WRITTEN BY OUR EDITORIAL TEAM AND FIRST PUBLISHED | 08 JUNE 2010

“…we should like to suggest the deployment of armed forces, the police, dog handlers and private licensed security personnel to all Nigerian secondary schools together with buying of at least five Alsatian dogs for each secondary school in the country and high-brow nursery schools including the provision of MySOS alarm system for each student.”

As MD Abubakar, Nigeria’s shameless and cowardly Inspector General of Police and his good-for-nothing team have just woken up from their slumber to do what we had in our editorial told them to do since four years ago, we hereby reproduce for Nigerians and the entire world to read that editorial published on June 8, 2010 as they embark on their belated so-called nationwide counter terrorism campaign. They claimed they had also begun a nationwide security analysis in the nation’s secondary schools, something we told them many years ago to do because all institutions of learning from the kindergarten to universities were not safe and accordingly advised them to carry out security education throughout every facet of the nation alongside other security agencies.

Whilst a holistic critique of the Kangaroo method they have been adopting since the beginning of the Boko Haram madness and salafism in Nigeria, their local and external financiers, whom the security agencies and the Presidency know too well, but do not have the boldness and courage to bring them to book, we should like to suggest the deployment of armed forces, the police, dog handlers and private licensed security personnel to all Nigerian secondary schools together with buying of at least five Alsatian dogs for each secondary school in the country and high-brow nursery schools including the provision of MySOS alarm system for each student. Walls must be built round all institutions of learning in the country including having barbed wires.

Sample of MySOS alarm system will be sent to Mr Frank Mba the Police Chief Public Relations Officer at Louis Edet House in Abuja. The personal alarm may be sent to Mr Mba with a battery, and on receiving it there must be no panic, hence we are letting the police authorities know ahead of time. Need we remind here again that even hospitals are not safe and there must be increase security presence in all hotels, airports, seaports including other Critical National Infrastructures (CNIs) throughout the country with pre-entry security checks in place at all public spaces throughout the country.

Since the 1960s there has been gross misuse of police by all and sundry – a situation where the police who should be deployed to frontline services are attached to all Lagbaja and Jalagba is highly unacceptable, hence we are hereby requesting the withdrawal of police and military personnel from legislators, senators, their wives, governors, party leaders, past heads of state/presidents, local government chairmen and chairpersons, traditional rulers, company executives, diplomatic missions, etc, to be replaced by private licensed security personnel arranged independently by this category of persons by themselves and for themselves and family members, and not at the expense of the taxpayers.

MD Abubakar should count himself a colossal failure if he does not get Abubakar Shekau the militant leader of the Salafist Movement in Nigeria funded by Saudi Arabia before he retires from the police.

THE SECURITY SITUATION IN NIGERIA, no doubt has *improved, but we are thoroughly shocked at the recent outburst of killings at Tusung village in Barkin Ladi near Jos in Plateau State, in which six persons were reportedly killed by a faction in the religious imbroglio. It is not clear what the moral and religious missions of the killings were, but the cheap reasons that had often been adduced for such predatory acts had been to avenge previous killings.

Whatever be the reasons for such bloodlettings is deplored by all humanity. “Thou shall not kill,” is a cardinal law in the Judaea-Christian Decalogue. And that law has not been changed from the scriptures. The same law forbidding killing is central to the Moslem faith. It is a shame that more than any other faiths in Nigeria and in the world as a whole, adherents of these two dominant faiths have contradicted themselves and their faiths by indulging in wanton killings, yet they will like the world to believe that their faiths preach love and peace! Need we aver here that it is these types of contradictions that led the post-modernists to propound the theory of relativism which across time has encouraged rebellion against the existence of a loving monolithic God?

When the followers of Jesus and Mohammed lock horns on daily basis in and around the world, especially as is the case currently in Nigeria, they make their faiths appear irrelevant to humanity.

If truth must be told, religious killings in Nigeria have persisted since the ‘80s till date because these bestialities had in previous eras received tacit official supports at various levels of Government, monarchical supports, mosques’ and churches’ supports. As have been reported many a time, in the event of such predatory, government officials depending on where they pitch their emotivity had always played the ostrich and had sometimes deplored uniform persons to help their kith and kin as Major General Saleh Maina, General Officer Commanding (GOC) the 3rd Armoured Division, Jos was widely reported to have done recently. It is also on record that highly placed persons including traditional rulers who ought to play the role of fathers to all concerned had also been reported to be partisan, hence small scale violence or riots had been inflamed to unimaginable magnitude through such partisanships.

We can’t understand why citizens of the same country should continue in these ‘internecine wars’ with themselves because of inherited foreign faiths. Ludicrously, Nigerians had at some other times indulged in orgiastic killings of one another for religious crises that had occurred in far away Europe and Asia which did not concern them and their nation in any least way. This is simply crass stupidity and a display of zeal without knowledge.

The fact that religious crises have persisted over the years, especially in the Northern States of Nigeria confirmed the prevalence of “drummers” among whom are the very influential persons in that part of the country, sometimes using State apparatus to kill, maim and destroy for their ingrained vested interest.

The prevalence of religious crises also explains the existence of superiority complex amongst adherent of one of the ‘warring faiths’ who tend to see Nigeria as their private estate, so would brook no opposing views and the practice of the other faith in a secular Nigeria. This hateful emotion could be the very reason why they tend to think they have the divine right to dominate others in the political sphere as well as in other spheres of the Nigerian life. And in order for them to hold sway in all spheres of the Nigerian life, they have since the birth of that country kept down as cannon fodders, some people-the gullible children of the working class popularly known as Almajiris who at their behest unleash violence and deaths on other Nigerians, while their own children are in high brow schools, colleges and universities in the West, and lately in the Middle East.

