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General News of Saturday, 6 March 2021

Source: www.sunnewsonline.com

Insecurity: Enough is enough, every Nigerian should carry arms - Prof Sagay explodes

Professor Itse Sagay Professor Itse Sagay

One man, one gun; one woman, one rifle. The above, Professor Itse Sagay appears to be saying, might be the panacea to Nigeria’s seemingly untameable security crisis, as insurgents, bandits and other criminals continue to seize the country by the jugular.

Given the worsening insecurity situation in the country, the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Prof. Itse Sagay has called on the President, the National Assembly and all concerned authorities to empower every Nigerian to carry arms. It will help to make for a balance of terror, he insists, in the current situation whereby the country is gradually sliding into a Hobbesian state where life is brutish and where might is right, no thanks to the activities of kidnappers, bandits, terrorists and herdsmen.

“I have made this suggestion before,” the Professor of Law told Vincent Kalu. “We should all be armed. Communities should be armed. Individuals should be armed so that anybody coming to attack you will know that he too has no chance of surviving.”

In the interview, he also called on the government to force Sheikh Ahmed Gumi to lead security agencies to the abode of the bandits in the forest. He expressed his opinions on other burning national issues.

Excerpts:

Nigeria is being stretched to a breaking point. What gave rise to this?

The country is really stretched. I have never seen this country like this before, where at every corner, there is somebody committing one violent crime or the other. Although it is more in the North, the South is not safe. In the Southwest now, you can’t travel by road because people will jump out of the forest and stop and then abduct you. I have never seen a thing like this; really the Federal Government ought not just to declare a state of emergency. It should have a major strategy session on this.

A community would be sleeping, and then some people would just come killing them. I have made this suggestion before: we should all be armed so that anybody coming to attack you will know that he too has no chance of surviving. Communities should be armed; individuals should be armed. That is a balance of terror. For example, if as a farmer, a village in the Southwest is under the threat of Fulani herdsmen who one governor has said were entitled to wield AK-47 rifles which they carry about, then I need to carry mine so that when they come to my farm, we confront each other. He, with gun, and, I with gun, then he will know that it is dangerous to come to my farm. At that stage, when there is a certainty that the man whom he is sent to attack can resist and use equal force, you will see that this thing will die down.

I always wonder when the youths cry out in various places, including my own Delta and other areas in the East and West that the Fulani herdsmen have overtaken our villages, our farms. Why can’t those youths gather together and seek arms and fight back? People need to fight back with arms and not with bare hands. The federal government should think of loosening the rules governing armsbearing and allow persons and communities that are under attack to have arms to defend themselves.

Like in America, everybody has arms; if you are going to raid somebody’s house, you know that it is a big risk. Or, if it is a farmer and he is armed, you know it is a big risk going to kill him, to destroy his crops, to rape his wife or bring your cows to come and eat all that he has spent a whole year planting, probably with bank facility, destroy everything so that he has nothing to eat because you have cows? No, everybody is entitled to defence.

When Ondo governor, asked the herdsmen to leave Ondo forests, it generated much tension. Some Northerners said the governor was wrong as Nigeria’s constitution guarantees freedom of movement in which anybody can stay where he or she likes, but the governor said it doesn’t mean you coming to destroy my investments. What is the legal interpretation?

There are so many freedoms and many legal entitlements. Your freedom of association or freedom of movement is subject to other rules too. Like this question of forest reservations, the law allows you to have reservations. The whole idea is to preserve certain species from being destroyed. The government can make a law that nobody should live in such area so that they would not begin to cut down such trees or kill the animals. There is nothing like unchanneled freedom of movement. You can’t say that because you have freedom of movement, you just pack all your things into my sitting room and say: ‘I have come; I have freedom of movement under the Nigeria Constitution.’ What type of freedom is that? Your freedom ends where my right begins. So the freedom of movement ends where such laws that control reservations begin. So there is no such unchanneled freedom, otherwise, there will be chaos.

