Many years ago, Mr Ray Ekpu a prolific columnist wrote about scandals in the Nigeria telecommunication (Nittel) building along Marina, Lagos. Coincidentally, before people could finish reading and digest the piece, behold fire gutted the ten stories sky scrapper and police arrested him for writing ahead like a prophet. He was once my senior in Concord Newspaper, so if like Elisha who stepped into his master Elijahs shoes, it is that the prophetic string should continue. So as a security analyst, a position which by virtue of my training and three decades exposure, it is not too difficult to add up happenings in the country like adding up the insecurity which looks like politically motivated, the pandemic that has furiously challenged the health sector and the nose diving economic problems, bleak days are ahead.
Meanwhile, drumbeats are already echoing from USA ,where some youths carried out an inexplicable explosion in Nashville, Tennesse, Killing three persons on Christmas Day. While back home, the Directorate of State Security (DSS) warned about some groups planning to cause mayhem. ( To be continued)
————————————————————When there is vacuum !
One of the basic needs according to Maslows hierarchy of needs is security. Like food …water ..these are also needs that any attempt to deny them to invidividuals entitled to them from their Goverment tantamounts to denying the human rights of these citizens.
While in Nigeria where things that are abnormal seems to have the clout to be normal and the people accept to live with them, the high level of insecurity in the country has enabled all forms of mayhem prevail such as not seen in any country except failed states of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. This is even as countries such as Somalia and Sudan are emerging out of the quagmire of failed states.
What do these countries have in common …over-compromised security where worse than wild wild west in California of 18th century, anarchy reigns supreme, frequent violence inckudinf war fares, frequent kidnappings for ransom, political killings, the invasion of villages by suspected terrorists in the name of herdmen whose evil machinations include raping of women and killing them in broad day light.
The threat of Boko Haram like Taliban and ISIS (combined) has persisted since 1991 and despite claims by the government to have arrested the situation, they continued to attack sporadically and repeatly killing and maiming innocent Nigerians especially in the NorthWestern part of the country. The challenges the Boko Haram posed to the military continue to reveal to the world of a nation’s compromised military unready for battle inside Nigeria and to protect Nigerians from any invading army locally or from external enemies.
The Boko Harams repeated assaults on the military including confiscation of the Nigerian military recently acquired armoured vehicles showed an Army that needs complete retraining or recruitment of men and women across the nation that ought to serve the nation’s interest and not the tribal needs of the politicians and leaders
The kidnapping of school boys in Goverment technical school in Katsina, the home state of the president few days after the President visited his native state add to the layers of doubt whether the president is still equal to the task of leadership that he was elected into office to provide. It further reveals that even the presidents space is not protected and safe by the same commander in chief that in real sense deserved first class uncompromised security.
Like the incident of the kidnapped Chibok school girls in which more than 100 of over 270 kidnapped school girls are still missing, these insecurity of Nigeria not only projects Nigeria as a failed state but a country that would soon be archived in the history of countries run by humdrums like the Wild wild California of the 18th century and the 20/21st century Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Could there be a way out of this quagmire? the answer is yes. This is even as any further delay in arrest of the situation wolud be making catastrophic meaning worse than the situation.
Like we are witnessing with formatons of recognized and unofficial security groups across the country, they revealed that indeed nature abhors a vacuum. When insecurity festers, the part of human nature is to admit and seek a means to protect itself. Across the nation, different regions which is what advocates of restructured Nigeria are prescribing for Nigeria come 2023, the formation of Amotekum in the Southwest and Hisbah in the North are evidences of a of compromised police force and the military’s inability to function in orderly society.
In the Southeast where the vacuum is even more felt and because the five Southeastern governors are undecisive or are delaying to act by forming their regional security network, there has emerged a group called the Southeast Regional Security Network which according to unverifiable sources was fronted by Nnamdi Kalu, IPOB leader. Yes, while we may condemn the formation or existence of such private security entity that the group existed is because of vacuum that lack of adequately -trained men and women In the police and military forces has created. It is not only they are not well trained and equipped but in a nation where more than 60 per cent of men and women in the forces are ethnic loyalists picked and patched with camouflage uniforms.
What you see is what you get. Meaning that these men and women in police and military uniform are not nationalistic or are not there to protect the citizens and the nation.
In the absence of the bizzare vacuum of men and women to protect the country, the solution to the problem is not by individual groups creating their own defense and rag-tagged forces. The developments adds to the anarchy already reigning supreme across the country.
Who suffers from all these insecurities? Of course, it’s the common citizens. With inflation, rising, the economy takes more shocks for the lack of security. Foreign investors are turned away and with low export base, there is no way the country could survive. There is no end to the financial woes the country is facing. There is not enough foreign exchange to meet both domestic and international financial needs of the country. The dependency on foreign exchange remittances by Nigerians abroad or dipping hands into the pension funds to meet domestic and foreign financial needs of the county could only last or go far for few months. And what is next is unknown since the country’s future is bleak, not only with insecurity but with a leader that appeared no longer to be in charge of affairs in the country.
With insecurity and all these vacuums out in the various sections in Nigeria, can this be a pointer to the biblical saying: “To your tents oh Isreal” seems like the clarion call.
Not a call for dissolution of Nigeria, but agreed decision to restructure Nigeria before that final death-knell that is evidently seen where here one look in the country from domestic and international perspectives. A stitch in time saves Nigeria .
By Primus C.Igboaka Cleveland, Ohio.)