The military in peace support operations in Nigeria: a question mark

Abstract

The military power may be one critical instrument that provides the sword for policy- makers and the military itself may be an instrument of conflict resolution and foreign policy of nations, but in domestic conflicts other than full scale wars, circumspection should be the rule of the game in the deployment of soldiers. The continuous deployment of troops to the streets and choke-points in Nigeria responds to the madman theory. The policy of applying maximum force to levels that have previously been regarded as disproportionate to the conflict and to the objectives of the parties is called the madman theory. The theory has its origin in the Vietnam war. The Nigerian history is replete with the use of maximum force to attempt to resolve conflicts; yet at the end of the day force never had the slightest capacity to terminate such conflicts. The use of soldiers in the Tiv crisis in the First Republic, the military intervention in politics in Nigeria, the deployment of Joint Task Forces (JTFs) to the Niger Delta region, Plateau state, South East zone, Northern Nigeria and road blocks across Nigeria are instances of the madman theory. The central argument in the paper is that in spite of their technical sophistication, the military resources are exceedingly crude in relation to many socio-political objections. Therefore, a big question mark hangs on the use of military resources that are only suitable to sweeping tasks like destruction, conquest and or control people to wage peace in Nigeria, especially under democracy.