make sense to me. These bandits have found a way of making easy millions and to expect them to repent when they are utterly irreligious and go back to a cattle rearing wahala where they hardly make N100,000 a year, is to say the least very insensible.
Unless the government establishes a clear and unambiguous capacity and understanding that it has superior instrument of violence and can, if tested, bring mayhem and destruction down to the doorsteps of any recalcitrant warlord, these bandits will never see the futility of poking fingers into the eyes of the FG.
By whatever name, either “Tura Ta Kai Bango” or “Shege Ka Fasa” or “Kasa Wuta, Sama Wuta” an ambitious and an unprecedented military operation never seen in Africa must be waged, at whatever cost to rid the North West of this nuisance that is getting bolder and daring by the day, to an abrupt and comprehensive end. We either get rid of them now that we can or they get rid of all of us, if not immediately now, in not too a distant time.
And if this is not done now that the Presidency is in the hands of the North, we should not begin to shout any conspiracy theory against a President of Southern Nigeria extraction if, after Muhammad Buhari, a successor plays the Ostrich.
