It was a great privilege to be invited as one of the three keynote speakers on a security management symposium and book launch under the theme ‘Sustaining the Gains of War Against Banditry and Insurrection’ held at Ibeto Hotels, Abuja on 4 May 2023.
Today the focus is on my own presentation entitled ‘Beyond the Rhetoric of Winning the War Against Insurgency, Terrorism and Banditry: The Task Ahead for the incoming Government’. The reason for this is not because of any special intellectual merit of my presentation but more because, with the inauguration of the President-elect less than three weeks away, the incoming government needs to be strongly reminded that the war against insurgency, terrorism and banditry remain unfinished.
Terrorism is an emotionally charged term with no consensus in the literature on its definition. Broadly speaking, it is the use of intentional violence and fear as tools to achieve political or ideological aims. The term can also be used in a political sense to de-legitimize any group. People also talk of state-sponsored terrorism.
How far has the Buhari government fared in the fight against Terrorism, Insurgency and Banditry? In his inaugural address in 2015, Buhari vowed to crush Boko Haram within three months and recover all the territories it had seized. While some gains were made in the recovery of lost territories held by Boko Haram, the emergence of a splinter group in 2016 known as Islamic State- West Africa , heralded a new dawn of terror.