Commodore Kunle Olawunmi (rtd) is a former Commandant of the Defence Intelligence College and Head of Department, International Relations and Diplomacy, Chrisland University, Abeokuta. In this interview monitored on Arise Television, he speaks on the recent killing of soldiers in Okuama Community of Delta State and why intelligence is failing in Nigeria in the fight against insecurity, among other issues
With the killings of soldiers and police officers in Delta and Imo states, what happened to police and army community relations and how did the people lose confidence in the security agencies?
It is going to be a hard nut to crack because the things you see in recent times have been a long time coming. If you recall, in this same Niger Delta, military men were killed between 2005, 2006 and 2007. During President Olusegun Obasanjo’s time, you remembered the Odi episode and when late President Musa Yar’Adua also came, he was interested in stopping what was going on. We moved into the Niger Delta and it was discovered that most of the things happening were mostly political.
People who wanted to be governors and senators were using armed boys to create fear and to scare their opponents. And after the election in 2007, they abandoned the armed boys. When we went into Niger Delta, we discovered that most of the groups were affiliated to one politician or the other. The President called them to order and at the end of the day some of them stopped what they were doing but a majority of them refused. I don’t want to mention some names that are still in the corridors of power.
When the killing of soldiers was consistent and continuous in 2007, Yar’Adua called on military intelligence agencies together and gave them the directive to put the thing to an end. So, he called the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the Department of State Services (DSS), the Inspector General of Police and his Chief of Staff and this thing was stopped within a year of his giving us that order.
So, it is very disheartening for me particularly that this is happening again because of the amount of money the Federal Government spent, the amount of men and material we lost to put this to the point of the Amnesty Programme today. It is very painful to see that all those efforts have come to nothing. The politicians have started again and whatever you are seeing in the Niger Delta now is political.
What they are trying to do is to warm up for 2027 and at the end of the day, they are going to make the Federal Government fight on two fronts. If you open the flank in the Niger Delta now with what we are having in the North, the Federal Government is going to collapse basically.
What were those steps that were taken that you feel were most effective during your time that needed to be reintroduced?
I think the most important thing is the intelligence process that we give them. We noticed that the kinetic approach was not working and we were losing men to the militants all the time. The DSS that was tasked with that job then could not perform because they relied on just kinetic effort. I remember when they went to a burial to arrest one of the militant leaders; when they got there, they met about 500 fighters, who were protecting this guy. So, what we did was to apply soft intelligence like electronic intelligence to know where some of the key figures were and we were able to get them.
People like Ateke Tom, Soboma George and so on, and even Asari Dokubo were invited to Abuja and we spoke to them. And when we saw that they were also handicapped because they have leaders and politicians, we went after the top leader among them and once we took him out in Angola, everything collapsed.
Was the Amnesty Programme a suggestion that came in to be able to reduce the tension? Secondly, some people have said that the tension in the region may be related to resource control; what is the level of complicity by some of the security agencies in the region?
The Amnesty Programme was something I tell people sometimes that I personally designed, but what I have discovered is that it is not being implemented. It has been corrupted completely and that is not what we planned. The idea of amnesty even though it came from the Defence Intelligence Agency was guided by President Yar’Adua himself.
We had our options and Yar’Adua didn’t want bloodshed and that was why everybody is enjoying the amnesty because we had the capacity at the time to take people out either in Nigeria or outside Nigeria when they turned to DIA to focus on the issue. And when we had the option of taking somebody out in South Africa, Yar’Adua actually called us to order.
He said he doesn’t want bloodshed saying it is better for us to take people alive and get further intelligence. Actually, the idea of Amnesty was reinforced by Yar’Adua otherwise it was easy for us to just take people out anywhere they were.
On the issue of military complicity; of course, it has always been there and I will not defend the military on that. Even right now, the military gets involved in bunkering activities and that is not an issue because in every gathering of people, there must be one bad person. Whatever is going on in some of these areas, I know because I have not left Niger Delta since I left the military.
Fortunately also, I was a senior lecturer of Intelligence and Security Studies at Novena University for four years, so I trained some of these militants you are seeing. I was there for four years training all of them because they came in through the Amnesty Programme. So, I still know them and they talk to me and I know exactly what is going on there. That is why I’m trying to look at the big picture and say that it is more political than economic.
The Federal Government is always making the mistake of trying to appease the militants or terrorists. The guy who is being looked for right now has protection from one of the militant leaders working with the Federal Government. That guy was given part of the contract and he also could actually protect his people but when something went wrong somewhere, he felt aggrieved. So, he went there and did some of the things he did. He was not alone.
One major thing people talk about is the failure of intelligence; why is intelligence always failing and do you think state police can help solve the problem?
What people don’t understand about intelligence is that the practitioners themselves don’t have a problem because the intelligence circle is basic. The direction up to when you disseminate, they are basic process and it is like mathematics basically. The point is that once you disseminate to the director or whoever directs the intelligence process, your job is done. It is always politics and I can tell you many processes we have tried to do in the past that the politicians just killed.
Once you finish from the Defence Headquarters and you pass it to them, there is nothing you can do after that. We have had cases where we were supposed to go and pick somebody up in Brazil, once that government left and the next government decided that we should stand down. It is not that we fail most of the time, it is just because of the political class, first of all, are not as educated as they should and most of them are not worthy of those offices because they can’t even interpret technical data that you present to them. They don’t even have time.
I think we have a problem with the political class not with the intelligence failure. There are times we present actionable intelligence and they will tell us to stand down and you can’t do anything and something will happen later and it becomes so disastrous and injurious to the nation. An intelligence officer will not come out and say we told them and they didn’t do it. We will just keep quiet and watch them.
The intelligence failure and processes are something that has to do with the political class, not the practitioners. If you go to the DIA, DMI and Air Force, you will see a lot of information that will help in what we are trying to discuss but they are not going to do it.
On the way forward, I think we should look at the politicians in the Niger Delta, they are about to start again as they did in 2006 and 2007. And this is to provoke the army or the military to make mistakes and once they make mistakes, it is going to inflame that zone to the point that the Federal Government may have to fight on two fronts and that is not good for the government.
They shouldn’t look at what happened recently but try to project and say let us quickly call those politicians to order now. They are trying to cause another problem and destroy all the efforts of President Yar’Adua in bringing the Amnesty Programme to the Niger Delta area. Another way forward is that they should try to look at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) because that was one of the recommendations we made.
A lot of money has gone to the NDDC because my friend in the Niger Delta told me that they are not seeing most of the money sent to that region. The NDDC and the Ministry of Niger Delta and some of the agencies of government that are supposed to reduce the tension, hunger and deprivations in that area are corrupt to the point that they are no longer efficient. That is why this thing is coming up again. The people are feeling the same way they felt in 2004 and 2005, and we have gotten to that point again because nobody is actually checking the NDDC.
I have written a paper on the issue of state police but the way Nigeria is today, I will not recommend state police. It is desirable but we could have done it like 10 years ago but Nigeria is so fragile and polarised now that all the indices that actually led to the First World War are here. I think if we have state police now, with the issue of nationalism, it may facilitate and fast track the dissolution of this country.