Nigeria’s Worsening Security Situation by Dr Kenny Odugbemi
The Multidimensional poverty ravaging 133m of Nigeria citizenship manifesting in form of hunger, anger, oppression have now metamorphosed into terrorism from instance of Boko Haram, kidnapping, killing and many held hostage whilst collecting heavy ransom, from credible intelligence the kidnappers use cellphone with NIN, and letter of attack to forward the community before the real attack, yet they still sustain thier operation, because of internal conniviance of miscreant s across various communities, make the terrorist more audacious in thier demand leveraging on thier own local intelligence sponsored by faceless cabals who remain undercover, yet we have National intelligence and State intelligence managed by diverse ethnic groups wrongly posted with good knowledge of environment, culture and language of host communities
SM Morgan intelligence- African focused research group has reported that more than 3,620 Nigerians were kidnapped for ransom from July 2023 till date SM intelligence stated Nigerian has paid more N302m, the kidnappers at present demanding for N100m from a victim calling on their daughter to show serious ness as the victim’s father struggles to pay ransom.
Typical question
Why is NIN not effective in tracking kidnappers demand
Why is the security interface and intelligence not respond at nick of time to deactivate this nuisance?
Why are we not tracking the kidnappers
Why does the security interface not collaborate with Air force if their is a collaboration to aid the rescue mission
Critical gaps
Non-critical of Security audit by third parties other than the existing security interface who tend to cover their gaps and inadequacies
State Police formation frustrated by Governors, with complaint of paucity of funds to give room for continuous impunity for looting in form of security vote
Kidnappers, terrorists communicate thier demand, no tracker to monitor the movement vin hilly mountain that are not motorable, so why not use the same drone bomb that kills people in spurious ways?
Police formation not well tooled to go after terrorist and kidnappers
Over reliance on Army Forms,not well remunerated,poor welfare structure, and low fire power
Investigation team and state intelligence are overwhelmed
Police formation who are insufficient with poor welfare,lack of sophisticated new AK 47 weaponry comparable to attackers in all form do not have well trained, hence police officer and Military died helplessly during combat operation
Military formation suffers internal attrition, is simply overwhelmed, under resource and under trained
Delay in Military attention due to incoherent Security intelligence network, because of lack of clarity, Military tends to exhibit restraints
Army formation were wrong use, for civil intervention instead of maintaining external aggression as the Military are trained to kill, not to be killed in urban confrontation
Recruitment is carried out without consideration for a clear understanding of culture, language that is why there is no accountability
Undue interference, when terrorist are captured and later released as claimed by the Chief of Defence, this is highly frustrating and keeping moral level at extremely low levels, not minding resources to train soldiers who often die regularly at every combat operation.
Conclusion
Civilians suffer the highest mortality of kidnapping-75% of death in kidnap cases were civilians,out of 570 death were civilians,122 kidnappers and 19; Secure agent
Unrecorded deaths of Army officers in every combat
It is time for present administration to stop politicking and politicizing issues of Security
It is time to restructure the security armforces to facilitate emergence of State police formation separated from Federal security formation
