Is the Nigerian Army replacing the Police, Navy?
In his own testimony on Monday, April 6, 2009, Mike Okiro, also a former Inspector General of Police, did confess while in Maiduguri, Borno State for a conference with senior police officers comprising commissioners of police, AIGs’ and DIGs, that the police was failing on intelligence gathering and usage which was why some crises occurred. […]
In his own testimony on Monday, April 6, 2009, Mike Okiro, also a former Inspector General of Police, did confess while in Maiduguri, Borno State for a conference with senior police officers comprising commissioners of police, AIGs’ and DIGs, that the police was failing on intelligence gathering and usage which was why some crises occurred.
Added to these was a recent statement by the Abia state government, speaking through Barrister Mich Ndu, Special Adviser on legal matters to Governor Theodore Orji, who declared at a phone-in television discussion programme conducted by Sylverbird television barely ten days ago, that the notorious kidnap gang led by its killed leader, Obioma Nwankwo, a.k.a. Osisikankwu, was beyond the control of the police because he was in possession of artillery which only soldiers could confront.
Perhaps, it was because Nwankwo believed he was beyond the touch of the police that he nick named him-self, ‘Osisi-ka-Nkwu’, which in Igbo parlance means ‘the tree that is taller than the palm tree’.
Indeed, the soldiers of the Joint Military Task Force, (JTF), did prove the Abia government right when on December 12, 2010; Osisikankwu was killed by soldiers around Obokwe market in Ukwa West Local Government area and immediately residents of Aba, the commercial nerve centre of the state which he had held hostage went into celebrations. He was shot alongside two other kidnappers simply identified as Polycarp and Chinedu after he had been ambushed by the soldiers said to have kept track of him for days. After he was shot purportedly arms including two GPMGs, three RPG bombers, 20 pieces of RPG bombs were recovered alongside riffles.
The Abia state governor, Theodore Orji, has reportedly declared that the soldiers have come to stay permanently to maintain internal security in the state. That remark, though a clear ‘vote of no confidence’ in the state police command state, is massively still being celebrated by residents across the state especially in Aba, where until the soldiers were deployed, no one was safe to move for fear of kidnap and frequent robbery attacks.
But as it has since been from the north and south of Nigeria, Governor Orji’s pronouncement was a mere addendum to what has since become a norm because from the south-east where kidnapping and robbery continues, south-south (Niger Delta) zone where militancy, hostage taking, kidnapping and robbery have also constituted threats to the north east and central where there are sectoral and ethno-religious attacks in Borno, Bauchi and Plateau states, soldiers have since taken over the internal security control after the police couldn’t handle situations.
Across the Niger Delta, in states like Bayelsa, Rivers and Delta, criminals and other civil offenders are mostly only being subdued when soldiers storm the scenes. In the days of high militancy, militants openly took over streets while policemen watched helplessly because the militants seemed more armed than the police. In the Niger Delta, not only the police seem replaced by soldiers, even the Nigeria Navy is to a large extent, as guilty because soldiers in the JTF, according to Weekly Trust investigation, appear more involved in patrolling the creeks since the militancy era to date. In fact, the JTF has the mandate of the Presidency to counter militancy on the high sea even where the navy should be in charge.
Only recently, Chief Ateke Tom, repentant commander of the dreaded militia group, Niger Delta Vigilante Services, voluntarily gave out eight militia camps deeply concealed in far away creeks of Okirika sea in Okirika local government area of Rivers State, about thirty kilometres from Port Harcourt. Though he had accepted amnesty, handed over heavy arms and made his lieutenants to drop arms and enlist in the amnesty package last year, Tom remained in control of his camps in the creeks which the navy didn’t know about because Tom had to assign three ex-militants familiar with the camps to lead the JTF, even when some naval staff, were supposedly part of the JTF since it is meant to be a joint military operation, even though mostly dominated by the army. The camps nicknamed Angola 1, 2, 3; Camps 5, 9, 10 and Marine 4 and 8, had areas for shooting practices, hostels, gardens and assemblies while camp 8 had a solid 3-bedroom apartment which served as Tom’s villa. Commander of the JTF in Rivers State, Colonel Mutiu Yekini led his men to destroy all the camps while he praised Tom for giving up the places as further demonstration that he has accepted peace.
But then, observers have kept on wondering where the Nigeria Navy were when all these camps were being built; how come they didn’t even know about them when they ought to have navigational control of the sea especially those in the Niger Delta which harbours the country’s oil explorations as the main source of income? It is terrible enough if the Navy were aware of the camps and did nothing but it is worse if they didn’t even know about them.
The JTF said in the last two weeks, that over four thousand illegal refineries were found in the creeks of Rivers and Bayelsa states alone. About three thousand locally built refineries operated by oil bunkerers to process stolen crude oil into petroleum products, were discovered and destroyed by the JTF in Rivers state, Col Yekini had said. JTF’s Joint Media Coordinator, Lt. Col Timothy Antigha, also said that over 1,000 of such refineries were found and destroyed in Bayelsa while four operators and dealers in some of the refineries were arrested with 690 drums of substandard illegally refined products, being ferried in two boats along the shores of the state were also recovered.
Over two hundred persons were arrested by soldiers in Rivers and handed over to the police.
