Temple Chima Ubochi
 | ubochit@yahoo.comBonn, Germany |
You have to be more careful in a world filled with all types of weapons, some of which are in the hands of terrorists (Boris Yeltsin)
We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded (Barack Obama)
resident Goodluck Jonathan, while speaking to CNN, has said that in the next three months the problem of Boko Haram insurgency would have been significantly eradicated. In his words, President Jonathan said: "We are not negotiating with Boko Haram. It is done all over the world. It is not negotiation. We are not begging. Our security architecture was first designed to deal with ordinary criminals but since terror started, we have been building it. I believe if you are to interview me again in three months' time, you will praise me that this government has tried. We are tackling terror from various angles. We must first of all stop them through military intervention, which we have initiated by declaring a state of emergency in three states where these terror attacks are predominant."
This column will remind the President what he said here in three months time, if the Boko Haram’s menace is not curbed by then. It’s easier for Nigerian leaders to say many things, but, when it comes to action, everything gets stalled. It’s not the first time President Jonathan has promised to get something done, only to fail to fulfill his promise within the time frame he set for himself. But, if the President is serious, he should get started by exposing the Boko Haram sponsors and the sect’s apologists who infiltrated his government.
POROUS BORDERS SABOTAGING EFFORTS TO DEFEAT THE INSURGENTS
The next problem that is sabotaging the Nigerian security forces’ efforts in the war against the insurgents is our porous borders. We learnt that there are 1,497 illegal routes into Nigeria! The governmental forces should plug those border loopholes first, if the insurgents must be routed, because, they (the insurgents) cross over into the neighbouring countries whenever the heat from the security forces becomes intense and unbearable only to cross back into Nigeria to perpetrate heinous crimes, and then escape again (thereafter) across the borders. Nigeria is surrounded by countries which are potentially breeding grounds for Islamic terror (hotbed of terrorism) such as Chad, Niger, Sudan, Somalia etc. Some of these countries serve as safe heavens for the wanted Boko Haram leaders, and must be one of the reasons they had evaded arrest. Those wanted Islamist insurgence leaders, still on the loose, are issuing orders to their followers, even to those inside Nigeria, from their hideouts in those neighbouring countries with foreign phone lines, despite the fact that the military forces shut down the Global System of Mobile (GSM) Communications in the three states where the state of emergency were declared.
Many of those people causing troubles in Nigeria in the name of Islam are not even Nigerians, but foreigners who are paid to destabilise Nigeria, as they can cross the borders into Nigeria easily. Some neighbouring countries are jealous of Nigeria, are being intimidated by Nigeria’s size, material and human resources, and are glad to destabilize the country to make it to remain a “big for nothing” entity. Previously, this writer wrote that “Many of these Islamic fundamentalists are from neighbouring countries, and are entering into Nigeria to cause mayhem due to the porous nature of our borders. The borders are porous and have become free inlets for the illegal importation of arms and ammunition and religious fanatics. Who knows how many potential Boko Harams are infiltrating now through the porous borders from Chad, Niger, Sudan etc and would soon mix up with local populations in the border areas and start claiming to be Nigerians with holier-than-thou attitude?
About 2 weeks ago, the Citizen reported that the European Union has confirmed fears of foreign support for insurgents’ activities in Nigeria: The European Union Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Mr. David Macrae, has said there is foreign interest in the security challenges facing the country. He said: “We were all very surprised, especially by the suicide bombings because as we all know that Nigeria has a lot of life. The idea that Nigerians will want to sacrifice their lives for such a ridiculous calls is beyond the comprehension of Nigerians. We can only think that this kind of thing is foreign inspired.” He said terrorism could not be tied to religion, saying “it is criminal”. He added that the perpetrators should be treated as criminals. Macrae said the EU will be very supportive of Inter-faith dialogue, as dialogue and understanding are the keys to a long term solution. Macrae said it was a shame that the country had not harnessed its vast mineral resources. He said: “Here in Nigeria, we have the oil but some call it a curse because during this time that the oil has been flowing, things have not been going the way they should have. There are imbalances in the economy. There are not enough activities taking place to provide jobs. It is a shame! There is a lot of importation of things like fruits in a country which has plentiful land. Really much more could be done to develop agriculture and should have been done in the past. Those things the country had in the past which were not put to good use have all contributed to the situation we find ourselves here”. Citing Rwanda as an example, Macrae noted that despite its numerical and economic disadvantage, it had been recording high rate of economic growth while in Nigeria with its population strength “there has been growth which has not been inclusive. Nigeria has tremendous possibilities in the people with very lively society but lacked governance. We need accountability and an end to impunity”. He also recommended strong institutional framework, if investments are to be sustainable. He added: “It is not sustainable if you have non-accountability. There is need for total accountability and transparency for all public monies spent. The idea of centrally transferring money to the States or to Local Governments which are not being accounted for, is not the way to go”.
