SBM Intelligence
It is a New Year but with an intractable conflict in the Northwest, police equipment vanishing into thin air, a land tussle with outsize ramifications, yet another arbitrary tax, a ‘victory’ for the government that is anything but and the biometric data of millions in the up for grabs section, it is not clear that Nigeria and an increasingly problematic Mali made any new resolutions to change for the better
Deadly business
The Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation (OAuGF) says about 178,459 different types of arms and ammunition went missing from the Nigeria Police armoury in 2019, without any trace or formal report on their whereabouts. Of the figure, 88,078 were AK-47 rifles and 3,907 assorted rifles and pistols from different formations nationwide. These could not be accounted for as of January 2020. A Thisday report cites details contained on pages 383 to 391 of the Auditor General for the Federation’s annual report on non-compliance, internal control weaknesses issues in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government of Nigeria for the year ended 31 December 2019, which was dated 15 September and submitted to the National Assembly. The report accused the Nigeria Police headquarters of lacking comprehensive details of unserviceable weapons, lamenting that such could fall into unauthorised hands for illegal use. The OAuGF report also queried the police hierarchy for the award of contracts without evidence of project execution. It revealed that 10 contracts worth ₦1,136,715,200.00 were awarded to a single proprietor in the name of different companies with details of the three companies as the same. “The three companies did not disclose their relationship in accordance with the fundamental principles of procurement as required by extant regulations,” the report stated.
An important context needs to be put around this. In 2020, an SBM report on small arms estimated the number of small arms in the hands of the military at 600,000. While we could not provide estimates for police arms, it is unlikely that the police are in possession of more arms than the military. The OAuGF’s report, therefore, suggests that the equivalent of nearly one-third of the Nigerian military’s small arms cache is unaccounted for by the Nigeria Police Force. There are several possible reasons to explain the disappearance of the weapons mentioned in the Auditor-General’s indictment of the police. Lone gunman or gang coordinated attacks on police officers leading to the theft of weapons are a very common occurrence in the country, something we warned about in at least two reports. These weapons are used in other crimes such as armed robbery and gang wars. Weapons theft is seldom reported or logged appropriately, further skewing the numbers. Secondly, the police have been accused of selling arms to some criminal groups in the past. The direct effect of such sales is that they leave the force under-resourced particularly as many police stations which apply for weapons often do not have their requests fully met. The implication: a direct threat to the lives of police officers. In September 2018, pirates raided the Aboh police post in Delta State, killing no less than three officers and carting away the armoury, leaving behind only three very old and barely functional rifles. The Aboh police station which serves at least 74 riverine communities in Ndokwa East LGA had only 22 officers who shared the remaining three rifles, and despite promises of improvement by successive commissioners of police, the situation remains the same. This example is, of course, small in the grand scale of the scale of national small arms circulation which we estimated at six million in that 2020 report. It is, however, instructive and a serious indictment on the police hierarchy and the usual voices that talk about arms controls in the force. Having highlighted the above, the state of security management in 2020s Nigeria is such that we are not holding our breath that anyone will be held accountable for this.
A pyrrhic victory
President Buhari has approved the lifting of the suspension on the Twitter operations in Nigeria. The lifting came into effect at midnight according to Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). In June 2021, the FG announced the indefinite suspension of Twitter’s operation after the platform deleted tweets made by the president, who had threatened to treat members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the “language they understand”. It had attributed the suspension to “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”. The government said it reached an amicable resolution with Twitter on various terms and conditions given to the micro-blogging platform including: establishing a legal entity in Nigeria during Q1 2022; appointing a designated country representative to interface with Nigerian authorities; complying with applicable tax obligations on its operations under Nigerian law; enrolling Nigeria in its Partner Support and Law Enforcement Portals to provide a direct channel for government officials and Twitter staff to manage prohibited content that violates the platform’s community rules.
