Rekpene Bassey
Ancient Greek mythology tells the story of the Lernaean Hydra, the terrifying swamp monster confronted by Hercules in the second of his Twelve Labours. The beast possessed nine venomous heads.
Every time Hercules severed one, two more sprang forth in its place and one of the heads was immortal.
Victory came only when Hercules realised that brute force alone was futile. He cauterised each severed neck with fire, preventing regeneration, before burying the immortal head beneath an enormous rock.
Nigeria’s security crisis increasingly resembles that mythical monster.
For decades, successive governments have concentrated on cutting off the visible heads of insecurity. Military offensives degrade insurgent camps.
Bandit leaders are neutralised. Kidnap gangs are dispersed. Yet every apparent victory seems to generate fresh manifestations of violence elsewhere.
Terrorism mutates into banditry. Banditry evolves into mass kidnapping. Farmer-herder clashes merge with organised criminality.
Separatist violence intersects with transnational arms trafficking. Like the Hydra, the monster continually regenerates.
The visible heads are many: leadership deficits; endemic corruption; youth unemployment; poverty; porous borders; the proliferation of small arms and light weapons; illegal mining; environmental degradation; communal conflicts; ideological radicalisation; weak policing; judicial delays; and vast ungoverned forests stretching across large parts of the federation.
These are formidable threats. Yet they are symptoms as much as they are causes. The immortal head: the one that continues to regenerate every other manifestation of insecurity is political insecurity.
Nigeria’s public discourse frequently speaks of food security, economic security, environmental security, energy security, homeland security and even cyber security.
Curiously absent is a sustained conversation about political security: the integrity of the political process itself and its capacity to produce legitimate authority, accountable leadership and the monopoly of lawful force.
This omission is costly.
Classical philosophy understood long ago what modern states often forget.
Aristotle argued that politics is the “master science” because every other institution ultimately derives its purpose and direction from the state. When politics becomes corrupted, every institution beneath it gradually follows.
Likewise, Plato warned in The Republic that the decay of the state begins not with the collapse of armies but with the corruption of governance and public virtue.
Nigeria offers painful illustrations. Competition for political power has too often encouraged the mobilisation of armed groups for electoral purposes.
Across different regions and political parties over several decades, politicians have been accused of recruiting, financing or protecting violent actors to intimidate opponents and influence elections.
Many of these groups, once empowered, later outlived their political sponsors and evolved into sophisticated criminal enterprises.
Several political figures have, at different times, publicly alleged that armed foreign pastoralists or mercenaries were brought into Nigeria during election cycles; as was the case in 2014 when hordes of Fulani mercenaries were allegedly brought in from elsewhere for the 2015 general elections.
Such claims made by some members of the political class who are alive and well within the country and in government, have fuelled widespread public concern and demand thorough and thorough, transparent investigation.
If credible evidence exists, the rule of law demands that those responsible, regardless of status or political affiliation, be investigated and prosecuted. Failure to do so breeds impunity and deepens public distrust in state institutions.
The broader point is unmistakable: violence becomes self-sustaining when politics rewards rather than punishes those who deploy it.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s insecurity has become staggeringly expensive. Independent estimates suggest that conflict and criminality cost the country billions of dollars annually through lost agricultural production, reduced foreign investment, destruction of infrastructure, disrupted education, ransom payments and the enormous fiscal burden of sustained military operations.
Millions of Nigerians remain internally displaced by insurgency and communal violence, while large swathes of farmland have become inaccessible because of fear of attack.
The circulation of illicit weapons compounds the crisis.
Regional security assessments continue to warn that hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of illicit small arms remain in circulation across West Africa, with Nigeria accounting for a substantial share. Every weapon that escapes state control extends the lifespan of the Hydra.
However hardware alone cannot solve a problem whose roots are political. No nation has ever permanently defeated insecurity while tolerating electoral violence, official corruption, selective justice and weak institutions.
Needless to say military victories are temporary where governance failures endure. Security operations can suppress violence. Only political legitimacy can prevent its return.
Back in time the Roman statesman Cicero observed that the safety of the people shall be the supreme law. That principle demands more than kinetic operations, deploying soldiers.
It requires building institutions that citizens trust, ensuring that no individual stands above the law, insulating security agencies from partisan manipulation, reforming electoral processes, strengthening local governance, protecting witnesses, prosecuting sponsors of violence and creating economic opportunities that make recruitment into criminal networks less attractive.
The aforesaid is the alternative approach. It is like a security engineering software. It is integral to the non kinetic doctrine.
A doctrine that has been tried and tested positively previously in Nigeria and elsewhere.
Hercules did not defeat the Hydra by endlessly cutting off heads.
He defeated it by destroying the source from which those heads regenerated.
Nigeria continues to fight the visible monsters: terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and armed militias. Necessary as those battles are, they remain incomplete.
Until the nation confronts the immortal political head beneath the rock: the incentives, impunity and governance failures that continually reproduce violence, the Hydra will simply grow new heads.
The greatest threat to Nigeria’s security is no longer merely the men who carry guns.
It is the politics that too often gives them reason, protection or opportunity to do so, and thereby feed insecurity in the country.
Bassey is the Pesident of the African Council on Narcotics and a Security Specialist.
