The way out

The recent kidnapping of female students (of yet indeterminate number) at a girls’ school which doubles as a mixed school in Chibok, Borno State, has provided the latest opportunity for tenants of power at both state and federal levels to throw brickbats at each other instead of addressing the serious security issues confronting us to […]

The recent kidnapping of female students (of yet indeterminate number) at a girls’ school which doubles as a mixed school in Chibok, Borno State, has provided the latest opportunity for tenants of power at both state and federal levels to throw brickbats at each other instead of addressing the serious security issues confronting us to enable the security forces secure the release of those unfortunate girls.
I have warned several times in the past that the current pastime of inventing conspiracy theories targeted at either the federal or state government will further erode whatever has been put in place in terms of security in this country. We have a serious security challenge and yet this is the time some otherwise unemployable appendages to political office have chosen to distract us from the goal of ridding our land of terror.
Even at the ongoing National Conference it is clear that some delegates are there to throw as many spanners as possible into the works. The strategy is to take untenable extreme positions all-round with the hope that others will shift from their own positions to achieve a pseudo-consensus which, put blandly, is what lawyers call status quo ante. In effect, we would have achieved so much motion at a cost of billions of naira but absolutely no movement. My old school teacher had an interesting way of describing such an eventuality: you didn’t pass, you didn’t fail, but you are still in the same class.
The question all of us ought to be addressing our minds to is, how can we make Nigeria safe for all in a sustainable manner? Policing is one of the duties of a government — federal, state, or local. I grew up to meet local government police working harmoniously with regional police. Every police personnel had a beat; it was therefore relatively easier to prevent or detect crime. If a government cannot provide basic security of lives and property, then it is not a government but a carpetbagger.
The current campaign of terror in the north eastern part of Nigeria has lingered this long partly because we have refused to change from our old ways. We awarded contracts with glee for the installation of CCTV cameras in Abuja after the bombing of the United Nations office. The cameras are mere decoration. When you have a habit of throwing money at problems instead of deploying intellectual muscle, you will find yourself in the bind Nigeria currently finds itself. Now that the terrorists are knocking on Abuja’s door through Nyanya, there is suddenly a flurry of hypocritical activity. Maybe some new contracts will ‘happen’.
I insist that we have to give unconditional support to the military and other security agencies in these trying times. Part of the support ought to be in the realm of ideas to the political leadership to change their miserably inept ways. In a country where we make a secret of everything connected with governance, nobody has told us how many soldiers and policemen we have lost to the terrorist scourge to date — as if those security operatives don’t have families. The least we can do, in our own self interest lest we all perish, is to give total support to our men in uniform.
The Jonathan administration will do well to take honest advice. So far, it is using the analogue system of the past which has since been overtaken by the complexity of the problem. The good old Nairaquine has been rubbished by a resistant strain of this novel virus of unspeakable terror. The United Nations recommends a minimum police strength of 222 per 100,000 people. As at 2012 we had achieved 205. That ratio looks good on paper but when one considers the fact that we are talking of a largely analogue force, it is clear that we have to rethink and retool. By the way, South Sudan has a ratio of 629 policemen per 100,000 people.
The first thing to do is dismantle the present police structure. Each state should have its own police force headed by a police chief who reports to the governor of the state. I have heard arguments about the possible misuse to which politicians could subject the state police. I think it smacks of intellectual laziness to just sit idly to parrot a cacophony of fears of the unknown instead of pooling ideas to surmount the problem of insecurity in the land.
As I have asked before, what makes the federal government more responsible than the states? I won’t be tired of reminding us that we had regional police forces in this country before. It was the military that unitarised everything in sight. That military mindset is all too evident in some of our democratically elected politicians today to the extent that they can’t imagine an arrangement where federating states have their full complement of powers to enable them function properly.
Then we have to overhaul the entire security apparatus. If we do things right, there are at least one million jobs to be created out there in the entire security superstructure. Perhaps we can look at how the shop is run in the US from where we copied the presidential system of government. The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a federation of 17 separate government agencies that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities considered neces-sary for the conduct of foreign relations and national security of the United States. Member organisations of the I.C. include intelligence agencies, military intelligence, and civilian intelligence and analysis offices within federal executive departments.
The way out for us in Nigeria is to create various layers of security as adjudged necessary for our circumstances including top-level operatives a La the US Seal. Then we should synergise with governments of the sub-region to get their cooperation. If terrorists have to wade through surveillance by local government police, state police and security agencies, and then contend with myriad other intelligence organisations with the National Bureau of Investigations at the apex, (without the possibility of hiding out in a neighbouring country) then their failure rate would be so high as to make terrorism unattractive.