Having proven to be a jinx fixer by taming the monster of petrol subsidy after it became a tough nut to crack by multiple administrarors led by strong men who have been at the Helms of political leadership of Nigeria ranging from General Sani Abacha, Ibrahim Babangida to Abdulsalam Abubakar including Olusegun Obasanjo both as military head of state and a democratically elected president, the scourge of insecurity can equally be slain by Tinubu if he applies a similar boldness, toughness and dexterity that he had deployed to end petrol and naira subsidies
WITH the United States of America (USA) President, Donald J. Trump, recently announcing that he is ready to send his country’s military “guns ablazing” to flush out those he referred to as Islamic jihadists killing Christians in Nigeria, it is as if a hornet’s nest has just been stirred — with bees going amok and stinging anyone and everyone in sight. The state of insecurity has gone so dire in a space of less than one month that Abuja, the seat of the federal govt, is said to have become no longer safe. The ugly situation has compelled the lawmakers who are based in Abuja to start helping President Tinubu seek solutions to the crisis actively.
And just as President Bola Tinubu’s administration was celebrating the recovery of the 24 schoolgirls abducted in Kebbi State and the 38 church worshippers kidnapped in a church Sunday, 23rd November in Kwara State — even while security agencies are still scrambling to secure the release of the rest of the more than 300 girls abducted from a school hostel in Niger State — multiple kidnappings have continued unabated across the middle and northern states of Nigeria.
In fact, in the past month, it would appear as if no Sunday has passed without the kidnapping or attempted kidnapping of innocent Nigerians and churchgoers. Presumably, school children (students) , worshippers and travellers have become the easiest targets for the criminals due to the large number of persons that can be abducted in one fell swoop by criminals.
Given the state of insecurity in our country, following the heightened rate of kidnappings and killings, and as a demonstration of my consistency in calling for the deregulation and decentralisation of the Nigerian Police, I have decided to republish this article, which l originally wrote and published on 15 January 2002, about 23 years ago. It is such welcoming news that President Tinubu appears to be on the path to becoming a jinx breaker if he follows through on all his policy pronouncements, including the national state of emergency on insecurity aimed at resolving the current crisis bedevilling our beloved country.
Below is the full article, which I originally published 23 years ago (when Olusegun Obasanjo was the president) in my column and multiple traditional and online newspapers:
Deregulating the National Security System.
The belief in some quarters that the Nigerian Police has been overwhelmed by criminals may at first sound like an exaggeration of the situation but evidence abounds that the nation is at the brink of anarchy owing to the spate of civil strife and armed banditry occurring around the country since the advent of the democratic system of government some two years ago.
The dismal security situation in the country, which has now been further exacerbated by the recent assassination of Chief Bola Ige, the nation’s charismatic Attorney General and Justice Minister, has further eroded the confidence of the few Nigerians who had been loath to give up on the nation’s security system.
Apparently embarrassed by the surge in crime at the nascent stage of this administration, President Olusegun Obasanjo proposed, and the National Assembly endorsed a generous increase in the year 2000 budgetary allocation to the police force. This was followed by an improved welfare scheme for officers and men, as well as a recruitment drive for four hundred thousand more personnel to make up for the inadequacy of human and material resources believed to be plaguing the force
Laudable as these policy initiatives are, crime and ethnic clashes in the country have been on the rise rather than decline. In light of the above, it is now apparent that the problem of the Nigerian Police does not entirely rest on a lack of personnel and tools to work with. Rather, it is a question of the increasing sophistication of the Nigerian society, which is geometrically proportional to the arithmetic progression of the Nigerian Police Force. In fact, pundits argue that if there is any progress at all in the Police, it must be cumulative experience arising from persistent practice rather than adoption of modern methods of crime prevention, which is the ideal expectation.
The above assertion is underscored by the fact that with the world increasingly becoming a global village via developments in information/communication technology, the interface of people in the so-called first world, like Europe and the United States with people in the third world like Nigeria, has remarkably increased to the extent that the knowledge gap has been greatly reduced. For instance, at the click of a button, an average person in Nigeria has access to the same information as his counterparts in the United Kingdom or the United States via the Internet. As a result of such virtual integration, the sophisticated attitudes and activities of the advanced societies have been rubbing off on our society. This implies that just as positive knowledge such as science and new technology, as well as lifestyles, are within the reach of every interested Nigerian, so also does insidious information relating to criminality beckon to criminally minded ones.