Expectedly, the Federal Government is claiming this as a victory for it, particularly in terms of mandating Twitter to register as a legal entity in Nigeria which it says will allow Nigeria to benefit from tax revenue from the global microblogging site. While Twitter does not report revenue from Nigeria or even Africa – it only reports from the United States, Japan and the Rest of the World – it is very likely that Nigeria is more of a cost centre than a profit centre for it. This is due to the fact that it is only the sixth most used social media app in Nigeria, and it generates far less advertising revenue compared to bigger competitors Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. As such, the expected taxation revenue will be negligible in the grand scheme of things. However, it still represents a sentimental and propaganda victory for the Federal Government. In adding Nigeria to its Partner Support and Law Enforcement Portals (PSP), it provides the government with a channel to expedite emerging issues directly to Twitter; although the agreement requires the government to provide legal justification for content they flag and Twitter still reserves the right to take action on it. When Nigeria’s newfound PSP admission is set within the context of the participation of a myriad of national and subnational governments, none of which banned or arbitrarily restricted access to the website, the victory lap being made by administration officials rings hollow. What does stick out is how digital freedoms were threatened by Abuja’s actions through a ban on a major space for critical discourse without a robust public discourse and its impact on civic engagement. The ban also cost Nigerian businesses, particularly small and medium enterprises, huge revenues, and denied the government and its agencies a vibrant channel of engagement with citizens. It is not lost on Nigerian netizens that in a penultimate election year where political engagement will ascend to stratospheric proportions, the ban became more than an inconvenience for political actors who are gearing up to make their sales pitch to voters. Already, many observers have noted an abnormal spike in new Twitter accounts following prominent critical voices en masse, and raising fears that the tone of conversation on the platform will be particularly toxic as the campaign season kicks into gear. Finally, the ban represented yet another feather in what is now a well earned reputation Nigeria has garnered for arbitrary and punitive regulation; one that has turned off investors in their droves. It is not a fluke that foreign direct investment, save for a few bright spots, has plummeted under this administration. Deconstructed, Aso Rock’s announcement represents the height of obfuscation, misdirection and face-saving that the current administration has proved adept at. It offered nothing and won nothing from Twitter. If this is what a victory looks like, it is the most pyrrhic of the lot.
Bits, bytes and being bitten
A hacker only identified as Sam has boasted about how he broke into the server of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and stole over three million National Identity Numbers (NINs) of Nigerians. The hacker revealed how easy it was for him to breach the NIMC server and access the personal information of millions of Nigerians in an article he shared on infosecwriteups.com. He said he got access to “juice” on the Nigerian Government agency’s server and that he could go-ahead to do whatever he desired with other sensitive data at his disposal. On social media, some Nigerian users have called for President Muhammadu Buhari to relieve Isa Pantami as the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy. The latest cyber attack comes less than two months after the Nigerian Communications Commission in November 2021 issued a warning that an Iranian hacking group was planning to carry out cyber espionage across Africa. A statement from the agency had said the hackers were targeting telecoms, Internet Service Providers, and the foreign ministries of Nigeria and other African countries. The incident also comes months after President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration while mandating Nigerians to enrol for National Identification Number claimed that it was going to stop crimes in the country including those perpetrated via the Internet. Over 60 million Nigerians had so far been captured on the national identity database, according to the NIMC.
It is important to start this by noting that on 10 January, the alleged hacker put out a tweet saying that he had not hacked the NIMC database, but rather had found a bug in an S3 bucket belonging to the mobile telephone manufacturer Tecno, and had reported it. Having said that, the alarm raised by the news coverage following his initial blogpost is not altogether misplaced. Nigeria’s government does not treat data protection seriously. Multiple IT practitioners we have spoken to have said that the NIMC data, which is inclusive of the NIN, is accessible by third party partners, and that an unscrupulous person working within those third parties could access this data, and tie it to other forms of data. NIMC is an ISO 27001:2013 accredited agency. This usually signifies compliance with one of the highest standards in Information Technology Security Management, as it specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an information security management system within the context of the agency. Regardless of this, NIMC has not done enough to allay fears surrounding data privacy, as there have been rumours on multiple occasions of data breaches or incidents capable of compromising the integrity of the data of Nigerians. This is merely the most recent and is emblematic of a wider attitude of nonchalance within Nigerian officialdom towards data security, sovereignty and integrity. Any agency that is responsible for data management, at the scale of NIMC should not just be reactionary. The agency should not only respond to claims of data breach, but should be proactive in ensuring data security, as well as transparent in instances of real or possible breaches. This is particularly germane considering the government’s stated aim of utilising the NIN as the anchor point of a wider strategy that will incorporate the banking, retail and other biometric data sets in a Social Security-style system that, if done properly, will transform how Nigerians work, shop, bank and utilise social services. A convenient backdoor for malevolent elements to exploit in the core element of that plan leaves little room for comfort. While NIMC might be a Nigerian entity, the rules and standards which guide their data collection and protection are global. An important question that arises from all of this is this: who regulates and audits the NIMC? While the obvious answer is the Communications and Digital Economy ministry, the supervising minister has perhaps been the most interested party in championing the current (and flawed) NIN strategy. The trail becomes much murkier, and potentially harmful to Nigerians, when figuring out who regulates the regulator. Figuring out that key piece of the pie might spell the difference between a robust and safe digital experience and a nightmare of historic proportions for Africa’s biggest economy.