Major Wisdom Osagiede Ogbewekon-Osemwende, a Nigerian serving in the United States Army, who served in Iraq during the American/Iraqi war and is currently attached to the African Command in Germany, told Vanguard recently that “A division that is made up of men and officers from all branches of the armed forces should be created to join the Customs, Immigration and police to patrol our porous borders with Cameroun, Chad, Niger, etc. They should effectively man the border points because this is where the Boko Haram people leave for Mali and Mauritania for training. The Nigerian government should be prepared to spend money on technology, censors and radars should be mounted at sensitive border points to monitor what is going on. The Federal Government can establish three central control divisions to man Nigerian/Cameroun, Nigerian/Niger, and Nigerian/Chad borders with radar installed to monitor the movements of people. The radar will send information to the central divisions and place those on patrol at alert. This is what the Boko-Haram people do and they move with ease in and out of the country to train in Mali and other countries. There is also the need to install underground sensors along the borders with our neighbours that will send signals to the central control system which, in turn, calls for air support in cases of emergency. The security agencies should train dogs to sniff persons and cars coming into the country because terrorism takes time to plan. It is not done overnight. They select targets to be attacked, they have good intelligence network and so, to counter them, you must have an intelligence gathering system that is superior to their own. The Federal Government should erect walls along our borders with our neighbours as the United States government did along its Mexican borders when it became clear that there were illegal aliens entering the country through its borders with Mexico”.
The Tribune Editorial puts it that one of the challenges with which the country is currently confronted because of and in addition to the sustained Boko Haram criminality in the North and pockets of Movement for Niger Delta Emancipation (MEND) insurgency in the Niger Delta is the issue of foreign insurgents taking advantage of the country's porous borders to inflict severe damage on it. The point has been made by both political observers and officials of the Federal Government that President Goodluck Jonathan's recent declaration of a state of emergency in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states was partly informed by the roles reportedly played by brigands from the neighbouring countries in the Boko Haram attacks in the respective states. Chilling accounts had been given of the incident which occurred in Bama town in Bama Local Government Area of Borno State when about 55 policemen, 10 State Security Service (SSS) personnel and others were reportedly killed, with residents insisting that most of the insurgents they saw were Nigeriens and Cameroonians, led by local almajiris who showed them the places they attacked. Senate President David Mark had in fact attributed the influx of brigands into the country to its porous borders during a recent public hearing for the amendment of the Border Communities Development Agency.
Indeed, as if to confirm that the accounts of foreign insurgency in the country were not mere conjectures, the Federal Government had recently uncovered a staggering 1,497 illegal routes through which criminally-minded foreigners had found easy passage into the country. Appalled by the scenario, it had approached the United States of America (USA) to assist in addressing the problems of the nation's porous borders. Minister of Interior, Mr Abba Moro, who recently dropped this hint in Abuja while presenting the scorecard of his ministry to the members of the National Working Committee (NWC) of his party and the media, itemised other measures which had been adopted to curb the menace. While, according to him, the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) would erect control tolls and border plazas at all the identified routes for proper monitoring, with massive deployment of electronic surveillance equipment to the borders, consultations were also ongoing with the United States' Department of State to assist with the deployment of modern equipment to the borders. In addition, the minister said the government had been discussing with a Chinese private company to provide the needed modern security equipment for its borders and that the proposal was to cost $244 million.
To be sure, the extant picture of local and foreign Boko Haram is certainly a grim challenge that the country must tackle with decisive and immediate drastic measures to guarantee its continued existence as a sovereign entity. While cultural and historical factors as well as Economic Community of West African States' (ECOWAS) conventions will continue to ensure fluidity of legitimate movement across the country's borders, particularly in the context of the stark and stubborn reality that most of the geopolitical cleavages to which Black Africa was subjected by the colonial overlords were patently artificial spaces constructed without the benefit of cultural pragmatics, there is, in our view, an urgent need to ensure that geographical affinity is not exploited to threaten the country's sovereign integrity. Thus, while citizens of Nigeria's Francophone or Anglophone neighbouring countries should feel free and be readily welcome to do their legitimate businesses in the country, those who would choose to enter the country for the expressed or unstated purpose of violating its laws either through illegitimate businesses or for the purpose of insurgency should be treated as enemies of the Nigerian state and dealt with strictly according to the law.
