Major General John Enenche (rtd) has warned that Nigeria cannot defeat terrorism and banditry unless the country takes decisive action against internal collaborators aiding criminal elements in communities.
Speaking in an interview on ARISE News on Thursday, Enenche said he fully supports the United States visa sanctions on individuals found to be sponsoring insecurity in Nigeria.
According to him, “if the United States imposes visa restrictions among others for them, to me it is the right step in the direction that we have found ourselves and the situation we have found ourselves in this country now. So I subscribe to that.”
Enenche strongly backed the new Defence Minister’s stance on ending ransom payments to kidnappers. He explained that criminal groups are never sincere in negotiations.
“They will ask for more. They are not sincere people and they can never be sincere. And at the end they end up killing the people,” he said. Sharing his experience in the field, he disclosed, “the way out of this is to come up with our indigenous homeland security whereby we use locusts. These people are trackable. They are traceable. When you use a real locust now what am I talking about. They will track them, follow them to the forest to everywhere and tackle them.”
He insisted Nigeria must take control of its own security strategy rather than rely on ransom as a means to rescue victims. “Ransom payment is out of it,” he warned.
Commenting on the approach of the newly appointed Minister of Defence, General Christopher Musa, he said expectations must be realistic. “Six months is quite a short time to measure his achievement because there has to be a convergence of political management for national security and military management,” he stated. He added that more time would be needed before any significant improvement becomes evident, saying “we can be talking of something after a year or two or three.”
On recent delays in adopting state policing despite widespread national insecurity, the retired army chief stressed that the priority must be leadership consensus on solutions already identified. “State policing is very, very vital,” he stressed. He criticised the lack of alignment among political leaders, saying “they are not coming to terms with the reality on the ground which is not supposed to be so.”
Reacting to the approval of 100 billion naira for security and police training by the National Economic Council, Enenche expressed doubt about its impact. “One hundred billion is not really one hundred billion. It is a lot of money but what impact will it make. It is not sufficient,” he argued.
On concerns that terrorists and bandits may have infiltrated the country’s security architecture, Enenche said no sector is immune to betrayal. “In every 12 disciples there will always be a Judas. And the military for me is not exempted from that,” he noted. He added that arrests of personnel trading arms to criminals show a need for deeper scrutiny. “It calls for suspicion and investigation,” he said.
On the declining interest of young Nigerians from the south in joining the army, he said the trend is not new. “From the beginning… we did not used to have rush for the army from the east. Then following that is the west… the highest as we have from record… is actually from the north. And it has still remained,” he explained, calling it historical.
Enenche emphasised that terrorists depend on support networks within communities and must be isolated and rooted out through local security structures.
“We have local collaborators in the villages that work with them. They share the ransom… with them,” he stated, calling for community based security operations as the next phase in defeating terrorism.
He said he is already involved in building local defence systems. “My company is packaging something like that civil security services… We need to do that,” he said, pledging readiness to collaborate with government authorities.
Enenche concluded that Nigeria can only win the fight against insecurity when political and military efforts align fully at national and grassroots level.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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