Why Buhari may choose a new NSA

BY YEMI ADEYINKA

National security and an absolutely secured nation is the issue in vogue today in Nigeria. The quantum of deliberately orchestrated violent crises, killings and armed criminalities disturbs every Nigerian.

The citizens are further perturbed and traumatized with the prevalence of violent eruptions and killings. And most security experts believe some of these violent eruptions should ordinarily be surpressed before their sinister omens transmute into a major security threat of national emergency.

Unpretentiously, Nigerians crave to live in peace; conduct legitimate business in their country insulated from terrorism, bile secession campaigns, ethno-religious conflicts, communal clashes, farmers/ herders conflagrations, kidnappings, militancy, and armed banditries of whatever colourations.

This has been the honest thoughts and expectations of President Muhammadu Buhari, who is cordoned by a pantheon of Security Chiefs. And the National Security Adviser (NSA) is one, topmost on the echelon vested with the onerous responsibility of guiding Mr. President and Commander-In – Chief of the Armed Forces through advice on the most suitable approaches in treating emerging national security threats.

Essentially, the face of national security of Nigeria whether worse, better or best depends largely on the expert advice and prescriptions of the NSA. The Buhari Presidency has dealt with multiferous national security threats in the last four years. In fairness to his administration, there have been encouraging footprints; but it could have been handled much better assuming the NSA proved his mettle as the nation’s chief security adviser efficiently.

And the observable snags are also traceable to the NSA, Maj.Gen. Babagana Monguno (rtd) who has displayed confounding incapacity to use the powers and clout of his office in a manner that will win the hearts of all Nigerians to President Buhari on national security.

Gen. Monguno’s performance in the last four years has completely blurred the initial excitement which trailed his appointment as NSA in July 2015. Nigerians joyed by his coming, spat each time his name is echoed.

Granted that the gamut or job description of the office of the NSA under national security also includes, his expertise inputs on economic policy, military security and foreign affairs, and international intelligence gathering; what is paramount to Nigerians now is homeland security of lives and property of the citizens. Unfortunately though, Monguno’s tenure as NSA has been less than impressive on this score.

In spite of the NSA’s impeccable credentials both in the military and academics, international exposure and experience, Gen. Monguno has marketed himself more as a Presidential Security Adviser who is tactless and devoid of any knowledge of diplomacy, underhand solutions, though a professional in International Relations and Diplomacy.

He is consistent in affirming through actions his barrenness of ideas in nipping in the bud, potential national security threats, until they mature into deadly and tragic explosions.

It has never occurred to NSA Gen. Monguno that not all crises are resolved through brute force or with the sounds of boots and guns. His failure to recognise this stronger weapon in crisis management often times, pushes the Presidency into the force (stick) approach to tame violent eruptions, at it’s worsening and damaging stages.

The NSA’s incompetence to adopt
the carrot approach, by using his office to win the minds of people for the President has caused Nigeria avoidable misfortunes and even diplomatic row.

Or else, how could one explain the impulsive “expulsion” of former Iranian envoy to Nigeria, Ambassador Saeed Koozachi without any prior knowledge that as an individual he was unduly interfering into the internal affairs of Nigeria and had a soft – spot for Shiites in Nigeria and personally concerned about the lawful detention of Shiek Ibraheem EL-Zakzaky? The NSA never took notice of him to advise the President to quietly ease him out until he made an inciting statement, threatening Nigeria of playing with fire by the continuous detention of the Shiites leader in Nigeria?

Gen. Monguno knows that diplomacy is a key factor in crisis management, especially at it’s early stages, as against brute force. And it is his responsibility to advise the President on the appropriate range of options to tackle a particular crisis or problem at it’s embroynic stages.

By appointing Gen. Monguno into the sensitive position of NSA, Mr. President indeed, vested in him an unquestionable and limitless authority to pry into covert matters with the likelihood of threatening national security, but may not ordinarily come to the notice or knowledge of the President.

It’s is his sacrosanct duty to look at underlying salient issues with potentials to cause national security threats and breach of public law and order. His advice and even insistence on certain options geared towards peace is absolutely in order. That’s why in Nigeria’s local parlance, the NSA is adorably referred to as the ” Spy Master.”

