Our security in our own hands
RECENTLY, the Pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, issued a statement demanding a new policing arrangement for the country – one that will allow multi-level policing and what it called homeland security.
Afenifere was reacting to the gruesome murder of the Olufon of Ifon, Oba Israel Adeusi on November 26, 2020. It also recalled similar brutal murder of Mrs. Funke Olakunrin, daughter of Afenifere Leader, for which some herdsmen are currently on trial. In the past five years, insecurity has become the buzzword that describes the Nigerian condition.
Those who choose to bury their heads in the sand like the ostrich, pretending that the reality does not exist, may have the right to self-deceit. But they cannot wish away or erase the fact that Nigeria (at 8.314 score) wears the toga of the third most terrorised country in the world, after Afghanistan (9.592) and Iraq (8.682).
The above statistics is not a ‘witch-hunt’ as those who seek to conceal the sore for selfish interests often allege. Global Terrorism Index, GTI, report is published annually by the revered Institute for Economic and Peace, IEP, and gives no hoot about whose ox is gored. The truth is that Nigerians are in more trouble than the GTI indicate. This is because the country’s federal security agencies, which enjoy the monopoly of providing security, are no longer able to secure the lives and property of the citizens.
To make matters worse, Nigerians who bear the brunt of this carnage, are deep asleep. We have sounded the warning before, and one does not need to be a security expert to know that after the campaign for Boko Haram to take complete control of Northern Nigeria is completed, the push towards the Southern states will intensify. If the North, with its sterling record of illegal arms proliferation cannot protect themselves, how will unarmed citizens in the South be able to do so? In every country ravaged by terrorism, it is a well-known fact that people who do nothing else but complain, like Nigerians do, are only extending invitations to death.
Everyday, innocent people are massacred; the President’s aides issue statements on his behalf, regretting the massacre. The rest of Nigerians and lawmakers urge the President to do something, knowing fully well that nothing will be done; soon it happens again and again, and the process continues. The issue of security of the people has become too crucial to be left solely in the hands of the type of federal security agencies we have now in Nigeria. Whatever name it is called – multi-level policing, homeland security or state police – our security must be in our own hands, otherwise, we all perish. Vanguard
