When will African leaders stop banditry, end insecurity?

PARALLEL GOVERNMENTS are commonplace nowadays in Africa. Last week, an unsuccessful assault against the government of Mahamat Déby was carried out in N’djaména, capital of Chad. The attack was reportedly aimed at removing Mahamat from power. The attackers were said to be bandits who were so daring as to attack the presidential palace. Ibrahim Traoré, military leader of Burkina Faso, has survived many attempts to overthrow his government. The regional insecurity crisis is not limited to these two countries. It finds expression in all of Africa, putting regimes and citizens in jeopardy. 

The covert and overt flow of weapons across borders in the continent is worrisome. This alone has created scores of armed bandits and insurgents harassing people, kidnapping and killing thousands of people within countries. Their mastery of the geospatial landmarks is alarming. Their use of the triborder area between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, for example, has become a safe haven for murderous armed groups pestering and killing helpless people near the borders of the three countries. They seek refuge and protection as they quickly and very easily slip across borders after committing atrocities in any of the three contiguous countries. Mozambique has suffered untold hardships as armed Islamic terrorists have been troubling the northern part since 2017. In so doing, they have complicated the country’s situation, impacting so negatively and significantly on the economy and security of a country that is yet far from recovering from the deadline cyclones that are becoming annual occurrences in Mozambique since Cyclones Idai and Kenneth.

Whatever peace, tranquility or security African countries may be laying claims to at present could at best be described as veneered. Undercurrents are unsettling. While many African governments outwardly affirm control over their internal territorial security, it remains to be seen if these translate to security in reality. Mineral-rich countries are particularly vulnerable, especially where extraction activities involve large numbers of artisanal operators. Among the many examples cited by those who posit that external influence of the Western countries have much to do with the periodic and sometimes sustained armed attacks is the Ambazonian war in Southwestern Cameroon. This has been attributed to France, allegedly based on its interest in the petroleum discovery in that region. In other words, France may not find it easy in that anglophone region of Cameroon if the area remains peaceful.

Meanwhile, the mineral-rich Eastern region of the DR Congo has been constantly in turmoil for a while now and the crisis does not seem ready to go away anytime soon. Eritrea has not known total peace for a long while. After a truce with Ethiopia, following the settling of their simmering border conflict, young Eritreans have been resisting the often indefinite mandatory national military service. Many were recruited to fight in support of Ethiopia against Tigray People Liberation Force (TPLF) in the two year civil war between TPLF and Ethiopian government from November 2020 and November 2022. To escape the forceful draft, many young men often migrate without their family’s approval, although families are aware that the country cannot offer their children a future.

Ethiopia too may have unwittingly created an avenue for long standing insecurity by the war it fought and failed to win in 2020 to 2022. A general trend now seems apparent in Africa, one in which young and energetic men earlier enlisted, used in civil wars and disbanded end up becoming tools in the hands of perpetrators of insecurity as many of them retain the ammunition in their hands after the crises that required their services are over, either completely or partly. For want of productive activities, these young men turn their arms against the unarmed populace as they terrorise the people and extort them. Prominent examples abound in Somalia where power vacuum has made the spread and perpetuation of armed terrorists easy. 

A lot of arms and ammunition usually get into the hands of wrong actors, thus complicating the problem of tracking and catching illegitimate keepers and users. Many heads of government equip rag-tag groups with subtle or sometimes direct support while pursuing parochial goals. What became the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan today sprang up from an armed group initially known as the Janjaweed. To give it legitimacy, Omar al-Bashir, the maximum ruler, christened it RSF and appointed leaders who have subsequently driven it to becoming a paramilitary rival to the country’s main military forces. We are aware that the official recognition given to RSF has led to the war currently ravaging Sudan, with no end in plain sight.

By the time the dust settles over the crisis in eastern DR Congo, a lot of arms would have been smuggled and sequestered away into private hands. In essence, the war could continue by any other means as over 10 separate armed groups reportedly operate within the troubled area, with M23 being about the most brutal of them. The spillover effects to Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda could be enormous.

Crisis in the Sahel has brought three countries together on common grounds. Their recently formed Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) or AES in French, seems likely to endure. The alliance formed by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger rests largely on regional security. Economic issues could begin to feature with time. But the recent decision of Chad to jettison its military pact with France could very well signal Chad’s shift westwards. In a matter of time, Chad could join the ASS (AES).  The anticipated strength in unity could give Chad a strong shoulder to lean on if it joins the Sahel alliance. But the challenge of fighting off bandits and insurgents remains enormous, especially for countries bordered by many neighbours. 

Northern Nigeria and northern Cameroon share part of the burden of insecurity. Escapees from Niger and Chad encounter little or no resistance while invading Nigeria. Their operations in Nigeria are even mind boggling. It seems like privileged people in power have found a cash cow in the security budget and seem keen on keeping the status quo. The bewildered look on the face of Nigeria’s Senate president, Godswill Akpabio on the need for legislative oversight functions tells a story. It is one of those making fortunes out of the misfortune of insecurity. The Senate president, asking for a voice vote in support of coherence in the alignments of the armed forces budgets, found to his dismay that the naysayers sounded higher, meaning that they do not want the armed forces’ accounts scrutinised by the national assembly.

Without deliberate, determined, focused and well articulated policy on bandits, well received and agreed upon as transborder policy, the crisis may even fester rather than getting arrested. Because a lot of banditry and insurgencies take place in rural and suburban areas, the rural and suburban livelihoods and economies could be permanently jeopardised. More and more people will abandon rural settlements and the rural areas will continue to diminish in relevance, offering the bandits more incentives to assemble, regroup and launch deadly attacks. These pose more and more risks for governments and ordinary people in various parts of Africa. The onus is therefore on people to demand responsibility, commitment and determination from the official authorities, to improve the security architecture of their countries and share intelligence information with neighbouring countries for common good. No country can afford to operate in isolation. ECOWAS, the way it is now, has to recognise the AES and work with it on common security issues. It is upsetting that the problem is growing rather than abating. It is not good for the external image of Africa. Something urgent needs to be done to curb the bandits and their cohorts.

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