Focus on the use of soldiers to contain civil unrest

When religious and ethnic violence erupted last year in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna, claiming more than 2,000 lives, it took the intervention of soldiers to restore order. A heavy military presence was maintained on the city’s streets as tension lingered over plans by Governor Ahmed Makarfi to introduce Islamic or Sharia law in a state with about as many Muslims as non-Muslims. In recent months the Nigerian authorities drastically reduced the number of soldiers on Kaduna's streets. Instead contingents of what has been officially termed a "Strike Force" have been created and stationed in strategic parts of the city for rapid deployment in times of crisis. It was one of these contingents that went into action on 12 November following reports that a Muslim preacher addressing a crowd in the Kaduna suburb of Kawo was making inflammatory statements likely to lead to a breakdown of law and order. However, the intervention became a tragedy when an apparently drunk soldier suddenly opened fire, killing six people in the crowd. This has raised questions once more about the desirability of using soldiers to contain civil unrest, and not just in Kaduna. Troops have increasingly been deployed to perform police duties in various parts of the country since President Olusegun Obasanjo's election in 1999 ended more than 15 years of military rule. Troops have so far been used to quell ethnic, religious and communal disturbances in 13 of Nigeria’s 36 states. These include ethnic clashes in the oil town of Warri in the southern state of Delta; violent confrontations in Lagos between a local militia known as the Oodua People’s Congress and northerners; the disruption of oil operations and other acts of violence by youths in the Niger Delta in the southeast; and the secessionist activities of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra in the southeastern state of Imo. Troops have also been used to quell ethnic and communal fighting in Benue, Taraba and Nasarawa states in the centre as well as religious clashes in the northern states of Plateau, Bauchi and Kano, in addition to Kaduna. "The deployment of soldiers is indeed an acknowledgement that the overstretched police force cannot cope with Nigeria’s numerous law and order problems," Usman Adamu, a Kaduna-based journalist, told IRIN. "But very often they use excessive violence. And the question is when are they going to return to their traditional duties and when will the police be properly equipped to do the job?" Government officials and analysts blame the long years of military rule for the gross neglect which left the police force deficient. They also blame military misrule for creating the bottled-up resentment among many groups in Nigeria that has translated into communal, ethnic and religious violence in just over two years of civilian rule. "I find it ironical that the same soldiers are being depended upon to enforce law and order," Adamu said. There is widespread concern that in a number of cases soldiers have made a poor job of law enforcement, creating very embarrassing situations for Obasanjo’s government. When in November 1999, the government sent troops to the southeastern town of Odi after a group of Niger Delta militants had killed 12 policemen, the soldiers did not hunt down the culprits but pounded the town with artillery and grenade launchers, destroying all its buildings. Scores of people were killed and thousands left homeless. There was a replay of the Odi situation in October 2001 in Benue State where, following clashes between the Tiv and Jukun communities, 19 soldiers from a contingent sent to quell the unrest were ambushed and killed by a Tiv militia. An angry President Obasanjo ordered the security agencies to get those responsible. What followed was the brutal sacking of several Tiv villages, during which all buildings were razed and more than 200 unarmed villagers massacred. Despite the uproar generated both in Nigeria and abroad by the action of the soldiers, the government defended them, saying they had acted in self-defence. Obasanjo, a retired general and former military ruler himself, told a national radio programme that those who killed the soldiers had "invited disaster" on their communities since soldiers are trained to kill. "If they(soldiers) are injected into such (peacekeeping) operations and things go wrong, you blame them for nothing. That is not their training,” he said. But many analysts think the growing use of troops and the resulting excesses are as much a threat to Nigeria’s new democracy as the widespread civil disturbances to which they are a reaction. There is concern that soldiers who should have remained in the barracks are now being called out and given internal security tasks in a manner that might both embolden ambitious military elements and provide them with a pretext to make a grab for power. "Mistakes are being made in the way the military is being used instead of the police to quell civil crises," Ukoha Ukiwo of the Centre for Advanced Social Science in the southern city of Port Harcourt told IRIN. "There’s indeed the prospect of the return of the military if the current trend continues." While agreeing that soldiers should not be used for internal security assignments, Professor Mike Kwanashie of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in Kaduna State, does not foresee dire consequences for democracy from their current deployment to contain civil unrest. "The military has so discredited itself in this country that, honestly, I don’t see any justifiable pretext for their return to power," Kwanashie told IRIN. "I don’t think Nigerians will easily accept the military, no matter the pretext."