Where ants gather
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has kicked against the Federal Government’s decision to tax carbonated drinks. The announcement of the new tax regime was made a week ago to discourage excessive consumption of sugar in beverages, according to the government. Director-General of MAN, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, said it is basically a means of raising revenue for government projects, adding that this was not the best time to introduce the tax. Ajayi-Kadir noted that it could hurt 1.5 million jobs. The MAN boss tasked the government to seek more revenue by expanding the tax base. He said the body would be ready to offer expertise on how to expand the tax net so manufacturers could survive and retain their return on investment.
Bogged by rising expenditure and falling revenues, Nigeria’s government added a new tool into its arsenal a few years ago – a finance act to accompany its annual budget. This allows the government to introduce new fiscal policy tools without much euphoria, whilst the public’s focus is on the actual budget figure. For example, the 2020 Finance Act introduced certain amendments to the Value Added Tax (VAT) Act, including raising VAT rate to 7.5% from 5%. The 2021 Finance Act introduces an excise duty of ₦10/litre imposed on all non-alcoholic, carbonated and sweetened beverages. Expectedly, stakeholders are divided on the pros and cons of the new policy. On the face of it, a ‘sin tax’ as such taxes on sugary drinks are called has the potential of cutting down sugar-related illnesses such as diabetes as costs are passed on to consumers. This is even besides the fiscal benefit of increasing Nigeria’s revenues, a much-pressing need these days. However, given how squeezed the Nigerian consumer is, the act of passing the costs on could have the unintended consequence of contracting the revenues of beverage makers. As Nigeria’s fiscal position becomes more and more precarious, we will see what are clearly cash grab taxation attempts of this nature and we expect the response from the organised private sector to be just as fierce. Our view is that Nigeria’s revenue problems cannot ultimately be solved by such an approach. The most sustainable approach will be to bring in more businesses into the formal sector, which currently accounts for only 35% of the economy. Many Nigerian small and informal businesses already pay tax to non-state actors who do little or nothing for them. It would be beneficial for everyone if the government is willing to do the hard work of bringing them into the formal sector. Unfortunately, the one thing that is clear in all of this is that the Buhari administration is unlikely to change its mind on this course.
Landed palaver
Southwest governors have advised Lagos governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to deploy Amotekun operatives to protect the residents of the state and their properties. The advice is coming on the heels of a face-off between Sanwo-Olu and a police officer over the occupation of Magodo Residential Scheme II by police officers from Abuja who say they want to enforce a Supreme Court judgment over the land. Police officers and some suspected thugs had on 1 December 2021 besieged the estate marking buildings for demolition. In a swift reaction, residents shut the estate and protested the invasion. In their letter to the Lagos governor, the South-West Governors’ Forum in a statement signed by its chairman, Ondo governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, said that the content of the video is very disconcerting. Sanwo-Olu had visited the estate to address the residents but met a phalanx of police officers who refused to vacate the premises even after he asked them to. The face-off at Magodo follows a 2012 Supreme Court judgment in favour of the Shangisha Landlords represented by the Adeyiga family. The military government of Lagos in 1985 had reportedly repossessed the property illegally and allocated the same to private individuals. Following a meeting with representatives of the Shangisha Landlord Association, members of the Magodo Residents Association and the police on 5 January, Sanwo-Olu said a committee had been set up to identify available plots and additional plots at mutually agreeable areas in the state.
