Boko Haram: The mistakes security agencies made, by former IGP Coomassie

Boko Haram related violence is not going away, in spite of huge spendings on gadgets. Should we now learn to live with the crisis? Well, something is wrong somewhere, because you have heard President Goodluck Jonathan giving a pass mark to security agencies. I want to recall what I said in June this year about […]

Boko Haram related violence is not going away, in spite of huge spendings on gadgets. Should we now learn to live with the crisis?

Well, something is wrong somewhere, because you have heard President Goodluck Jonathan giving a pass mark to security agencies. I want to recall what I said in June this year about the problem of Boko Haram. I said it is as a result of lack of proper and authentic intelligence and I still maintain that if you don’t have accurate and authentic intelligence, you can’t dislodge any opponent or saboteur and or any trouble-maker. I still stand by that. But it will be something different if the security agents are well-trained; if they are the right people to do the job, if they are well exposed and if they are on top of the job. If it is so, then, we will not find ourselves in the present situation of insecurity.

As a former IGP, what do you think makes our security intelligence units ineffective?

I don’t understand. If you said our security agents are well-trained, well paid and were provided with working equipments, then we will ask, are they motivated to do their job effectively? There are so many things connected to the success story of any organization.

So, why are our security organizations ineffective?

First, is the right person doing the job? Second, is he trained on the job he was asked to do? Thirdly, is the person educationally qualified to do the job? Fourthly, is he interested in the job? Fifthly, has the person got appropriate tools, gadgets and other sophisticated  facilities to carry out the job? Sixth, does the person have exposure to do the work? This is because an intelligence people must have connections globally not only internally. Intelligence people must always be up-to-date. In other words, they must know what is happening. If they are lacking in this area, there is big trouble.

Are you saying the situation was not like this when you were Inspector General of Police?

Of course, the situation was not like this! Look at what happened during the Maitatsine crisis in Kano, for instance. Although there was intelligence then, but Justice Anthony Aniagolu, the man who headed government’s investigation committee, said the intelligence was not enough. He also discovered that police had no intelligence outfit because the police intelligence outfit, which was the special branch, was severed from the police and called the Nigerian Security Organisation (NSO), which is now called the State Security Service (SSS). It has received priority over and above the police. This created the complex of superiority between the police and SSS personnel. Aniagolu then made a recommendation, as a result of which government created the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) unit in the police. But they did not give CIB the courage to do the job effectively. So it remains like what we used to had in the past. In the past, we have so many security apparatus, such as crime branch, where we had the ‘suspect squad’ which was doing intelligence job locally. The personnel were mostly Native Authority (NA) agents and they successfully penetrated and got intelligence about criminal activities. We also have the X-squad which went about sniffing for information about criminal activities and then they would strike. After that, we had the CIB. Later, we got SSS as an organization. We have intelligence units in other security organizations, such as the Military Intelligence and the NIA, but the most important thing here is that, if you got all the intelligence from these organisations, do we pass the report to the appropriate organisation that will operate? And that organisation is the police. Are they being fed with authentic intelligence? If they are, are they well-trained? Are they professional enough to handle the situation? These are some of the things the government should look into. The police we have today is the same police we have had since 20 years and 30 years ago I have said it before and I am not afraid of repeating it again. The quality of police we have now is not as the same of the quality of the police we had in the past. First of all, the men must be suitable for the job; they must know rights and wrongs, right from their respective homes. This will enable them to avoid what is wrong and try to do what is right after joining the force and the attitude can be transferred to the public, which they protect. They must also have enough education to do the job. They must be professionally trained to be policemen. They have to be re-trained for the various jobs they have been doing in the service. Then, they have to be motivated.

Welfare package must be available for them and they must be scientific because the world now is a global village. We are now working scientifically. You can get information through your GSM,  so our policemen must work scientifically. If you have been attending seminars, workshops and trainings, you would have colleagues elsewhere.

When the need arises, then you can call them to help you with useful intelligence data that can help you get through with your job. That is the importance of connections. But if I may ask, is this what we are doing now? The answer is no. So these are some of the things we have been talking about concerning insecurity in Nigeria.