Again, many have wondered, where were the Navy personnel when these refineries were continually being built in the creeks?
Some sources in the JTF had even told Weekly Trust that apart from the Air Force which regularly carries out surveillance over the creeks to communicate to patrolling soldiers, “if any other force members must be included in operations, the soldiers prefer mobile policemen because they are more combat ready and fear less than the Navy because any time there is a mission to combat militant, the Navy prefer to stay back and claim they are in defence or will complain that their gun boats are not in order or tactically park their boats in ways they cannot move so that they avoid the operation”.
A naval officer who didn’t want to be named, however said it is not true that they avoid operations and that they have been in the creeks all these years policing the sea. The naval staff also said the Niger Delta militants know the creeks like the back of their palm while they have all manner of bombs. But then, it is suspected that some of the deadly weapons possessed by the militants may have been brought into the country through the sea.
Top naval officers seem disturbed by the issue. Only in October, 2010, Rear Admiral Usman Jibrin, the new Flag Officer Commanding (FOC) Eastern Naval Command headquarters, Calabar, said he was worried by recent attacks launched by militants on oil facilities in the Niger Delta.
It is not clear what steps the naval headquarters in Abuja have taken but as it is for now, soldiers whose job should be on the land, are now the ones mostly said to be patrolling the creeks of the Niger Delta, destroying illegal refineries and confronting militants bent on furthering attacks on coastal oil fields which should ordinarily be guarded by the navy.
But then, even President Goodluck Jonathan has rather shot the navy when he proposed the use of ex-militants as coast guards. Depending on which way one looks at it, it was as if the President had accepted that in their heir days as militants, the boys had greater control of the sea than the navy and as repentant militants, they still have the knowledge of the coast than the force established to know better.
In the northern part of Nigeria where there is no militancy and high level kidnapping, sectoral violence involving the Boko Haram in Borno and Bauchi states as well as ethno religious crises in Plateau has led to the deployment of soldiers who seem to have also come to stay in the case of the Borno Boko Haram and Plateau clashes.
In Plateau, a Special Task Force has since been deployed when serious attacks between Biroms and Hausas and to some extent, Muslims and Christians, were openly and frequently killing each other. At some point, one Commissioner of Police had to be grudgingly posted on account of being suspected of taking sides. It must be said though, the crises in Jos haven’t really been tamed by the soldiers but it has been curtailed to some extent. The soldiers in the state have also remained somehow in control of the internal security which the police should have been doing.
In Borno state, Governor Ali Modu Sheriff even had a row with the police when he was reported saying that the police doesn’t seem capable of protecting its own men not to talk of other citizens because the force has suffered most as many of those killed by serial snipers believed to be Boko Haram sect members opposed to western values and education are policeman.
The sect had at a time when they were being haunted for by the police, even attacked a police station in old Maiduguri and all the police said was a needless argument that the station wasn’t a divisional headquarters as written on its own signpost but merely an outpost wrongly upgraded by a dismissed commissioner of police to the level of a divisional headquarters. The police apparently wanted to show that it wasn’t being over powered by the sect and had to come up with that tale that appeared like saying ‘someone didn’t die but was killed’.
The police in Borno state may be looking for escape routes, accused Sheriff of not assisting the command because while it along with the army made requests for patrol vehicles, Sheriff only presented vehicles in dozens to the army.
But it must be said that the Nigeria police may not have been receiving the kind of attention the army gets especially even at the presidency. Until recent years when talks about police reform began, the police was simply left in comatose, lacking virtually everything needed for modern counter crime operations. Some may argue, though, that in the 80’s, policemen subdued high level criminals like Lawrence Anini and the rest, probably with fewer personnel and less sophisticated weaponry but then, criminals have now gone more sophisticated, have access to war artillery and appear to work at digital levels where there is now the use of satellite tracking devices to trace criminals.
The federal government has always claimed to be working to reform the police. Recently, former Minister of Police Affairs, Adamu Maina Waziri, had told Weekly Trust earlier in 2010, that the federal government had approved N80 billion which is part of the N1.5 trillion required for the Police Reform Programme. He had said that the N1.5 trillion was expected to be contributed by the FG, states, local government areas and private bodies. The minister said the FG decided to raise the N80b to commence the reforms even though other tiers were yet to contribute as at then. The fund was meant for rigorous training of policemen, fixing their barracks, schools and offices, providing them with patrol vehicles, modern communication gadgets and other modern security equipments required for modern day policing. Their welfare was to be improved as well, he had said.
Perhaps in line with the reform, experts from Israel, weeks ago, trained two hundred police officers and men to become snipers who can pick criminals in a crowded area, engage criminals in physical combat, easily detect and dispose explosives, disarm people illegally possessing riffles as well as being able to use mobile phones-satellite techniques to detect locations of kidnappers who mostly use phones to demand ransom.
The trainees comprised junior and senior policemen and women from the Rivers state police command and about five hundred others rained earlier, the police said.
It is left to be seen if this training, said to have also been conducted nationwide, will improve the police force into rising to the occasion to be in charge of internal security and effectively control crime so that soldiers who have roundly been accused of brutalising innocent souls in some village, massacre mainly because they do not adequately have civil approach to crises management, can return to their formations to defend the territorial integrity of the country more so that there are fears that continuous internal operation may pollute the army.