History has consequences, and government is a continuum. These two things are the principles that the Magodo case exemplifies. However, the current furore around the treatment of Governor Sanwo-Olu by security agents on ground and the reaction of other South-West governors, has reignited debate about Nigeria’s federalism with arguments that the defiance of the Lagos State Governor by a junior police officer provides reasonable grounds for the creation of state police forces. In theory, it should be an anomaly that security operations this disruptive can happen in a state without the prior knowledge of the purported Chief Security Officer. Such is the warped nature of Nigeria’s federalism. The reality is that the myth of governors being ‘chief security officers’ is just that, as all security agencies are firmly in the control of Abuja going by the Constitution; as such, the police which was enforcing an almost decade-old Supreme Court judgement did not need the permission or even to inform the governor prior to carrying out the action. The presence of a subsisting judgement does not mean that the legal question has been definitively settled. The highest court in the land essentially called into question the validity of a key aspect of the country’s land laws by deeming the requisition by the Lagos State Government illegal; setting the stage for courts to reassess the execution of government land requisitions in the thousands of court cases challenging similar state actions across the country. In other words, this will not be the last we will hear from the Supreme Court on the controversial issue. In the meantime, measures such as Amotekun mooted by the other governors can only prove a temporary workaround. It also bears noting that if Amotekun was present at the scene, it could have escalated the situation further not just physically but also in terms of the discussion about the extra-constitutional nature of state-created militias. The Constitution is clear that the establishment of police and other government security services is exclusive to the Federal Government – what has happened with Amotekun is that a political settlement of sorts has been reached to allow its existence after much tussling between the Presidency and the South-West states. However, this is not cast in stone and could be set aside. This is why it is very important to continue with the conversations on state policing to the point of drafting constitutional amendments that will allow for their emergence and defining the parameters for how that will work in Nigeria. There are several valid arguments in favour of state policing, but the reaction of the South-West governors including their Lagos colleague to the Magodo issue plays to the arguments that state police forces would more than likely be used as personal armies against political opponents in the authoritarian games of the state governors. This is an important factor that needs to be thoroughly considered and debated in the push towards more autonomy for Nigeria’s subnational units. That aside, a successful resolution of the impasse requires Alausa to correct its past mistakes, mistakes that it is still making by expropriating land from landowners to fuel the feverish pace of luxury real estate development currently gripping the state.
The bloody parade continues
An estimated 200 people or more have been killed in villages in Zamfara during deadly reprisal attacks by armed bandits following military airstrikes on their hideouts this week, residents said on Saturday. Residents gained access to the villages on Saturday after the military captured the communities to organise mass burials, Reuters reported. The state government said 58 people had been killed during the attacks. Ummaru Makeri, a resident who lost his wife and three children during the attack, said around 154 people had been buried including several vigilantes who were killed. Residents said the total death toll was at least 200. On Friday, at least 30 people had been killed in Anka local government area, when more than 300 armed bandits on motorbikes stormed eight villages and started shooting sporadically on Tuesday. The military said it conducted airstrikes in the early hours of Monday on targets in the Gusami forest and west Tsamre village in Zamfara state, killing more than 100 bandits, including two of their leaders, following intelligence reports. There have been a series of attacks in northwest Nigeria, which has seen a sharp rise in mass abductions and other violent crimes since late 2020 as the government struggles to maintain law and order. In a separate incident, 30 students abducted from their college in Kebbi were freed on Saturday, a spokesman for the Kebbi governor said, without providing details. Away from that region, gunmen kidnapped about six children of former Secretary to the Taraba State Government, Gebon Kataps, alongside their police escort and driver. The state’s police command confirmed the report, but could not ascertain the exact number of the victims. In Katsina, two soldiers and seven illegal miners were killed in a clash over gold nuggets at Magama, a border village in Jibiya Local Government Area. The clash occurred last Wednesday around 1800 hours after the discovery of huge gold nuggets in one of the open-pit mines dug by the artisanal miners. The Daily Nigerian reported that about 40 miners, who were also armed, paid the soldiers the sum of ₦2.5 million (₦500,000 per pit) before they were allowed to start the mining. However, after the miners were done, the soldiers insisted that the gold be shared equally with them. The miners refused, leading to an exchange of gunfire. Following the ban on mining in neighbouring Zamfara, the activities have now shifted to some parts of Katsina.