We recall that we have, at various times, drawn the federal and state governments' attention to the unending tragedy at the nation's borders. But the continuing reality of the threat of a possible secession from, in particular, the North-East, arising from the festering of individuals who, as President Jonathan noted, owe their allegiances to different flags and ideologies, should spur the Federal Government to take even more drastic measures to curb the menace, particularly as the terrorists' confidence has been reportedly bolstered by the external assistance received form al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. The House of Representatives recently came up with a resolution mandating its Committee on Interior to liaise with the Ministry of Interior and the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) to construct perimeter fences with in-built sensors and cameras to properly demarcate the country's boundaries, check illegal entry and facilitate the possession, by the NIS, of proper statistics of those coming into the country. However, given that the continued failure in arresting illegal entry has been attributed to an ill-equipped and psychologically unprepared security apparatus, there is an urgent need to ensure that the agencies saddled with protecting the country's borders are given the benefit of constant re-training and motivation, while both inter-agency cooperation and international collaboration should be taken many notches higher to ensure that productive results emerge from the government's efforts
FAILURE OF THE SECURITY FORCES TO USE DOGS, EARLIER, TO GUARD PLACES
Knowing what to do to solve an emerging problem, but, hesitating, and then, doing that same thing only when the problem has gotten out of hand is foolishness. Many of us know that the Islamic zealots dread dogs and would avoid anywhere they are kept. This writer wants to ask why the security forces didn’t deploy trained military and police dogs to guard strategic places and churches all the while Boko Haram was rampaging all over the north? Didn’t the security forces know that those religious zealots hate dogs with passion and would never go close to any place where dogs are guarding as suicide bombers? If you take anything belonging to those religious zealots, they would abandon such thing for any person without a fight once a dog comes into the picture; just to tell you how afraid those fanatics are whenever they see dogs. A fanatic on a suicide mission would abdicate the mission once he sees an Alsatian dog at the place he was supposed to detonate himself and the bomb. This writer wonders if those training the anti-terrorism squads are not including the handling of dogs in their programmes. A dog can do more job here as it can sniff out hidden bombs which the human eyes can’t see. Many of the lives lost and property destroyed could have been saved, if fierce looking dogs were deployed in the war against the insurgents from the very beginning (including, may be, the lives of the 15 personnel of the Nigerian Army, comprising two majors and 13 soldiers, who were killed in action by members of the Boko Haram sect in Borno, Yobe and Darfur, who were buried in Abuja on Thursday July 25, 2013). To show that Nigerian officials know what to do, but, will not do it at the right time; the Sun Newspapers wrote that “No fewer than 50 insurgents have been captured by troops of the Special Forces in the ongoing military offensive in northern Nigeria against the Boko Haram sect. In an update on the operations, in Abuja, signed by the Director of Defence Information (DDI), Brigadier General Chris Olukolade, the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) disclosed that the 50 insurgents were arrested with the aid of trained military police dogs deployed to aid troops in the operations. In the words of Brigadier Olukolade: "The efforts of the specially trained dogs have led to the arrest of the over 50 terrorists, who were trying to infiltrate Maiduguri. More than 15 of them were arrested with arms concealed in their body or property. Various attempts being made by the insurgents to enter towns and cities in the North East as troops dislodge them from their forest bases, have been foiled by the dogs. The trained dogs were deployed to participate in the search for the terrorists”.
Read this:
THE LULL IN SECURITY CONSCIOUSNESS AMONGST THE PEOPLE
Nigerians have overslept, just like their leaders; that’s why insecurity is ruling the land. Previously, Nigerians never wholly entrusted the authorities with their personal security, because, they have never been there for the people. The police, military forces and other security agencies have always seen the people as “enemies” to be maltreated or exploited. That has been the reason why people had always taken their security into their own hands, and it worked well, to certain extent, for them. The police always complain of lack of weapons or no money to fuel their vehicle or no personnel to send whenever a call is placed that armed robbers are operating in the vicinity, but, once the robbery operation is over and the robbers had left with the stolen items, the police would then “surface” at the crime scene, and will start asking “wey dem”. It has been the pattern from time immemorial. That was the reason the Onitsha traders and masses invented the words “Boys Oye” in the 1970s to deal with armed robbers tormenting them persistently in the 1970s and 1980s, and the method drastically reduced the menace then. The Onitsha residents dealt with the serious security threats of that time in their own way. Many towns and cities also invented peculiar parlance for “instant justice” used in dealing with armed robbers and mischief makers. Aba residents are well known for their “Nzogbu Enyimba Enyi” and the “Bakassi Boys” outfit. But from 2000, at the start of the current political dispensation, Nigerian people have forsaken things which worked well for them, thereby entrusting everything into the hands of the political leaders who are not there for them. In the 1970s and 1980s, every suspicious person or movement was questioned; every unexplained wealth was questioned; every unknown face in the neighbourhood was noticed and monitored, and all these reduced the crime rate. Those days, armed robbers would never enter any place where the door or the gate is open, because of the fear that the owner or owners of the house or compound may have already prepared to attack them, but, nowadays, the armed robbers would thank their lucky stars if they meet the doors or gate to the place of their operation open.
Although many kidnappers or many armed robbers or some of the terrorists were thugs recruited and armed by politicians for their election purposes (to intimidate their political opponents), and those thugs “graduated” to become kidnappers or armed robbers or terrorists, as the case may be, after they were used and dumped by the politicians. But, these dread criminals started as amateurs before metamorphosing into the monsters they later became. Those criminals have families, villages, communities, and when their people started noticing the dangerous change in their living style, why didn’t the members of their families or village or community report them (when the dangerous habits in them started manifesting)? If families or villages or communities had reported those criminals when they were amateur criminals, may be, they wouldn’t have grown into the monsters and untouchables they later became.
To be continued!
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