By Fred Chukwuelobe
Our security architecture is so rotten and that is why the fight against banditry and other criminal activities may not yeild the desired results and may fester for a long time to come.
1. The appointment of officers is so skewed in favour of tribe and political considerations than on competence and ability.
2. The system is corrupt and those appointed mindlessly loot for their tenth generation.
3. Those not able to loot look up to those ‘privileged’ to loot for help.
4. Those on the frontline are poorly equipped and poorly remunerated. Their welfare in and out of service is at best inadequate and inhuman. So, they don’t give their best.
4. Tribalism and ethnicity make it difficult for those who should hold government to account to become accessories to the mess. Those assigned to fight crime fight for their own interests and survival.
I just read a post on the timeline of my friend, Nnamdi Ikeh-Akabogu. He asked a rhetorical question: “After stealing from crash victims without helping any of the injured, what else you do for a living?” This got me thinking and I decided to share my experience.
In 2006, while returning from the village, I had an accident on Benin – Ore Road. My vehicle somersaulted and fell into the bush.
Policemen manning ‘an extortion checkpoint’ few meters away came to ‘our rescue,’ or so I thought, not until they asked me how much I would pay for them to pull us out.
When I finally managed to pull myself out of the wreckage, they stopped a towing van from towing the vehicle, demanding from me a police report that I was involved in an accident. When I asked them how they hoped I could have such a report, they said I should go to the nearest police station to get it before I could be allowed to tow the vehicle.
Meanwhile, one of us was slightly injured and needed hospitalization. That didn’t bother them.
Thank God I had a way to get them off my back and I used it. Otherwise, they would have extorted whatever remained with me and left us at the mercy of God.
When I relayed my experience to a friend, he told me I was lucky; that in his own case his sister had her leg mangled and these criminal minds stepped on the mangled legs, searched the vehicle, collected N2.5m they had and shouted, “make una do quick before people go come.” Then collected all the accident victims had and vanished without lending a helping hand.
These are human beings who swore to serve and protect. Any wonder criminality festers?
Let’s turn to the current haphazard government fight against banditry and other violent crimes. All the gragra you see government doing is to avoid US President Donald Trump sending American soldiers to intervene.
Whether we like it or not, the problem will remain unresolved and may never be resolved in our lifetime.
Imagine that as we argue, government has no solution to the banditry because the sponsors, the sympathisers, and the bandits are the ones fighting banditry.
The clueless government is being defended by those who would rather we remain “a disgraced country” because their person is in charge to truly being honest with ourselves and telling truth to the president: that he has failed and should resign or rejig his administration to counter the insurgency.
President Tinubu had no capacity to govern a diversified country like Nigeria. He instead took his turn and his turn has turned out to be nothing other than ‘Eko for show.’
We are closing Unity schools to prevent the bandits from abducting more children. What happens when they go after university students and civil servants? We shut the society?
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has been jailed for life. Congratulations, government. What about the bandits and their sponsors? You’re negotiating with them and paying them? You’re hobnobbing with them and spending our money feeding them? They use the money to buy more sophisticated weapons and get more emboldened? You budget more money to tackle insecurity and the money developes wings and fly away?
Troubling!
NB: Fred Chukwuelobe, was a Special Assistant to former Governor of Anambra, Chris Ngige on Media and Publicity.