Since banditry started, there is the impression that the military and security agencies don’t know where these bandits are. But we have seen Sheikh Gumi walk into their abode for negotiations. Some argue that this seems to be a contradiction. What is your view?

It is really a contradiction. Gumi should be made to tell the security organisations where these people are so that operatives can organise themselves and wipe them out wherever they are. He should be made to tell them. To create a situation in which the impression is given that bandits and kidnappers are legitimate operators with whom we should be negotiating destroys society. What this thing says is that there is no boundary to misconduct: it means that any misconduct you can carry out becomes legitimized. That is the impression. In such a case, life becomes brutish and nasty because there is no law; there is a right, which is just the right to carry arms. Once you can use your arms and effectively do something dastardly, then you are recognised and you can carry on doing it. It is just not acceptable.

Sheikh Gumi canvassed amnesty for the bandits in the mould of the kind granted Niger Delta militants, as a way of ensuring peace. Do you support his proposition?

It is a totally different thing. The Niger Delta militants were not killing people. Yes, they did some kidnapping. But they didn’t go to school to kidnap schoolchildren. They targeted oil companies and those expatriates working for oil companies. It is not as if I support it, but it is not the same thing. Those people were engaged in political and economic protest. They were not just engaged in pure criminality to make gain out of evil.

People are asking: why is it difficult to declare the herdsmen and the bandits terrorist groups?

I don’t know. If they are not stopped now, they will bring this country down. Already, the economy is being affected. If where you are doesn’t have an airport, the elite will not go there; there will be no business there. Those in the elite group now travel by air; you can’t take the risk of going by road and enjoy the countryside. I have lawyers in this firm. Every time they have to go by road to anywhere, our hearts are in our mouths as to whether they would come back. That is not an economic way of surviving and living. So the roads will end up being empty because you have these terrorists. There is no other thing to call them. There had been instances where they hijacked buses, gathered all the people, trekked with them miles into the forest, raped the women, starved everybody almost to death and demanded money from relatives. And, if the money did not come or come early enough, they killed the people. For those who are a bit old and cannot walk fast enough into the bush, they kill them. That is totally unacceptable and I really want the Federal Government to deal with this thing in a very drastic manner so that they will know that what they are doing is intolerable.

Are you not afraid of the rising cases of ethnic warlords? In the East, you have Nnamdi Kanu; in the West, you have Sunday Igboho; in the Northeast, there is Shekau, leader of Boko Haram; in the Northwest, the bandits have a leader, likewise the herdsmen, they have a leader?

It is disturbing. I will make an excuse for Sunday Igboho; he seems to try to correct the situation. He is rising on behalf of his people to put down a situation in which they are being oppressed by marauders, robbers and bandits. He is not legitimately empowered to do so, but where those who are empowered to take up such responsibility are not doing anything. There is a vacuum which such people rise up to and try to bring justice which those empowered to do so are not doing. So, I don’t classify Igboho as one of those you are talking about.

Yes, we have a problem in this country. Northeast, we have Boko Haram; Northwest, we have bandits and in the South and Middle Belt, you have herdsmen. So there is no peace; the whole country is boiling. The security agencies – the army, the police, the DSS, the Civil Defence Corps, if they need more recruitment into the forces, let it be done. But this thing has to be stamped out. Otherwise, Nigeria will be destroyed. I see its imminent break-up, especially by the time you have people roaming all over the places. Look at what is happening now: those who supply foods and meat from the North are saying they are not coming to the South because something happened to some of their people.

They are not looking at this thing properly. The South didn’t plan anything against anybody except actions individuals might have been taken against those who were terrorizing them. But for such a situation to arise shows that the level of insecurity in the country is so bad that we are unconsciously creating a breach between the North and the South. If you say you won’t allow food that you sell for money (it is not as if it is a gift to anybody) to other parts of the country. Then that part will say okay, whatever that we have that goes to your own side will not go. Then very soon we are going to have confrontations. It is a very dangerous situation.