From Aloysius Attah, Onitsha
A renowned security expert, Mr. Sam Otoboeze has raised the alarm that the rising state of insecurity in the country may threaten the smooth conduct of the 2023 general elections scheduled for February next year if urgent steps are not taken by the government now.
Otoboeze who spoke in an interview with Daily Sun yesterday said people may be too intimidated to go out and vote on Election Day going by the realities on ground at the moment across different parts of Nigeria.
According to him, campaign grounds already look like potential vulnerable targets for the terrorists who now operate with impunity across the country.
He said that it will take the grace of God to have a free and fair election where insecurity is high, pointing out that the first thing to do was to deal with insecurity to have a peaceful elections.
Otoboeze noted that if insecurity was not dealt with, “we don’t need a soothsayer to say that the elections would be marred and that portends a gloomy future for the country “.
He lamented the collapse of the country’s security architecture which led to the invasion of the Kuje Medium Correctional Centre without a counter attack from security services.
The security consultant frowned at the lack of operational response from the security services guarding such a high profile facility describing the incident as a compromise on the part of the security personnel.
He warned that for terrorists who have demonstrated significant capacity to inflict serious injuries on the society to be let loose from a detention center portends danger and worse times ahead.
“We need to understand the mentality of terrorists, they want publicity and to make news. The information going out from the villa and security agencies shows that something is wrong; the military and paramilitary agencies are compromised”.
He called for vetting of security personnel deployed to sensitive national infrastructure and the recalibration of the security architecture to curtail the rising cases of insecurity.
Otoboeze blamed competition instead of collaboration amongst the different arms of the security services as largely responsible for the recurring security breaches.
He advocated the need to recalibrate the nation’s security architecture so that INEC would have the capacity to discharge its duties in the forthcoming elections.