A retired United States Army Captain, Bish Johnson, has said Nigeria’s security crisis cannot be solved by a single military strike, wârning that the country faces a multifaceted insecurity problem.
Johnson spoke during an interview on ARISE News on Friday night, reacting to recent United States airstrikes against terrõrists in north-western Nigeria.
On Christmas Day, US President Donald Trump announced that American forces carried out deadly strîkes against Islamic State militants in north-west Nigeria, vowing further action if the group continued attaçks on Christians.
Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs later confirmed the operation, saying it targeted terrõrist elements through collaboration with the United States as part of “structured security cooperation with international partners, including the United States of America,” aimed at tackling terrorism and vîolent extremism
However, Johnson cautioned that Nigeria’s insecurity goes beyond terrórism alone.
“If we don’t diagnose our problem correctly, we are going to come up with the wrong solution.
“Inasmuch as there is an element of terrorism in the North-West, the problem is much more complicated than it is being simplified.”
He pointed to herder-farmer clashes in the Middle Belt, which he said have claimed thousands of lives and remain unresolved.
“Nobody has talked about the issue of herder-farmer clashes, which have claimed so many lives in the Middle Belt, and it is still ongoing.
So Nigeria has a multifaceted insecurity problem that this one strîke cannot address. There’s also the issue of Sharia law in northern Nigeria.”
The security consultant also cited cases of religious vîolence, including the kîlling of Deborah Samuel, a Christian student who was lynched and stoned to death by her classmates in Sokoto State.
PUNCH Online reports that Deborah Samuel, a 200-level student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto, was brutally mûrdered on May 2022, after being accûsed of blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad.
“Unfortunately, we saw what happened in Sokoto State, where a young lady, Deborah Samuel, was lynched and stoned to death in broad daylight by her fellow schoolmates,” Johnson said.
He noted that no one has been held accountable for the kîlling, describing it as one of several incidents influencing international perception of Nigeria.
Up till now, none of the people responsible for the déath of that innocent young lady have been brought to justice,” he said. “These are some of the issues the Americans are observing, which is why they are tagging this as religious persecution.”
Johnson said such incidents make it difficult for Nigeria to counter claims of religious intolerance.
“It’s difficult to convince Americans otherwise when you have situations like what happened in Sokoto—and that’s not the only place where similar incidents have occurred and people have not been brought to book,” he added.
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