By Adeyemi Okediran
In recent times, Nigeria has witnessed an unprecedented level of insecurity. This has made national security threats to be a major issue for the government and has prompted a huge allocation of the national budget to security along with grants from foreign countries.
Insecurity, especially internal is not a problem that is unique to Nigeria. Other countries both developing and developed face the challenge. The difference however between some of them and our country, Nigeria is how they manage and tackle such threats.
It’s an open secret that the world is faced with security challenges, some of the major security challenges confronting the nation however have been identified to include: conflicts, socio-economic agitations, political and electioneering, ethnicity, cultism, criminality and to a wide extent corruption.
The key starting point to face the issue of security challenge isn’t to make move to its eradication directly but to understand the cause of security challenges as well as investigate their sources and with that, a remedy could be accomplished.
Nevertheless, security challenges can be traced to a lack of institutional capacity from government failure to standardize the security institutions with needed and necessary things. As a matter of fact, some of the institutional frameworks are very shaky and have provoked a deterioration of state governance and democratic accountability, hence, paralyzing the formal and legitimate rules nested in the hierarchy of social order. In a genuine manner, the security challenges in most cases are greatly traced and linked to government failure.
The abduction of over 100 schoolgirls, by suspected members of the Boko Haram sect, at the Government Girls ’ Technical Secondary School, Dapchi, Yobe State, Fulani herdsmen clashed with farmers, the militants in Niger Delta, and kidnappers were the most daring act in recent times.
One problem is that security expertise is limited in Nigeria where this level of terrorism is a relatively new phenomenon. And training, as well as resources for building that type of intelligence gathering capability, is lacking.
Every country has its fair share of security challenges, but when the state of insecurity rises by the day, then there is a need for urgent action.
That Nigeria is passing through a turbulent period is visible even to the blind. Drums of insurgency and criminality are currently beating so loud across the country that it is difficult to appreciate the rhythm of Nigeria’s celebration of democracy. Lending credence to this is the implications of security challenge and reasons why insecurity remains unabated chronicled earlier in this work. That the Boko Haram Saga and other related issues are threatening the unity of the country is an understatement. However, it is beyond pretense that virtually all the problems associated with this sorry state of Nigeria are caused by Nigerians either covertly or overtly.
Insecurity in Nigeria has posed a national question and up till this moment, no credible answer has been provided.
How functional are the espionage or intelligence-gathering and analysis departments of our security agencies? Are the officers well trained well equipped and well-motivated? Is their knowledge about covert or undercover operations up to date? Are round pegs being put in round holes? Imagine, what sense would it make to send a Christian-Igbo intelligence officer who has no in-depth knowledge of the Hausa language to infiltrate Boko Haram?
It still dazzles me how our own beloved country, Nigeria is now a valley of death in a twinkle of an eye. Reflecting on the national agenda, day after day, weeks after weeks, and months after months, we are still in a jeopardize state of the union talking about the same level and magnitude of insecurity in a country where we are spending so much on security architecture. At a point in time, it occurs to me if the money incurred on security is not blood money, because the more the army got killed due to the incapability of good weapons the more money is disbursed to the security sector.
It is becoming so alarming, customary, ritualistic, and a pattern if we still complain about the same thing and we’re yet to conclude on a decisive purposeful, coordinated, organized approach to curtailing ameliorating and palliating these problems.
This is a country where the government never stops talking about the economy. The problem is if they should revive the economy, for who are they reviving it for; for people that are dying or for the death? It’s high time we re-prioritize reorganized our priorities.
So far so good, there is no security not to talk of welfare, and in a sane clime, you need to be alive to even enjoy welfare. It’s high time the government takes this beyond the rhetoric presentation on a daily basis. It’s no doubt that from the president to the least appointed/elected are protected by the mobile police and even the army. Who is to protect the common man on the street? Who is to protect those poor souls in Zamfara? Who is to protect the farmers in Plateau? It’s high time we move away from rhetorics and sensational presentation and call a spade a spade.
Let the president of the nation called giant of Africa come out and show capacity as the chief commander of the arm forces. As the case may be if there’s a need for international support let’s decide on that now if we need international collaboration to let’s meet with the right team on time and we should not just be concentrating on creating funds for the armies and other forces without looking at the police their ends.
It is an open secret that intelligent gathering in this country is dead and non-existent. It’s unapologetic knowing that events will happen and there will be signs and signals that they will happen and they will happen and there will be no sensible remedy to curtail it from happening again and again.
Criminals are not spirits from outer space, they are human beings with flesh and blood, breathing the same air as everybody.
The right time to take the security challenges as a serious business in Nigeria is today and not the day after tomorrow, we want to see a working security program a decisive pragmatic approach to these problems. We cannot just continue to have sensational headlines on pages of newspapers.
