Security: How Nigeria fail serially

By Adekunle Adekoya

IT is no longer news that 17 soldiers, including a lieutenant-colonel, two majors, one captain and other ranks were ambushed by a gang of militants in Okuama village in Delta State. In fact, the slain soldiers were buried with full military honours at a military cemetery in Abuja on Wednesday. While the nation was grappling with that, no less than eight policemen got killed in Delta and Imo states, with six more still missing, according to the Police High Command last weekend. 

These two incidents indicate the nadir into which our nation has sunk in terms of security. Meanwhile, as these were happening, a hapless journalist was abducted, Gestapo-style, from his home in Lagos and whisked to Nowhere. The resulting uproar from his professional cohorts eventually led to his release.

My people have a saying to the effect that if you don’t know how to dance, watch the footworks of the person next to you, with a view to copying, and eventually knowing how to dance. Just as we were grappling with our issues, a major global power, Russia, experienced a bout of insecurity.

On the evening of Friday March 22 in Moscow, the Russian capital, gunmen burst into Crocus City Hall, an entertainment complex on the outskirts of the city, where a rock concert was about to take place. Reports indicated that at least four people opened fire in the building’s foyer before entering the hall itself and continuing to shoot. Amid the shooting, the attackers then set fire to the hall using flammable liquids. Despite helicopters dropping water over the building, it took 10 hours to extinguish the flames.

According to reports, the March 22 attack lasted about 20 minutes, and in that time, about 137 people were killed and at least 60 others critically wounded. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

Three days later on March 25, Russian authorities have charged four men to court for being responsible for the attack.

That means the appropriate security agencies there have carried out substantial investigations, prepared their case files and turned over to the judicial system for prosecution.  The swiftness of the Russian response seems to be the difference between our situation and that of the rest of the world. We just don’t take security issues seriously enough here, do we? Worse, we place greater premium on regime security than real national security. That is why a huge portion of our resources are spent on providing security for the president, governors, obas, and chiefs, while the rest of us that can afford it purchase security from the state. The rest are left to secure themselves as best as they can. 

My take is that we just play with serious things, and now, ridiculous things are happening to us. Else, how do you explain to the whole world that your policemen and soldiers are being killed by rag-tag gangs of militant outlaws? If the ideal were the case, as exemplified by the Russian response to the ISIS attack on Crocus City hall, we would have arrested and prosecuted somebody for letter-bombing Dele Giwa since 1986. We also would have arrested and prosecuted the killers of Chief Alfred Rewane, Iyalode Bisoye Tejuoso, Marshal Harry, Bola Ige, Suliat Adedeji, Chief Dikibo, Funso Williams, and a host of other unresolved celebrity assasinations.

If we take security seriously, kidnappers will not be roaming around and abducting people, including children, at will, and herding them into bushes like goats. The case of the Kuriga schoolchildren is actually stuff for Nollywood box office hits. What baffles me about the Kuriga schoolchildren is that barely 24 hours after they were released, state machinery went into overdrive to sew clothes for all 187 of them, which they all wore at the reception held for them at Sir Kashim Ibrahim House in Kaduna. If that effort were put into making security work, maybe the kidnap would not have occurred at all. Again, since 2014, many of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped are yet to be recovered. Same with Dapchi and others all over the country. Even the felons that have been arrested, something, somewhere, is holding up their prosecution. 

The message we are sending to outlaws and would-be criminals is that they can continue to live outside the law since nothing will happen to them. But if the reverse were the case, deterrents would have been put in place that will ensure that taking to a life of criminality is a no-no. In the North-East, high-tension electricity pylons were brought down by some yet-to-be-identified vandals. Who are those vandals? Have they been arrested? If they have not, why not? Whose job is it to go after them? Who is waiting for an order to go after felons that willfully destroyed critical national infrastructure? Or is it that somebody, or some people have not linked the vandalism of those pylons with national security? Arise, O compatriots! Nigerians, let us wake up to the ramifications of security. Let us stop playing with matters of security. In fact, we must begin to look at all national issues through the prism of security. When we do that, we’ll pass Security 101, and move on to the next level.

Killing of 17 soliders: Lessons for all

Nigerians, from the number one citizen to the grassroots, mourned on Wednesday, March 27, 2024 as the 17 soldiers slain by suspected militants at Okuama in Ughelli South LGA of Delta State, were buried at the military cemetery in Abuja. They met their tragic end ostensibly on a “peace mission” amidst an intractable communal conflict between Okuama and its neighbour, Okoloba.

Once again, President Bola Tinubu vowed to ensure the culprits are brought to book, while conferring national honours on the departed patriots and unfolding welfare packages for the families.

Okuama was definitely not the first place where civilians waylaid and massacred our soldiers and policemen. We have seen it in Odi, Bayelsa State; Zaki-Biam in Benue State, and several other places. On the other hand, we have also seen the military laying heavily and mercilessly into defenceless civilians at the orders of presidents and governors. We saw it at the Lekki Toll Gate, Lagos State; Sheikh Ibrahim el Zakzaky’s commune in Zaria, Kaduna State and in Aba, Abia State when unarmed pro-Biafra activists were mown down and buried in mass graves.

We must pause and ask ourselves: in which other civilised countries do civilians kill their policemen and soldiers except those wracked by terrorism? Definitely, the deliberate killing of soldiers and policemen is an act of terrorism targeting the state and its apparatuses of defence and law enforcement. It is totally unacceptable. 

Beyond giving the departed befitting burials and making templated speeches, how do we ensure that the people and their defenders/law enforcement agencies work together in the nation’s interest, rather than target each other? The continuation of the anomaly is another sign of system failure, and must be addressed holistically, not one-sidedly.

The leadership of this country down the ages must take the primary blame for this cat-and-mouse relationship between the people and their agents of order and public safety. Leaders manipulate and deploy these armed agencies to feather their political nests in the same manner that the departed British colonial masters did.

More than 60 years after independence, we have not created a Nigerian, people-centred police or military. These agencies have often been deployed in manners that have stoked sectional hatred, bitterness, alienation, domination, marginalisation and exploitation of the resources of the people.

We want a new dispensation whereby Nigerians, irrespective of their ethnic, religious, regional or political backgrounds will see our police and military forces as our valuable social assets rather than oppressors. After all, they were recruited from among the people, and they will eventually retire back to the people.

We need a better partnership.

Culled from Vanguard