Sadly, while security systems in the advanced societies have been geared towards managing sophisticated crime in their society, our security system, no thanks to dysfunctional infrastructural facilities like electricity and telecommunications, is in a quandary and therefore unable to cope with sophisticated crimes. Take, for instance, the professionalism applied in the assassination of Chief Bola Ige as evidenced by the fact that he was shot with a bullet that dissolved inside his body and the careful planning that ensured that his security details were effectively out of the way at the time the crime was perpetrated. It is not by chance that the executors of this dastardly act spared no effort in ensuring that they left no trail, either through the bullet or eye witnesses such as the security men who could have put up some resistance and therefore attract attention. Indeed, I am convinced that the present difficulties being experienced by the police in apprehending the culprits of this heinous crime, 3several weeks after, is attributable to the dexterity of the criminals. The prayer now is that Ige’s assassination should not join the list of celebrated and unsolved murder cases by the Nigerian Police, which includes the gruesome murder of Newswatch magazine Editor, Dele Giwa, via parcel bomb in 1986 and the assassination of Octogenarian nationalist, Pa Alfred Rewane in cold blood, in 1995.
Having catalogued the increasing sophistication of crime in Nigeria and the frustrations of the police that is compelled to use primordial methods and tools to fight it, it is obvious that nothing short of a radical rethinking of the nation’s security system is necessary for the ugly trend to be reversed.
One of such radical ideas that lends itself to our present situation is the deregulation of the security system in the country. Although this may sound naive and even simplistic, the truth is that the solution to the burgeoning security situation in Nigeria is the deregulation of the sector.
For the avoidance of doubt, deregulation is about private sector involvement in providing efficient and effective services hitherto considered to be social services and therefore exclusively offered by public institutions which are inefficiently managed.
Evidence of the dividends of deregulation is the current improvements in telecommunication services in Nigeria, which is attributable to the licensing of second-generation mobile phones (GSM), the licensing of more independent telephone operators (Multilinks and Intercellular) and the privatisation of Nigerian telecommunications (NITEL).
By the same token, the proposed deregulation of electricity generation and distribution formerly monopolised by NEPA via the establishment of independent power plant (IPPs) by private investors promises to have salutary effects on the productivity of the manufacturing sector of the economy as well as further improve electricity supply to society. In addition, it is an open secret that the current enviable heights which the nation has attained in the fields of banking, aviation and broadcasting are products of deregulation of the sector via the structural adjustment programme (SAP) of the mid-1980s.
That these developments have had positive bearings on the efficiency of the economy in particular and society in general is incontrovertible, as the benefits of deregulation are all too glaring for anybody to need further convincing. So why shouldn’t the Nigerian security system as typified by the Nigerian Police which has been generally acknowledged as inefficient and ineffective also receive the deregulation therapy? This is the billion-naira question that the Nigerian authorities, the Presidency and Legislators must answer.
In my considered opinion, the first step towards achieving this objective is the licensing of private investigators to carry out the duties of preliminary investigations of crime. This proposal is borne out of the fact that the main area where the Nigerian Police has been found wanting is in investigation, as it is believed that the detective function is very time-consuming, taxing and requires high-tech gadgets and luxuries that police can ill-afford.
From available data, the police in their present circumstances do not possess the personnel with the right motivation and facilities to conduct investigations at the right speed and with utmost transparency. This is a derivative of the general belief that most Investigating Police Officers (IPOs) are of questionable character bordering on integrity.
To be fair, police analysts have been citing poor remuneration as the reason an average police officer may be prone to compromise integrity and professionalism. Sympathisers to the cause of the police force also point out that until the year 2000, the average amount of money paid to a police officer who dies on duty was a paltry sum of one thousand five hundred naira (N1,500). In addition to the anguish of having lost a breadwinner, it is also alleged that the deceased’s families are often thrown out of police quarters shortly after. Happily, Solomon Akiga, the Minister in charge of Police Affairs has announced that government effort in turning around the fortune of the police at least in terms of welfare is already yielding fruit as officers and men are no longer being owed backlog of salaries and the sum paid to the families of cops who die on duty has been upped to a handsome sum of one hundred and fifty thousand naira (N150,000.00).
