Why Insurgency Cannot Last In South East Unless ‘Imported’

Much has been said about the fact that the targeted killing of security agents especially the police and destruction of police stations and facilities allegedly by Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) which has vehemently denied involvement in these criminalities, mirrors the early stages of insurgency in Borno State and the North East. However, there are reasons to believe that insurgency of the likes of Boko Haram and Taliban in Afghanistan cannot last in the South East because there will not be enough oxygen to sustain it unless ‘imported’ into the region.

Note that IPOB may be the only ‘terrorist group’ in the world that has consistently denied involvement in terrorist activities even in its area of perceived influence. Usually terrorists like to glory in perpetrating terrorism, killing and maiming of their victims and celebrating it. As a matter of fact terrorists even claim terrorist acts that they were not involved. Like the Boko Haram that gleefully claimed responsibility for the shooting down of Nigerian Airforce fighter jet in combat operation in North East recently, which turned out to be a lie. I digress. Back to the main discourse.

If insurgency means an “active revolt or uprising” it therefore suggests that for it to last it must have a lot of oxygen to give it life. It seems to me that in South East it cannot get that oxygen unless there is a state actor involved or mercenaries are imported to destabilize the region.

The South East does not have the army of almajiris like the North East which has been the funnel through which the Boko Haram insurgency is supplied with recruits that could sustain long term insurgency. South East men unlike the North East do not marry many wives and thus do not procreate too many children to be used for insurgency under the guise of fighting for the creation of Biafran State. Children are precious in the zone and undocumented kids roaming about without purpose that could be recruited as insurgents are uncommon in this part of the country.

It should be noted that most of those perpetrating insurgency in the North East are the youths, who are mostly uneducated that constitute the bulk of the 13million out of school children in Nigeria. However, the youths of the South East are the most educated and best performing youths of Nigeria in academic performance. A cursory look at WAEC performance in Nigeria bears me witness.

In May/June 2015 West African Senior School Certificate Examination states in the South-East, again, lead in the performance chart of candidates who obtained credits in at least five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.

Abia State topped the chart with 33, 762 of its 52, 801 candidates. Anambra State came second with 28, 379 out of 46, 385 candidates. While Abia State scored 63.94 per cent, Anambra got 61.18 per cent out of 100 per cent.

In the 2014 May/June WASSCE rankings, Anambra State led the pack, while Abia State came second.

In the 2019 West African Examination Council ranking of performance by states showed that the top 10 performing states at the 2019 examination are Abia, Anambra, Edo, Rivers, Imo, Lagos, Bayelsa, Delta, Enugu, and Ebonyi. The top performing states were Abia and Anambra, and the rest of the South East was in the top ten brackets in a country with 36 states and FCT Abuja.

And if we are to go into admissions into federal universities there is no South East state that does not exceed its quota allocation with several candidates denied admission despite their high scoring records which would have given them admission were they from other parts of Nigeria. Such well-educated and ambitious youths cannot be easily persuaded to join insurgency party when their role models are Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg of Microsoft and Facebook fame respectively.

If South East is a country it can defend its territorial integrity especially with what it showed by fighting and sustaining the Civil War for three years against the world powers including Russia, USA, Britain, and China and then Cameroun and Nigeria. However, it is difficult for it to sustain insurgency as part of Nigeria, because it does not have large expanse of ungoverned territories like the North East where violent non-state actors like Boko Haram and bandits can hibernate and use as base to sustain insurgency against the Federal Government of Nigeria.

South East business leaders cannot support terrorism or sponsor it because they know that nothing kills investment like insecurity. The ‘aku ru uno’ mantra that has turned Nnewi, Aba and Onitsha into industrial zones in Nigeria is part of the lessons learnt from the Civil War and its aftermath. They cannot therefore risk all to set up their businesses in the Igbo heartland and sponsor IPOB or anybody to make the zone ungovernable. Of course IPOB has continued to insist that it is a non-violent organization and if it were not the rest of the world would have taken action against it, especially its Diaspora wing.

The South East does not have control over Nigeria’s security forces and thus do not have men at the borders of the country and compliant security agents that would allow the kind of sophisticated weapons being brandished by Boko Haram and bandits with which they perpetrate terrorism and kidnapping, including the total annihilation of communities and towns in North East and elsewhere and creating over 3million internally displaced persons (IDPs) across the North.

Given the fact that it is not possible for insurgency to thrive in the South East because there is no oxygen to give it life, it means that the Nigerian state can easily stop those perpetrating killings of security men in the zone, unless they want us to believe the famous quote of late Head of State General Sani Abacha on insurgency. Here I want to end with the quote as cited by former military President Ibrahim Babangida in his verified twitter handle @General_Ibrro on October 21, 2020 “Once again, I will like to quote Late Gen. Sani Abacha: ‘Any Insurgency that lasts more than 24 hours, a government official has a hand in it.’”