Delta Community Killings And State Rascality

The major news on the national scene in the past one week or so has been about the brutal killing of 16 soldiers in Okuama community of Delta state. While the public expressed outrage at the slaughter, another piece of sad news, backed by video evidence, emerged on how houses in the community were being razed with the military being pointed to as the culprits allegedly on revenge mission.

But that soldiers were the suspect could not have come as a surprise given previous experiences in other parts of the country. In recent years, we have seen villages razed in the Orsu area.of Imo state following similar killing of army personnel. And years before then, there were the infamous Odi and Zaki-Ibiam episodes. These are besides several other less prominent cases in different parts of the country

So, it has become a sort of common-sense knowledge in our country that once a soldier is killed in a community, his colleagues will come on a reprisal mission. Little wonder, residents of the Delta community were said to have deserted the town in search of refuge elsewhere once the news of the killings emerged.

While the army, as usual, has denied the alleged involvement of its officers in the brutal reprisal, one’s sense of history tends to make the contrary seem more believable. In fact, from some of the comments I have read on social media, it appears Nigerians would have been surprised if such killing of military personnel had passed without soldiers coming to revenge. It is one anomaly we have learnt to live with, an abnormality normalised.

It is definitely heinous and insensitive to kill soldiers, policemen or any other law enforcement officers. However, it is also important to note that the perpetrators of these killings are nothing but criminals and daredevil lawbreakers.Therefore, their actions are nothing surprising, and the only thing we should worry about is the risk of our security agencies being overwhelmed by non-state actors. On the contrary, there is so much more to worry about when soldiers exhibit lawless aggression, turning the weapons purchased by the nation against her innocent citizens and their property. I am talking about a scenario where we can no longer distinguish between state actors operating withing the scaffolding of the law and criminals whose stock in trade is to break the law. I am referring to state rascality.

All state institutions are creations of the law and ipso facto operate under the law. Institutions for projection of legitimate violence, such as the military and police, are not an exception. If anything, the rule should apply more strictly to them given the grave consequences that ensue when they go lawless even for a fraction of a second. Odi, Zaki-Ibiam, Apo Mechanic Village killings, and several other instances are a clear example of the gravity of the tragedy that results whenever a state institution of violence goes lawless.

Whenever such incidents happen, I do see comments by people suggesting that this is a normal response from soldiers becauae they are trained to kill and so would not take any such affront without deadly retaliation. Former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Victor Malu, who was on saddle during the Odi massacre that cost, at least, 200 lives, made a similar suggestion. Writing in his 2014 autobiography, IN THE NAME OF VICTOR, the general wondered how people would have expected soldiers to stand and watch while militants fired at them from people’s houses.

But the ex-military chief seemed to conveniently forget that much as soldiers are trained to kill (whatever that means) they’re also trained to save and secure lives. Military training is dynamic, encompassing various dimensions including codorning off, search and rescue, reconnaissance etc., as operatives are trained on how best to attain the various objectives each operational situation may entail. It’s not about just shooting and killing.

When humans are trained to exhibit strength and combat skills, they are not being made to become wild animals. For example, in combat sports, one value emphasised in training is that one is under obligation not to abuse their strength and skill by employing them for needless aggression – such as fighting in the street. Thus, a key ingredient of professionalism in boxing, martial arts, and other combat sports is having sufficient discipline to always use one’s strength and skill responsibly.

I’m an ardent reader of military literature, and one of the things I have learnt is that restraint in use of weapons and combat skill is an integral part of military training. Therefore, Gen. Malu’s suggestion that the only reasonable response by his men who went into Odi – as per their training – was to open fire and blow up people’s houses sounds puzzling coming from a soldier of his professional height. Didn’t their training also tell them that in such situations where militants are using civilians as human shield that withdraw and restrategising to avoid slaughtering the same people they had come to prptect may just be the right response? But then it appeared the soldiers were at Odi for a revenge mission and not to protect the villagers.

Withdrawal or retreating is a legitimate strategy in military engagements. Gen. Malu’s appeal to the exigency of self-defence labours under the weight of the truth that shooting armless people is not the only way to avoid being killed by an enemy. War has rules of engagement. That is the essence of the principle known in political, moral and legal philosophy as JUS IN BELLO (justice in war).

But as what goes around comes around, it did not take more than two years, precisely in November 2001, for Gen. Malu (then retired) to be served the same poisoned chalice his men served to the people of Odi, as his community of Zaki-Ibiam, Benue state, became a victim of similar military reprisals that cost over 200 lives.

At the time of Odi, Zaki-Ibiam and Okuama incidents, it was clear Nigeria was not in any emergency situation to save the citizens from imminent massacre by any foreign or internal aggressors. The militants had their agenda, the villagers were not their target. A senator who was a military officer made some valid points while the Apo killings of 2013 were being debated in the Senate. He noted that by their training, soldiers should know when to use any of the various tools of operation available to them – codorning off, surveillance, shooting etc., as being a soldier is not all about shooting and kiliing. Every security situation requires a specific form of response suited to it. He argued that as a military expert, he was finding it difficult to place, in military terms, the decision of the soldiers that opened fire into the uncompleted buildings inhabited by squatters on the suspicion that they were members of Boko Haram. Instructively, this soldier-turmed-senator may have been vindicated when, months after, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a decision, following an inquest, indicting the army for unjustified killing and imposed a compensatory levy on it in favour of the victims.