Disappointingly, the NSA has no such faculty and has not “mastered” it in the operations or discharge of the functions of his office as Nigeria’s NSA. He waits until the last resort- brute force is applied as the prevailing delicate insecurity situation permits.

His effective use of the carrot approach to crisis management would have tremendously assisted the President in delivering the dividends of democracy to Nigerians. But he failed and accordingly, disappointed Nigerians.

So, regrettably, what Nigerians often experience is the circumstantial compunction on Mr. President to resort to the deployment of the military to quell crises when they explode in horrendous violence and killings.

For emphasis, it is often after it smoulders, gathers momentum and overwhelms civil security like the Police and Civil Defence etc undetected to compel use of brute force to extinguish it. It means the office of the NSA has been dysfunctional. This is the national security dilemma of Nigerian people.

And there are a couple of examples which “convicts” the Gen. Monguno in public court. The secession agitations of the Nnamdi Kanu’s led Indigenous Peoples of Biafra ( IPOB) had been in the cooler or recess until the Buhari Presidency came on board.

Nigerians know IPOB is not a serious separatists movement or genuine in it’s quest for a “Biafra republic.” But it’s sudden exhumation from incubation under the Buhari Presidency was indicative of grievances the leaders of IPOB, it’s supporters and sympathizers had with President Buhari’s leadership of Nigeria.

It’s expected that the NSA would have made discreet findings, unearthed the issues and offered the necessary advice to Mr. President on how to deflate the smouldering tensions and crafted in a manner that would amicably resolve the inflammable contentions.

But the NSA relaxed untill IPOB announced in the media the setting up it’s government and appointed officials, launched two wings of it’s security guards, occupied the Southeast in armed criminality, frequent violent disruptions of public peace, law and order, extrajudicial killings of those hostile to IPOB’s ideology and modus operandi.

The FGN was compelled into the use of military force to stop the abberants and the subsequent declarative statements of proscription or later, as a terrorists group.

Further to this negligence, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) or the Shiites have become a national security threat. And it streams from a string of events that could have been tackled had the President been offered the right advice by an NSA alive to his duties.

Even in the Niger Delta, there was a subsisting palliative to douse the tension, anxieties and militancy campaigns in the region. The implementation of the Presidential Amnesty Programme launched by the former administration of Yar’Adua had issues. The beneficiaries complained of several loopholes, such as indequacy in spread, marginalisation and such stuffs. Beyond it was the issue of failure of development MDAs specially designated for development activities in the region to massively impact on the people in justification of the funds accruing to them.

The situation metamorphosed into multiple voices of dissent against the administration of President Buhari from the region. The people expected the Buhari Presidency which came into power on the crest of checkmating such vices to rise to their rescue instantly. But no assurance was forthcoming and Niger Delta went berserk in remonstrations and back to the creeks.

And with it, came the concomitant effect of duplicity of militant groups craving for recognition and attention. Niger Delta Avergers (NDA) and hordes of other splinter militant sects went into alliance, threatening the declaration of a “Niger Delta republic.”

At this instance too, the fresh cause of anxieties and tensions in Nigeria Delta was the poor management of economic, empowerment, environmental and development schemes for the region.

It needed a remedy contemplated on such paths. Its clear, such solutions escaped the NSA, Gen. Monguno, until the FGN was persuaded by circumstantial threats to national security to deploy the military to forestall any planned subversion of the sovereignty of Nigeria.

It may sound sarcastic, or even odd, but what is discernible to any keen observer of the insecurity situation in Nigeria would effortlessly concede certain incontrovertible facts.

It is that the NSA, Gen. Monguno was overwhelmed by the challenges of his office or ignorant of his briefs or hesitant to act appropriately or all of the aforementioned mentioned.

Gen. Monguno’s outing in the last four years has indicated, he never realized the imperative and import of national security as also protecting valuables which legitimizes and raises a platform for national unity, peace and progress.

In Gen. Monguno, President Buhari has missed a chance in treating some national crises with antidotes, severed from the cord of force or militarism. It has earned the President many distasteful sobriquets in public domain.

And a President who sticks to this calibre of NSA to eternity might as well channel all national resources in curbing extant threats to national security.

Adeyinka, a security analyst wrote from New Gate Estate, Ogbomosho