Juliana Francis
Sixty-two years ago when Nigeria extricated itself from the strangling grip of her colonial masters, there was jubilation, but today there is a divide in that emotion.
Some Nigerians opined that the country appears to be tottering even at 62 years of its independence. They also said that the nation is in a drunken state, on auto-pilot, heading towards a self-destruct.
They based their argument on the myriad of challenges dogging the country.
The country is rife with insecurity that even the citizens can no longer breathe. Terrorists and other separatist groups have overrun the nation, leaving the people enveloped in fear.
The leaders, who the citizens looked up to with forlorn hope, to squash the emergence and emerging swam of terrorist groups and criminals, have crawled into a corner, whining in fear, petrified even of the bogeyman.
Aside from insecurity, which has continued to topple the scale, corruption among ruling elites has tragically worsened. Churches have overtaken manufacturing companies, unemployment is high and cybercrime criminals are dancing around the streets, undeterred, while the educational sector is almost grounded.
A data consulting firm, Beacon earlier this year, stated that no fewer than 8372 people lost their lives to insecurity in 2021. Nigerian security personnel are not excluded from the worrisome death statistics.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) said that Nigeria now has about 20 million out-of-school children.
The public health sector continues to be in a pitiable state, making government officials seek healthcare outside the shores of Nigeria. The public hospitals are now almost without qualified, seasoned medical practitioners due to the brain drain.
Travelling via roads has become a nightmare, with the roads still potholes of deathtraps, and kidnappers have continued to saunter along major highways, watching like hungry hawks for prey.
The inflation rate is intolerable with both citizens in urban and rural settlements complaining of not feeling the presence of the government.
The cost of living is at an all-time high and most farmers are groaning in frustration because they now have to pay taxes to terrorists before they can plant and harvest.
Some notable Nigerians speak about insecurity in the country after 62 years of independence.
The Executive Director of Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC), Mr. Okechukwu Nwanguma said: “Insecurity has increased in Nigeria becoming worse than what it was under the previous government of Goodluck Jonathan. This was one of the bases for which Buhari and his allies in the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) which was then in opposition criticised Jonathan and accused him of being clueless. This government has borrowed more money than any other government to strengthen the fight against insecurity. Yet insecurity continues to escalate with the government being completely helpless. Families whose members are kidnapped are left with the responsibility to raise money demanded by terrorists as ransom to secure the release of their members. Buhari also expressed his helplessness when he said he couldn’t wait to leave office. Therefore, I personally do not expect anything from this government. We can only hope that Nigerians will unite to take their destiny into their own hands by electing a person who is competent to clear the rubble of the collapsed house and begin the process of rebuilding it.”
The President of the Crime Reporter Association of Nigeria (CRAN), Mr. Lekan Olabulo opined that the security situation in Nigeria was now at a very alarming level, stressing that there was no difference between the situation now and at wartime.
He further stated: “Almost all parts of the country are unsafe for the citizens. The situation has continued to worsen since Independence. I remember vividly when some of us were young, most parts of the country were safe, any time of the day. People were going to religious places without any fear of insecurity but today, the situation has changed. Look at it now; states are clamouring to equip their security outfits with AK47 rifles. That is the situation we find ourselves as a nation. The trust in the police and other security agencies has collapsed totally. You can imagine a situation, where we have to debate inviting mercenaries to protect our country, which shows the height of insecurity in the country. It is also an indicator of a total breakdown of security in a country as huge as ours. We have not done well at all. The country is waiting to explode if we don’t do the right things now.”
According to the CRAN President, Nigeria needs a total overhauling of its security architecture, adding that there was a need to involve private security experts as well as practitioners and make use of a non-kinetic approach in the battle against insecurity.
He stated: “We should concentrate more on the use of intelligence rather than force. I also want to suggest that our security operatives should desist from revealing their strategies to the public. They should not allow the reports of the activities of the bandits and other criminals to force them to reveal their strategies.”
The Vice President of CRAN, Mrs. Evelyn Usman, who is also the Deputy Crime Editor of Vanguard Newspaper said: “Even a blind man can feel the impact of what Nigeria is going through at the moment. One area that it has adversely hit is the economy and it can be said to be in imperil. We rely so much on oil, and even at that, there is much theft of crude oil, particularly in the south-south geopolitical zones. We cannot even buy anything from the market anymore because we import almost everything. As of two weeks ago, I checked the dollar rate it was close to N700 per dollar. What else can we say?”
She also mentioned the activities of the dreaded Islamic sects in the Northeast, which had destroyed the economy in that region, creating the worst internal refugee problem in Africa.
She said that due to the insecurity in that region, people were now afraid to leave their homes, living in shelters spread across the country.