Despite all these, what do we do to ensure that the police are not discouraged from doing their jobs?

Like I have said, government must look into the shortcomings of the police now and beef it up. For example, the M.D Yusuf’s committee on police reform had recommended that we should stop recruiting policemen; upgrade all our training institutions to appreciable standard, comparable with anyone in the world, at least, in Africa, before we go to the world. Then, look at the trainers. Retrain them, let them be focused and professionals so that they can train people to become policemen. Look inward, retrain the trainable among those already in the police and get rid of those that are not trainable. After you finish that, then you can start recruiting fresh policemen. There are always jobs in the police, so you can go out and get the right people for the job of policeman.

But the other thing you have to do is to take care of the religious and regional differences. And to do that, you have to apply the federal character law. Every region now has got qualified people to fill in its own places at all levels of government. So, when you come to that, just look for quality, not quantity. During my time as Inspector General of Police, I stopped recruitment. I never recruited constables because I was implementing the recommendations of the M.D Yusuf’s committee. However, I did not get the money to upgrade my training institutions and do the other things. But when we handed over in 1999, the government gave them power to recruit 40,000 policemen, and as a result, they lowered the standard of the police and recruited all kinds of people into the Police Force.

Are you saying the problem of the Nigeria police emanated from the recruitment exercise?

Of course,  it is part of the problems. Recruitment, coupled with what is now obtained in the service, compounded the problem of the Nigeria police.

Do you agree that Boko Haram is a creation of Northern politicians to destabilize Jonathan’s administration?

Which politicians? That is the question. No. Boko Haram, at least, if it is not a religious sect, is a group that is not satisfied with the way things are going on in the country and they thought this is the way to show it. And that is why, at one time, we recommended dialogue with them. If you know who they are, if you know what they are after, if you know where they are and if you can identify their leadership, then you can get them and dialogue with them. One of the problems of Boko Haram, which is now known, is the killing of their leader and members in Maiduguri. They were killed openly and it was shown on Aljazeera satellite cable. The clip is everywhere in this country.

That particular aspect did more damage to this country than anything else.

Do you think confrontation between soldiers and Boko Haram members can solve the problem?

Well, soldiers were deployed to the crisis areas because the police had failed to tackle the situation. Like I have said, if they could act on authentic intelligence, they could get to the root of the matter and address the situation.

Boko Haram is a sign of failure from the part of the traditional institution. How would you react?

Traditional institutions are the veritable tools for security in this country; it had been so before. First of all, they are well established. They have the emirs, the councils, the district heads, the village heads and the ward heads, so they are well-established and they have been doing their jobs for many years. If a stranger enters a village, the ward head must know and he will then communicate to village heads to district heads and then to the emir and the emir will know what to do about the stranger. Is this still working? If not, why?

And we have to look into it, whether the politicians have adulterated  the traditional institutions. They are fathers of the whole society, even the Government knows, because if there is crisis, the emirs are being used to act during  fire brigade approaches. But, honestly, emirs are supposed to be members of the state security councils and the district heads to be members of the local government security councils. If this is not made functional, then something is wrong.

Do you agree that the insecurity in Nigeria is as a result of injustice on the part of leaders?

Yes, I do, because injustice is now common, just like corruption. One breeds the other. If you are corrupt, you will not be just to your subjects as a leader so it is correct, and unless we check these evils, we will not go anywhere. And that is why I said it has to do with the leadership.

What future is there for Nigeria?

The future of Nigeria depends on all of us. It can be bright and it can continue to be gloomy. It depends on us, especially the leadership. Although both the leadership and the followership have their faults, it is mainly the leadership because if you have a leader who is sincere, committed, honest and God-fearing, and interested in giving his best to the development of the country, and who is ready to do things correctly without favouritism and corruption, things would be better. In other words, our leadership must be firm and security agencies must be able to do their jobs without hitch or hindrance. But if you know that if you commit an offence you can talk to somebody at a higher level to stop authorities from punishing you, then there is problem.