Man bites dog: Score one for the SSS

The State Security Service (SSS) is the successor agency to the old National Security Organization (NSO). Like its predecessor, the SSS has established a reputation for intimidating, suppressing and oppressing the public on behalf of whichever illegitimate, undemocratic or unconstitutional government happens to be in office at the time. Also like the NSO, the SSS has been a serial failure at its actual, constitutional function, that of using intelligence-gathering and investigation to forestall threats to public security.

As such, Nigerian citizens were surprised to discover earlier today that the SSS can actually do its job when it sets its mind to it. Working with other agencies, the SSS yesterday intercepted 13 containers laden with arms and ammunition including rocket launchers, catridges and hand grenades at the A P Moller Terminals in Apapa port.

No, the bust wasn't the result of an SSS investigation, or of SSS infiltration of the smuggling syndicates. The agency, according to the Vanguard report, was "acting on a tipoff".

I would like to thank whoever it was that gave them that tipoff. And I would like to thank the SSS for actually acting on the information.

This reminds me of an essay I wrote before the 2003 "Elections". I complained that there were too many armed groups in the country, and that the weaponry wielded by such groups was growing ever more sophisticated by the day. I wasn't talking strictly about "outlaw" organizations or the small private armies of various politicians; my fears applied just as much to the "vigilance" militia that were (at the time) sprouting up all over the country, supposedly to protect citizens from armed criminals in place of the ineffective police.

The "vigilante" groups were invariably mono-ethnic or mono-religious, some not extending beyond the local communities that could (and did) sometimes clash over land ownership and/or chieftaincy disputes. Among the larger outfits, the OPC and Hisbah clashed with resident citizens from other ethnicities or religions (if the OPC was set up to fight crime, why did it intervene in the Afonja vs Alimi chieftaincy dispute?). Then there were the militia that were mysteriously attached to particular politicians (including the Bakassi Boys and the groups that metamorphosed over time to become the so-called Niger Delta "militants).

Disturbingly, hundreds of citizens were executed without trial by these vigilantes, particularly by the Bakassi Boys and similar outfits in the Southeast. We Nigerians know all about the extra-judicial executions carried out by the Nigerian Police Force, and we are rightly suspicious of the excuses they routinely trot out after mysterious police-related killings. What is strange is so many commentators and citizens were will to believe the Bakassi Boys or OPC when they trotted out the same ridiculous excuses to explain away their own killings of citizens. As for the Hisbah, while I am a religious man, I tend to be suspicious of individuals and groups who insist their actions, whatever they do, and whoever the do it to, are on the instructions of the Almighty. Human beings are human beings, and every action of a human being is subject to question; it is blasphemous to try to shut down legitimate criticism by claiming anyone who disagrees with you is disagreeing with God. You are not God. You are man. And I can disagree with anything you do.

But I digress.

The point of my essay, written before 2003, was that we were on a path, and if we continued on that path, bad things would happen. I asked that people learn from history. I asked that they study every African country that collapsed into violent anarchy. It never happened all at once. It was always a slow, steady buildup. I asked them to look at what was happening in Nigeria, and to look at what had happened in other African countries, and see if they could not see the same disturbing signs that I did.

Just one commentator responded. He said I was a "nihilist". Which was amusing. People are funny that way. An ex-classmate once called me a "bleeding heart liberal". Another commentator responded to an essay of mine by calling me a "rabid neo-conservative". People who ignore what you wrote or said, and busy themselves with dismissing you by use of negative labels, are usually people with nothing of value to say.

There are still a lot of armed groups in Nigeria. There is still too much in the way of sophisticated weaponry floating around in the hands of these groups. As I type this, a mysterious group which may or may not be Boko Haram has been assassinating police officials in Borno, Bauchi and elsewhere in the Northeast. And just four weeks ago, Nigeria was shocked by the Independence Day bomb blasts; seriously, if someone had told you in 2003 that we would see terrorist-style car bombs at Eagle Square on Independence Day, would you have believe them?

Don't misunderstand me.

I am not predicting imminent doom.

My issue is there is a pattern, an environment that is slowly taking shape, and (as with most things) we seem to be ignoring it, in the hope that it will resolve itself and go away. Maybe we don't even see it around us.

Yesterday, the SSS (acting on a tipoff) came upon evidence that someone or some group is importing heavy weaponry. Whoever it is, this is likely not their first shipment. If Nigeria were a square, we'd have three porous land borders (subject to weapons smuggling among other ills) and one porous coastline (from which oil bunkerers have shipped crude from the Delta to ships waiting off the Nigerian coast for years, and we've all seen the pictures of heavily armed "militants" in the Delta).

It seems to me that at some point before 2003 (probably years before), and continuing till today, we've lost control of the amounts of weapons that get shipped illegally into Nigeria, and have watched unconcerned as the numbers of armed groups have multiplied. Today, our president insults us by talking about MEND as though there is a "good MEND" and a "bad MEND", when it is his job to ensure there is "no MEND".

Below is a pictorial sample of a few of the weapons surrendered to the government a year ago by the faction of MEND led by "General Boyloaf" (Victor Ben Ebikabowei). His was not the only faction of "MEND", and other factions did not participate in that particular amnesty. Even so, the BBC took one look at the quality (or lack thereof) of the "rusted" guns and "mildewed" camouflage turned in by "Boyloaf's" faction, and raised the question of whether they had just turned in their worn-out materiel, saving their still-functional arsenal in a hidden cache somewhere. There is no way to know; "Boyloaf" like most of the "militant" commanders, has connections to senior politicians in the Niger-Delta and Abuja.

Still, take a look at what kind of weapons people are smuggling into Nigeria.




PS: I do not own the copyright to these pictures. No infringement is intended.