In truth, we have seen this level of rascality from military, police, and other law enforcement officers in other countries including developed countries such as the USA. But the difference is always that in such countries, the relevant institutions of state have shown the resilience to instantly respond with appropriate measures including sanctioning the culprits. A recent popular example is the jailing for manslaughter of police officer, Derek Chauvin, who, in 2020, killed a black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck in a bid to restrain him. Compare this to Nigeria where even after years of intense public outcry against police brutality which climaxed with the famous #EndSARS protests of 2020, many killer police personnel are still walking the streets free. With all the allegations levelled against several known SARS personnel, including a well known butcher that held sway as the commander in Anambra, how many persons have been officially indicted and prosecuted?

While we think of the answer to the above question, let’s bear in mind that for as long as we let impunity prevail over accountability and rule of law in our country, we should always be ready for more Odi, Zaki-Ibiam, Orsu, and Okuama. There are no two ways about it.

The pre-eminence of rule of law in the United States is why their soldiers and law enforcement officers feel freer to perpetrate abuses only outside the country’s territory. We have two historically popular examples in Vietnam and Gautanamo Bay. This explains the reason the US government choose to detain its international terror suspects outside its territory, at Gautanamo Bay in far away Cuba. The strategic smartness of this decision became clear when, following a suit by some rights activists, a US court ruled that such detainees cannot bring up human rights actions before the US courts since the plaintiffs do not live within the US territory and are not US citizens. Such overseas detention helped the government to keep such suspects behind bars for indefinite periods without trial, something that would be unthinkable within the US territory.

Instructively, General Malu wrote that the blame for Odi massacre should go to the political authority that issued the orders to the military. He said the military was merely obeying orders and that it’s not in the place of soldiers to question the morality of orders given by political authorities. But the political authority of the day was neither ready to accept blame nor pursue justice, probably because of its complicity. This is what it seems like especially considering that a panel of inquiry was only instituted by President Obasanjo after so much public pressure, and that his government never released a white paper after the panel submitted its report. The suspicion – a very plausible one – was that the government was avoiding indicting itself.

Yes it was clear the government did not want to take responsibility. I recall how Prof. Jerry Gana, then information minister, while responding to the violence involving the Gani Adams-led O’odua People’s Congress (OPC) in 2000 in Lagos, warned against daring the government. With reference to Odi, he expressed frustration that since the last time the government employed the military against insurgents, public outcry had failed to cease. He was, in other words, implying that people’s complaints about the tragedy of Odi was misdirected; it should not be directed against the government or the military but against the insurgents who provoked the military action. It was a subtle warning to the OPC not to provoke similar response from the government, and a timely caution to the rest of us to direct the blame appropriately in case another tragic outcome occurred.

While the military’s own reluctance to take responsibility was equally clear, more curious was the inconsistent manner of its response to the public accusations. It started with a compete denial. I remember then army spokesman, Col. Emeka Onwuamaegbu (who later retired as a major general), speaking on Channels TV SUNRISE on a Saturday where he denied that the Nigerian army had sent any troops into Odi. He claimed that anybody that went into the community with tanks could not have been an officer of the country’s military as the army units stationed in the Niger Delta did not operate tanks due to the terrain of that area of the country. Later on, the army shifted from denying that it sent in troops to denying that civilians were killed in the operations. This is a similar pattern over the years. If, as Gen. Malu seemed to be suggesting, the army was right in how it conducted the Odi operation, why then was it denying that it conducted the operation in the first place?

Nonetheless, one truth discernable from Gen. Malu’s comments about who takes the blame for the Odi massacre is that disposition of the political authority is critical to how the military and other security agencies behave. Unlike other agencies of the state, the control exercised by the political authority over the military is built around strict command-and-obedience norms. This tends to deprive the military the sort of autonomy enjoyed by other state agencies and ensure that its conduct always more directly reflects the values and temperament of those in power. As admitted by President Obasanjo during the funeral of the 19 soldiers killed at Zaki-Ibiam, he had ordered the military “to move in”. As we were to see a few days later, this language betrayed the temperament that motivated the military action. Soldiers “moved in” with tanks and other advanced weapons and started shooting sporadically in the community when it should have been clear that the militants that killed the soldiers had surely withdrawn into their hideouts.

Neither strategy nor exigency can justify such brutal response seen in Odi, Zaki-Ibiam and other places. The criminals had completed their hit-and-run operation and disappeared into the thin air, what is then required was a clandestine operation to gather intelligence about their identity and location which would then lead to more precisely targeted police or military operation to neutralise them. This is exactly why we expend taxpayers’ money training, equipping and paying officers of the DSS as well as the intelligence units within the police and military. But Obasanjo would have none of this as evident in his response when President Jonathan suggested that the Odi operation was a mistake. In a release he made through his former aide, Femi Fani-Kayode, Obasanjo made it clear that the operations at Odi and Zaki-Ibiam were successful and necessary as they taught the militants the lesson that they cannot kill security agents without expecting a “terrible” response. TERRIBLE was the word. The old Ota farmer was evidently more interested in demonstrating the brutal power of the state than in protecting the citizens.

Our problem is weakness of rule of law. The monetary compensations awarded by courts to Odi and Zaki-Ibiam communities years after as well as that awarded to Apo shooting victims by the National Human Rights Commission could not have been enough. There is indeed need to ensure individual criminal responsibility. This is a surer way to elevate the rule of law. Without rule of law, state rascality is the inevitable outcome.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.