To complement the above-mentioned morale-boosting developments in the police, it will be ideal for the private sector to be allowed to get involved in security and safety with highly trained and properly motivated personnel, as well as sophisticated equipment. I have no doubt that such blending of private sector result-orientedness in investigation with police enforcement will result in a safer and better environment for Nigerians to live and work in.
Now, one is not unmindful of the very sensitive nature of security, which makes it mandatory for that function to be carried out exclusively by professionally qualified people. Fortuitously, there is a horde of highly trained senior police officers and military personnel on early retirement, sad casualties of previous military governments, to choose from for licensing as private investigators. This also comes with multiple benefits as the nation will have an opportunity to call back into active service officers that government had invested huge resources to train but had suddenly been forced into early retirement while in the same breadth creating jobs for the army of unemployed Nigerian youths who will be trained to act as operatives in the private investigation outfits while achieving its primary objectives of enthroning peace and tranquillity in the society.
Incidentally, security not only ensures peace through the absence of chaos and anarchy in a society as it also guarantees the presence of economic development. This is because the security of lives and property, like efficient telecommunication, regular electricity supply, good roads and portable water, are sine qua non for foreign investors to be interested in an economy.
So, if government is serious about its quest for foreign direct investment (FDI) in Nigeria, as reflected in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s frequent travels abroad, then putting the nation’s security system in order via deregulation should be top priority.
IT is astonishing, and it feels like deja vu that 23 years after l wrote the piece above, insecurity seems to have degenerated from bad to an abysmally worse level.
But one can take solace in the belief that the current rash of kidnappings and killings appears to be the last kick of a dying horse. In fact, to put it more succinctly, the alarming rate of criminality in the past month could be likened to when antibiotics are applied by doctors to cure an ailment in a patient.
The first dose usually awakens the bacteria or virus, and the patient could become even sicker, but when the medication is continuously applied, the active bacteria eventually succumb.
That, I believe, is what is currently playing out in the security space in Nigeria, whereby the rate of criminality has become so high that there is a sort of frenzy and the Nigerian masses are justifiably very frightened.
But with persistent pressure from the President — who has truly become the Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces by leading from the front in the war room as Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump as C-in Cs did when they were faced with similar crisis of terrorism — I am optimistic that this evil chapter in story of Nigeria will soon be over if President Tinubu doesn’t blink in the manner he pushed back against resistance to the bold reforms he had introduced in the past two and half years of being on the saddle of leadership in Aso Rock villa presidential seat of power.
Having proven to be a jinx fixer by taming the monster of petrol subsidy after it became a tough nut to crack by multiple administrarors led by strong men who have been at the Helms of political leadership of Nigeria ranging from General Sani Abacha, Ibrahim Babangida to Abdulsalam Abubakar including Olusegun Obasanjo both as military head of state and a democratically elected president, the scourge of insecurity can equally be slain by Tinubu if he applies a similar boldness, toughness and dexterity that he had deployed to end petrol and naira subsidies.
Working in synergy with American and other international partners that are pledging to help, one is not being too optimistic to imagine that Nigerians, especially those in the vulnerable regions who are currently living in mortal fear of the marauding bandits and outlaws, would soon be sleeping with their two eyes closed.
For now, although the battle seems fierce, in the long run, the war would be won if fought consistently with vigour as insecurity moves to the front burner in Tinubu’s governance priority list.
With a national state of emergency on security declared by the C-in C, the lawmakers in Abuja organizing brainstorming sessions to come up with actionable policies, and even as the 36 governors in the nation who have risen from an emergency meeting convened to tackle frontally the challenge of insecurity have urged the FGN to approve the suspension of mining activities (a causative factor of insecurity) in the northern axis for six (6) months to enable a reset, clearly the two of the three branches of government are working assidously towards accomplishing a common goal of ending insecurity, so the fingers of most Nigerians are crossed as they hope for the best.
- Magnus Onyibe is an entrepreneur, public policy analyst, author, democracy advocate, and development strategist. He is an alumnus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, USA, a Commonwealth Institute scholar, and a former commissioner in the Delta State government. He sent this piece from Lagos.