Story by Dili Utomi.
The security situation within Nigeria seems to have defied all remedies as the days go by and rather than improve for the better, it is getting worse. In various parts of the country, there are kidnappings for ransom, abductions, killings, revenge killings and sometimes a whole community of people is almost completely annihilated. Recently, some States of Nigeria have become more notorious for these unfortunate events. Anambra State for one has been getting the spotlight for the dire security situation there, recently.
It was in consideration of these unfortunate circumstances that we went to town to seek the opinion of a public concerned individual who follows the socioeconomic and political trends in Nigeria. He is a man who is deeply troubled by the deplorable state that Nigeria is falling into and he wants urgent and lasting solutions to all the problems. Mr. Kevin Chinedu Okechukwu is a businessman of repute who is the chairman and chief executive officer of Nedu Logistics and Panama hotels as well as the chairman of Kirikiri Truckers Association. He is also an Anambrarian. We present a verbatim version of the interview below.
Question: Recently there has been an upsurge in crimes and criminality within your state, Anambra. This is not good for politics, it’s not good for the economy, it is not good for the socials. What do you think are the root causes?
Answer: Actually, just like you said, the security situation in Anambra is something to panic about. It is a very serious situation. I traveled to Anambra over the Christmas period and was there up into January, I think I was there for about three weeks, I witnessed firsthand the security situation. Actually, I will start by saying that Anambra state is not well policed, especially in the entire hinterland. When you go to the villages, you hardly see the presence of police. Even the police stations are deserted. Many of the policemen want to run away from Anambra State, especially in the villages. So you now find out that you don’t have the police presence, not to talk of any military presence. The only places you see the police and their checkpoints are far away close to the cities, so that basic security is not there. It is only the local vigilantes that are there and these local vigilantes that we are talking about are not trained, they are not well armed, they are just the regular people that you know and there is nothing much they can do. They do not even have ordinary communication gadget. They do not have anything. We have to arrest the security situation in Anambra state. That means governments have to bring in more security men, policemen into Anambra state, because Anambra State is highly under policed. That is where we have to start.
We have criminal gangs in the bushes in Anambra State, there are a lot of them and they stay there because they know that we do not have proper security. We do not have enough police personnel that will challenge them, the few available policemen in the areas are afraid. They won’t even patrol with uniform. They are sneaking in and sneaking out. It is a fact that the villagers are even protecting the police and not the police protecting them now, that is the truth.
When you go to the hinterland in Anambra State, it is usually the villagers that protect the police, because they hide within the populace, wearing civilian clothes, pretending to be civilians, while we now use the local securities to do one or two things. In most parts of Anambra State now, if anything happens to you, you cannot report to the police. Even if you report to the police, the police will say, go and arrest that criminal, go and arrest the person and bring ihim or her to us at this station. So it is left for you to arrest that criminal and then take the person to a big police station, this is because the small police stations are no longer existing in practice, so you have to take the suspect to the nearest town where they still have a functional police station, this ardouos situation has made it that criminals are no longer afraid because there is virtually no police to arrest them or enforce the law.
Question:: Okay, sir, what do you think are the major problems? Is it that the authorities do not have the political will to do their job or the policemen are not properly coordinated, or that their morale is low, or that the equipment are not there? What are the major issues giving rise to this situation? Are more criminals going in from other states into Anambra to perpetuate these criminalities?.
Answer: No in Anambra State, especially most part of the South East, there are political agitators, some call them separatists. Those separatists are there and they have criminals that hide under these political agitators to perpetrate crime. So sometimes you don’t know who are the agitators or who are the criminals. Some people are actually out and out criminals. We equally have those agitators, so all of them don’t know who is who. So it now makes it very difficult for government and police to know what to do because sometimes you think you are fighting the agitators, but that may not be so. Well as it looks now, they are ordinary criminals that are operating because of joblessness, most young boys now will tell you that they are doing yahoo (online fraud), but it is even more serious than that, they engage in diverse criminal activities, many of them are kidnappers.
They will tell their parents that they are doing yahoo (online fraud). In Nigeria now, when people are doing fraud, most people don’t take it to be a crime anymore, they have fully accepted online fraud as legitimate business. So the parents even clap for their children. To them their children are doing well. They are coming with big cars. They are building houses, if you ask their parents, what job is your son doing? The parent will answer, my son is a Yahoo boy, without the parent knowing that their son is a kidnapper. No, that’s what many of them do in the name of Yahoo. When they kidnap you and collect ₦10 million or ₦20 million, they will come back to the village and they start spending money big time claiming to be Yahoo boys.
So government needs to have a very good synergy between all the security agents. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) will arrest a kidnapper while thinking that he is a fraudster and not knowing that the guy is a kidnapper, but because EFCC wants to get something from the fraudster, they will not even report the issue to the police. The Department of State Security (DSS), the police, the army are not working together as they should as they see themselves as rivals. Every agency is working in most cases at cross purposes, whereas in this kind of situation, all the security agents are supposed to be sharing information, but some hoard information, we have cases where somebody will commit big crime and will fall into the hand of another agency that is not in charge of that particular case.
If drug is found on a criminal and he is caught, they will handle it as a drug case and leave it as drug case, whereas the guy is equally a kidnapper, equally an armed robber, or the guy might even be a terrorist, but because they are not working together, the criminal will not be properly prosecuted. The truth is also that all these security agencies are not well funded. They go out to work and make money to fund themselves and also to enrich themselves, government does not fund them well. Sometimes you see that villagers contribute money to help them in logistics support one way or the other. Sometimes, if you have security information, even if you give the credible information to the police or the DSS, they might not have the necessary money or proper logistics equipment to swing into action, they will be waiting until the government funds them, provide them with logistics, or you the complainant will have to mobilise them with the needed resources.
Question: The picture you painted is very grim. I mean this security problem. What are the solutions?
Answer: My brother, the solution is not easy to come by because the truth is that most times, we just follow all these things through the kinetic approach and we know that kinetic approach alone cannot solve this security problem. A lot of people are jobless, they don’t have jobs to do. Most are young boys and they will run to criminality since there are few opportunities. This is the age of the internet, people read, watch the internet and see how other people live large all over the world. They want to live large too and so most young persons do not want to go and do some useful work again, but even if you want to work, where’s the work?
So the kinetic approach alone that the government is pushing will not work. Government needs to create jobs and also, government needs to dialogue with all those agitators, because they are one of the key problems that we have. They have to look for a solution to the insurgency here and there, because these also contribute to this level of insecurity. So government should focus less on the kinetic approach. I think that we have solutions that are non kinetic. The non kinetic approach is what governments have to focus on, the problem is that it is very expensive, both politically and financially, but that’s the only way we we can see a good result. That’s the only way.
Question: Okay. Do you have a particular advice for the governor or the people of the state in Anambra State?
Answer: Yeah, what they should do and what we have been trying to do is to fund security more, bring out more money into security. All of us, the state government, the local government and individuals, capable individuals under the broader community unions or village unions or whatever they are called, they should donate money for security. Security is not cheap. It is expensive, especially when it comes to the level we are in Nigeria, you need money to fund the security, that is both the police and even the vigilantes themselves. This is because I know my village vigilante people are not paid salary and they are agitating that they need some kind of remuneration. It makes sense because they are people that are trying to secure the lives of others, some of them leave their jobs, leave whatever they are doing to patrol in the night, go around. They need money to eat. They need money for their own logistics support also. So it is not cheap. Every person should put his/her hand on deck and provide funding so that we can still survive and see how the government can tackle these security problems holistically. We need the kinetic and non kinetic approach to solve these security problems and that is the truth. Thank you.
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