Defending Our Villages
Nigeria has slowly regressed to a pre-colonial era where tribes raid other tribes in order to gain land or take slaves or simply to subjugate them. During this period, raiding parties attacked villages and cities across the area now called Nigeria without let. Villages were ransacked, captives taken into slavery or sacrificed, houses burnt and farms destroyed at will. Every tribe was guilty of raiding other tribes and also raiding their own tribesmen. The coming of British colonialists imposed a pax Britannia that squelched the most egregious raiding. It never fully stopped though.
The current environment has brought back those days of warriors going out to bring slaves, capture territory, and subjugate others. It is not in the remit of this paper to find the reasons for this descent into anarchy. We are only interested in exploring options for protecting our towns and villages from marauders.
With the failure or connivance of the security system left behind by the British to replace the pax Britannia with a pax Nigeriana, various states, regions and local governments have been evolving strategies to defend themselves, their people and their territories against known and unknown gunmen. Some have adopted the pacification approach and opted to be paying tribute in cash and kind to the raiders. The FG has advised communities to give up their territories in exchange for peace. Others have opted to setup state backed vigilantes, civilian JTF or ethnic militias. Interestingly, neither of these approaches have worked. Either the marauders are just too bold thirsty to be pacified or the territory is not being given up easily or the ethnic militias are not effective.
We are interested in the last case since there are always loud cries for ethnic militias and vigilantes to be created. Will an ethnic vigilante or militia as being presently setup be able to defend their territories — that is prevent raiders from causing havoc and if so at what price in the long term and in the short term. Vigilantes and militias are currently being asked to do the job of both police and military units. To be effective in the short and long term, they need t be properly trained, equipped, remunerated and led. One estimate puts the cost of putting together an effective force of 100 of such personnel to $10-$15m to setup and a recurring annual cost of $5-$10m. A look at the police budget of a small county in the US easily bears this out. Enugu State is reported to have recruited 100 forest guards in her 17 local governments. Even though the budget for their maintenance and equipment is a state secret, the budget of the entire state government is less than $1bn a year compared to the $100m+ needed to properly train and equip such a force. Similar statistics accounts for the ineffectiveness of existing security services and the various ethnic militias being setup. An effective police/military force is beyond the budget of any state in Nigeria currently. So we end up mostly with underpaid thugs, armed and let loose. In many cases, they will end up aggravating tense situations or running away in the face of onslaught of any raiding party.
If these raids have become a permanent feature of our country , we need to rethink the security strategy beyond setting up Amotekun and Ebubeagu or civilian JTF. These will not be able to protect all our forests and villages. We have to go back to the strategies the ancient Chinese used to ward off Mongol raiders and what the Europeans used to defend against the Viking raiding parties.
We need to think about fortifications and communications. Many ancient cities and villages were protected by various fortifications — moats, walls. Ancient Benin was protected by a wall and a moat. The Chinese built a 5000km wall with fortifications. The walls of Jericho are spoken about in the Bible. The Europeans built forts and towers from which defensive action can be taken to ward off raiders while reducing the carnage amongst her citizens in the event of a raid. The Chinese created signal towers on the great wall whose job was to watch out for raiders and raise alarm.
In this day and age, fortifications and communications is what needs to be deployed to allow us use lightly armed and even volunteer watchmen to deter and defend against raiders.Sentry towers with solar panels at reasonable height, with communication equipment, cameras, alarms and search lights can be manned by as few as 1 person or can even be totally automated.
These towers strategically placed will be able to remove the elements of surprise as well as provide defenders with an elevated and protected fighting position. Alarms can be sent to citizens or even used as deterrent. Reports and camera feeds can go directly to central control monitors where elite units can be despatched from. Fully equipped sentry towers can be built for less than N5m each and provide surveillance over an area of more than one square mile. Each village will need more than one obviously but each village can construct one with available local resources.
Our argument is that no state has the resources to maintain a properly equipped military force of such size as to be vigilant at all times to be able to protect our towns and villages from raiders. We need to invest more in fortifications and communications as the ancient Chinese and Europeans did. We can do that effectively with available resources and expertise.