She said: “I really don’t know how we got here. For the first time in Nigeria’s history, the security forces had been overwhelmed by this divergent banditry and act of criminalities. For the first time in Nigeria, we witnessed EndSars to the extent that hoodlums, posing as protesters, almost run down the security formulation, particularly the police. The Military that used to be revered had been ridiculed by terrorists. You can imagine the other time in Kano or Kaduna, two military formulations were attacked. Where did we go wrong? Our security forces seem to be paralysed and youths are leaving the countries in droves.”
She said that the strike embarked by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), caused young Nigerians to be idle, adding that most of them were being recruited by terrorists for stipends.
She noted: “Nigeria used to be a place where you can leave your door open at night and go to sleep. My parents told me that in 1960, market women used to leave their wares unattended and everybody trusted one another, but today, the reverse is the case. We don’t know whom to trust anymore or whom to run to. Nigerians are in fear.”
Usman expressed fear that the situation was going to continue to be so unless the country has purposeful leadership. “Purposeful in the sense that there should be a vision, a dream of the type of Nigeria we want. I think that is where we should all start. If the president has a dream of bringing insecurity to an end, then he must place the right people, especially in the security terrain, in the right positions, people who will buy into his vision. However, what we have today is not purposeful leadership. All we have is leadership of interest, leadership which looks at personal gains to the detriment of the nation. For crying out loud, Nigerians that have lost their lives just because of the lapses of the government to checkmate insecurities are on the high. Just last week in Edo State a man was kidnapped and because he recognised one of the kidnappers, they slit his throat and this was after collecting ransom from his family. Today, we have kidnap for ransom and kidnap for ritual, it used not to be like that and I keep asking where we went wrong. The number one area where we got it wrong is leadership without a purpose. I emphasised that if we have purposeful leadership we all be driven by the mandate to take Nigeria to its original place. We have the population, we have the resource but mismanagement is the problem. There was a time in this country, in the last administration when money was given out to some leaders in Nigeria to purchase equipment to fight terrorism, but it will shock you that some of the equipment bought was obsolete. It’s like endangering the lives of the troops in the theatre of war. These soldiers lose their lives every day and they have families. Visit some barrack today, the sights are appalling, you’ll see widows and I happen to witness one with a three-month-old baby. This should be two months ago. As at that time, a soldier had been killed in the North East because someone among our leaders refused to do the right thing.”
She opined that the way forward was for purposeful leadership in different sectors. “If you are the Inspector General of Police or Chief of Defence Staff, Police Service Commissioner Chairman or Minister of Police Affair, just do the right thing. There was this Police Trust Fund that was instituted recently, it will shock you to know that there is now a controversy surrounding it. N11 billion that was released for the purchase of bulletproof jackets, helmets and vehicles, was wasted! During my investigation, I found out that they bought substandard bulletproof jackets. The jackets were not bulletproof. Even the helmets they bought could not fit. Again, one of the vehicles bought blew up when they were taking it to the wedding ceremony of the president’s son (President Buhari’s son). So tell me, who is trying to outsmart who, and there have been controversies over the expenditure of that N11 billion. As journalists, we must always ask questions.”
She stated that statistics showed that over 3 million Nigerians have been displaced from their homes with over 300 in the Internally Displaced Camps.
She said that the number of those killed by the insurgents was over a million. She said that one of the adverse effects of this insecurity is food scarcity.
“I mentioned food because once there is hunger in the land, it aggravates the situation. According to the international crisis group, mounting conflicts are one of the causes of farm product scarcity. Today, farmers can no longer go to farms because of insecurity. It is so appalling in a country where one was born, one cannot have access to one’s farmland. In the North and some other parts of the country today, people paid kidnappers before they can access their farms. They pay at every stage of the farming season. If it’s the planting stage, they pay, harvesting stage, they pay before anything can be done. This has taken an adverse effect and if you watch, it has affected our farm production,” said Usman.
She continued: “Kidnapping for ransom is another recent security challenge. Before now, people used to kidnap and we used to hear it a long time ago for ritual, but now it has transcended from ritual purpose but for ransom. It is no longer the poor that are victims but also the rich. We can recall the attack on the Abuja-Kaduna train; some victims were just recently released. Yes, we have come to a stage where Nigeria is no longer considered safe anymore. Nigeria is one of the most unsafe places in the world due to insecurity. It has also threatened food scarcity, and our local and foreign investment and it has also hurt the country’s economy. Insecurity has been a threat to human existence and it is a threat to our people’s productivity as people can no longer go to work where it thrives, including those who render humanitarian services have also been victims. The Nigerian government must sit up to address the security challenges and position the country as a safe place to live, work and invest. The foreign embassies here have alerted their countries and told their nationals not to come to Nigeria because of the unsafe situation even the Nigerians in the diaspora can no longer come home because of the insecurity in Nigeria. Government should also address poverty as the number one area of the solution. Some of the people that were kidnapped, victims I spoke with, told me that most of the kidnappers were graduates, who started to kidnap in order to make ends meet. The government as a matter of urgency should address the poverty situation in the country and poverty has been attributed as one of the major causes of growing insecurity in our country.”
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