The latest massacre in Zamfara puts the government’s effort at addressing insecurity in the region using force under severe scrutiny. Reports have it that the victims were killed by fleeing terrorists escaping aerial bombardment by the air force. The story of the military operations in the North West has largely been one sided with air power taking centre stage. The army, trying to minimise personnel loss, has refrained from carrying out operations too deep into terrorist encampments, inadvertently giving them time to regroup after aerial bombardments. The latest massacre is both a consequence of that strategy, a failure of intelligence, but most importantly, it is a failure of the non-application of ground forces. The terrorists operated freely for days without apprehension, an indication that the intelligence services did not anticipate this, and the army failed to respond in its duty to mop up terrorists fleeing the aerial onslaught. Little progress has been made in attempts to coordinate the security agencies to achieve a shared strategic outcome. On another note, this non-coordination could also be due to a lack of discipline and professionalism exhibited by officers of various agencies. The Katsina mining incident is illustrative of this. The army leadership’s decision to deny the story without a proper investigation ensures that this will not be the last time we will hear of its officers colluding with criminal groups to perpetuate illegal activities. Furthermore, bandit activity appears to be spreading in parts of the country that hitherto were not dealing with such incidents. This is evident in abductions in Kwara, Plateau and Taraba. This is not surprising as it speaks to the proliferation of armed non-state actors across the country and how weak and overstretched the security architecture is. The ease with which armed gangs can form and carry out attacks also highlights why a purely military approach will ultimately not work, and why smart policing, especially in rural areas, needs to be ramped up.
Card shuffle
Some 300 to 400 Russian mercenaries are operating in central Mali, a senior French armed forces ministry official said, challenging an assertion by the West African country’s junta that only Russian military trainers are deployed there. Other West African countries have closed their borders with Mali, severed diplomatic ties and imposed economic sanctions in response to its delay in holding elections following a 2020 military coup, the 15-state Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said on Sunday. The moves were also a response to the arrival of private military contractors from the Russian Wagner Group, whose members are mostly ex-service personnel. Mali’s junta, which has proposed a five-year transition rather than stepping down in February as initially planned, has said the new forces are military instructors who came with the equipment they bought from Russia. The European Union has imposed sanctions on the Wagner Group, accusing it of clandestine operations on the Kremlin’s behalf. France has thousands of troops fighting Islamist militants in the Sahel region and in December joined 15 other countries, mostly European states operating in Mali, in condemning the possible arrival of mercenaries. Mali will not be able to complete a 30 billion-CFA-franc ($52.20 million) sale of T-bills this week because of the sanctions. An official with La Banque Centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO), the central bank serving the eight west African countries which share the CFA franc currency said the freezing of transfers from the BCEAO could lead to a liquidity shortage in Mali.
The sanctions on Mali, and its newfound pariah status within ECOWAS, are a welcome development in what the regional body hopes will change the course of a country that it considers a thorn in its side. But as we have noted in previous publications, it might not be enough to lead to a democratic transition because of good old geopolitics. The expected departure of French troops could mean more international engagement as Mali’s foreign affairs ministry announced recently that Chad plans to deploy 1,000 additional United Nations (UN) peacekeepers to reinforce its contingent in the country. The Chadian involvement could be a backdoor for French influence to remain if the current animosity abates. France’s latest comments over the arrival of Russian mercenaries in Mali can be seen as a last-ditch effort to save its waning influence in what it considers its traditional playground. Following the Goïta regime’s insistence on going along with the Wagner Group deal in September and October, France put some oomph in its threat of sanctions by closing the Kessalt and Tidal military bases in Timbuktu which had been the operational anchors of operations against Islamist militants since 2013. French forces continue their gradual withdrawal from the region, despite ongoing fighting with militants. Locals have expressed unease about French departure, a development which the government claims that Russia-trained Malian troops would address. However, general anti-French sentiments in the region and in Mali, in particular, mean that this unease is not reflective of the general population’s view of the situation, which the regime has latched on to in recent weeks. The withdrawal of French forces has created a void that Russia is evidently trying to fill using the Wagner Group, a private military contractor that is also seen as a quasi-state body due to the closeness of its founder to Vladimir Putin. This might help the Goïta regime to fend off pressure from ECOWAS countries, France, the United States and the United Kingdom to restore the country’s democracy and adequately support the country’s military rather than spend on mercenaries, especially as it tries to achieve stability in the short-term. It is, however, unlikely that Russian support can allow Goïta to stay up to five years in office, a key part of a recent proposal by the regime to ECOWAS. The end calculus might see the regional body stomach what will effectively be a Russian foothold in the region in exchange for a speedier democratic transition in one of its geographically significant members. Whichever way the geopolitical chessboard is spliced, Mali is now firmly in play and is sure to be one of the most interesting and consequential African countries in 2022.