Editor's note: The Nigerian
army recently launched Operation Python Dance in the South-East
geopolitical zone to ensure a crime-free Yuletide and free flow of
traffic in the zone during the festivities.
Ochereome Nnanna in this piece for the Vanguard explores the influence of the operation on the life of the Southerners.
The
Christmas season is here. In no other part of the country is the
Yuletide celebrated as much as it is in the South East and South-South
(the heart of Nigeria’s Christendom). It is a time when a chunk of the
Igbo Diaspora returns home for the annual communal and family reunions.
Even
though it has long been predicted that this year’s Christmas is going
to be hard on all Nigerians because of the economic recession
(depression, some economists now say), something special is in the
offing.
President Muhammadu Buhari, through
the Nigerian Army, has a special Christmas gift for the people of the
South East: a military operation code-named: “Operation Python Dance”.
According to a statement signed by Colonel
Sagir Musa, the Deputy Director, Army Public Relations, 82 Division of
the Nigerian Army Enugu, this operation has already started on 27th
November to end on 27th December, 2016.
According to Musa: “the
prevalent security issues such as armed robbery, kidnapping, abduction,
herdsmen-farmers clashes, communal clashes and violent secessionist
attacks among others will be targeted”.
The statement went on: “Above
all, an elaborate Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) Line of Operation
has been planned during the Exercise. Interestingly, Nigerian Army Corps
and Services would conduct activities such as medical outreach, repairs
of roads, schools and other infrastructure across the South East Region”.
Before
we examine the meaning and implications of this exercise, let us
reflect briefly on the army’s current operational engagements
nationwide, particularly the language in which they are coded. This will
offer insight into the psychological mindset of our nation’s elite
fighting forces: the Nigerian army.
If
you examine what the military says about it you will be confused as to
what they really have in mind. Is it true, as some Biafra separatist
groups have alleged, that it is being put together for a sinister
purpose?
Or is the Army making special
arrangements, out of its newfound love for the people of the South East,
to ensure their maximum protection during this period, including even
repairing roads and schools!? Let us take the second part first: that
the intentions are noble. It is being speculated in some quarters that
the federal government might release the Director of Radio Biafra and
leader of the Independent Peoples of Biafra, Mr Nnamdi Kanu, after one
year of holding him in detention against court orders.
This
school of thought reasons that the army is being put on standby to
ensure that crowds do not come out to welcome him and possibly cause a
disturbance of public peace this Yuletide. The truth, however, is that
no army can stop people who believe in Kanu from jubilating when he is
released. No army can stop the Shiites from jubilating when their
leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El Zakzaky is released.
Others
agree with the Army that the Operation is to keep citizens safe from
criminals. That is highly subject to debate. Why should the army be
mobilised against robbers, kidnappers and abductors? Is that not the job
of the Police, including their aggressive Mobile arm? What are the
local vigilantes, Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps ,NSCDC,
State Security Services, SSS, and other agencies doing?
Must
we throw the Army at every problem we have in this country? Is the
South East such a hotbed of crime that it requires the Army to conquer
it? The army is not trained to fight crime; it is trained to kill.
Those who smell sinister motives say that the inclusion of
“herdsmen-farmers clashes” is a mere red herring. What we have is not
“herdsmen-farmers clashes” in the South East and other parts of the
Middle Belt and South of Nigeria.
It is a
series of invasions by armed herdsmen killing, burning and displacing
local communities for their cattle to feed on their victims’ farms. The
Army should have been mobilised long ago against these invaders to
protect the defenceless indigenous peoples as the constitution binds
them to do, if the Police has been found wanting.
The federal government is more interested
in cattle rustlers than murderous herdsmen! The fear now is that the
Army is now on standby to sack any community that decides to defend
itself against these armed invaders in the South East.
The second fear is that in spite of the recent
reports by the Amnesty International (AI) that the Nigerian Army killed
150 unarmed Biafra agitators (which the Army has stridently denied) this
“Operation Python Dance” is meant to continue this alleged systematic
decimation of unarmed Igbo youth in the name of fighting “violent
terrorists”, as the Army put it. The SSS said it discovered over 50 dead
bodies in a mass grave in Abia State earlier this year. It was quick in
identifying five of those bodies as those of Fulani men allegedly
killed by “Biafra agitators”, without telling the world the identities
of the rest and who murdered them.
The armed
forces and our Federal agencies of state security have given the people
of the South East reason to doubt the sincerity of their intentions
towards them in the past eighteen months, by targeting unarmed agitators
for extermination while refusing to protect local communities from
invading armed herdsmen. Let us all keep our eyes open and see what will
be the outcome of “Operation Python Dance”.
If
this Operation results in a peaceful Christmas season devoid of
kidnapping and armed robberies; if it marks the end of the herdsmen
attacks in the South East, and if indeed the Army repairs the bad roads
and dilapidated schools, then the Army would have put its critics to
shame. In fact, it would be a rare special treatment for the people of
the zone which must be extended to all other sections of Nigeria. We are
watching how this python will dance
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