Olakunle Olafioye
Chairman of Trans-World Security Systems Ltd, Dr. Ona Ekhomu has called on bank Chief Security Officers (CSOs) to anticipate and mitigate security threats that could have severe negative impact on banking operations, bank workers, bank customers and members of the public.
These security threats are likely to grow in frequency and be aggravated by factors such as decline in public policing, increase in stranger on stranger violent crimes, as well as increase in terrorism, insurgency and militancy.
Ekhomu argued that dwindling government revenues evidenced by the shrinkage in the value of the national budget will result in more poverty and a concomitant rise in security threats that must be addressed by bank CSOs.
Delivering a paper titled “The Future of Security Management” at the 12th Annual Security Retreat for CSOs of Banks in Nigeria organized by the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, Dr. Ekhomu who is the first chartered security professional in West Africa decried the sharp increase in the rate of terrorist attacks including insurgency, militancy, kidnapping, assassination, criminal explosions. He said: “armed robbers now use dynamite, hand grenades and even rocket-propelled grenades (RPGS) in their operations. Aside from the use of explosives ordnance, bank robberies are now very high fatality events. The recent Offa (Kwara State) bank robberies resulted in about one dozen police deaths.
Dr. Ekhomu advised bank security officials to counsel their corporate population against indiscriminate road travel due to the threat of kidnapping by suspected herdsmen.