But we hasten to warn that while they are not reading the hand writing on the wall, these Almajiris will in just a matter of time turn into Frankenstein monsters and devour them.

Let no one deceive themselves, religious riots will persist, so long as Nigeria is governed by people and not by laws; so long as that country relishes in its non-accountable system where certain people are seen as above the law, wanton killings will persist, so long as Nigeria chooses to protect some of her citizens to the disregard of others; killings and acts of criminality of the worst types will persist, so long as Nigeria refuses to redress the inherent imbalance and apparent fault lines in its polity, until Nigerians aim at having a questioning society, the many aberrations in the polity will persist and there will continue to be restiveness in that polity. But they will be order, peace, harmony, stability and restoration when ex-Presidents and Heads of Government including Generals, monarchs and other highly placed persons are tried and sent to jail like any ordinary Nigerian for their intransigencies against the State.

Also, all security officers that have taken sides and use State apparatus to put their kith and kin at an advantage position over hapless compatriots should be court marshalled and if found guilty have their services terminated with immediacy and be punished accordingly. When soldiers and the police who had been trained and are being paid by the tax payers are partisan, they are saying to the world there is no such institution as the Nigerian Army, but the Army in Nigeria, they are telling the world there are no such institutions as the Nigeria Police, the Nigerian Air Force, the Nigerian Navy respectively, but the Police in Nigeria, the Air Force in Nigeria, the Navy in Nigeria. The situation becomes the more disheartening when it is realised they had sworn to an oath to protect the nation and her citizens, to defend the nation and her citizens.

Thus far, the security strategies that have been adopted in tackling religious crises have been ineffective in every least way, hence the persistence of the crises. Suggested effective strategies: punishment/jail is appropriate for all persons found to have taken the lives of their compatriots; all persons found to have abetted and encouraged killings, be they traditional rulers, religious leaders, Generals, etc, should be tried and if found guilty face the maximum wrath of the law, and if traditional rulers be deposed in addition to being sent to jail; in the recent killings at Barkin Ladi, we are of the view that the curfew was removed too soon; we call on the Inspector General of Police and the National Security Adviser to identify all flashpoints/hot zones in the country and compile the list of these eruptible areas and subsequently create buffer zones by building military and police barracks in such hotspots. Furthermore, such hotspots areas should be declared by Acts of the National Assembly as Federal Neutral Zones (FNZs) belonging to nobody and owned by no ethnic group, but the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and should be so administered.

In these days of modern telephony, it shouldn’t be difficult for any anyone to reach the police, the GOCs, Governors, traditional rulers, Local Government Chairmen and Chairpersons, community leaders, etc. The police and community leaders should make their mobile numbers available to the local people to contact them immediately in the event of any likely threats to national security, so such could be nipped in the bud. Communications about threats to national security should not be the exclusive preserve of Governors and GOCs. The people are involved, lives are involved, so everyone who owns mobile phones including persons who do not have one should have the police/security emergency numbers, emergency numbers of the Inspector General of Police, Police Commissioners, GOCs, Governors, traditional rulers, Local Government Chairmen/Chairpersons, Councillors and other community leaders in flashpoint areas they can contact in an emergency.

It is the statutory responsibility of the Federal Ministry of Information to compile and publish emergency numbers in the media. The media in Nigeria too should see this as their responsibility to the nation to publish emergency numbers in their publications and on television and broadcast them on radio on daily basis.

Also, stickers of emergency numbers should be posted by car owners on their cars; emergency numbers should be posted on all strategic/conspicuous places throughout the country; constant dialogue and events such as sports which have the potential of bringing the local people, “warring factions” together on regular basis should be encouraged and the police should publish crime stoppers lines, so every citizen could report crimes and threats to national security.

The Almajiris remain a threat to national security, so long as they and other young Nigerians, especially the unemployed are left unengaged, untrained and uneducated. Nigeria is rich enough to give all her citizens basic education, give those who cannot proceed to tertiary institutions specialist education by building Skills Academy in all of its 776 Local Government Areas. As hawks hover in the sky over chicks, Al Queada is hovering over the Nigerian skies to recruit these ones to terrorise the nation and the world. The devil finds work not for the busy hands, but for the idle hands. We cannot stress this well enough.

We hasten to add that the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria recognises no indigenes/settlers, but Nigerians who are citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, wherever they are domiciled at any time in the Federation and should be so protected, do their legitimate businesses unmolested, pay their taxes, stand for elective offices, vote and be voted for, wherever they have chosen to live in the Nigerian Federation at any time.

PROBE ALL OVER YAR’ADUA’S DEATH!

We expected that a probe panel should be sitting and interrogating all persons involved in the events surrounding the late President’s sickness culminating in the eventual declaration of his death on May 5, 2010. By all persons, we mean including Mrs Turai Yar’Adua. Yet, our hearts go to the entire Yar’Adua family.

In a serious country, Mrs Yar’Adua especially, should be facing treason trial for all her intransigencies since November 2009 against the Nigerian people and their country. Lest we forget, the Nigerian people and the entire world would want to know the expenses their nation had incurred over Yar’Adua’s sickness culminating in his death recently. The cheap way to dismiss a call such as this is to ask that the dead be allowed to rest. This is a simplistic and naive way of treating a national issue of monumental proportion which is of interest to posterity, constitutional experts, students of the Nigerian Constitution worldwide, all those clamouring for constitution review, historians, conscientious statisticians, economists and researchers.

*As on June 8, 2010.