BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
The immediate past Director of the Nigerian Army, Directorate of Public Relations, Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman (retired), has said some vital preparations were not put in place before civilians took over governance from the military and argued that the lack of preparations for civil rule was foundational to the security challenges confronting the country.
Usman also said the federal and state governments have failed to provide good governance to citizens and that they have not invested enough in security architecture.
Speaking in Osogbo, the retired military officer said for over 20 years, the Police Council, which is headed by the President and state governors have not met to discuss how insecurity could be tackled.
He, therefore, canvassed the need for community policing to be activated in the country for information and intelligence gathering aimed at forestalling attacks.
Other reasons why security challenges continue to worsen in the country, according to the security consultant, are lack of information and intelligence gathering mechanisms by security forces and the Nigerian masses at large adding that the citizens have left the task of security to security agencies alone.
Usman warned against politicisation of security issues and urged Nigerians to support the military and other security forces in the fight against insurgency and terrorism in Nigeria.
He argued that to some reasonable extent, the Nigerian forces have been able to defeat Boko Haram and that it no longer controls any territory in the country.
He said those who had been sacked from their ancestral homes in the North East had returned and picking-up.
He said, “There are quite a number of reasons for the insecurity that is currently ravaging the Nigerian society, especially in the North East and the primary reason is the issue of good governance.
We (Nigeria) seem not to prepare ourselves adequately for the envisaged security challenges. We are coming from a military dictatorship where things were done with fiat and all the rest, there were so many bottled up emotions and Nigerians ought to have been prepared for the democratic governance.
“Nigerians agreed to go into democratic governance (civilian rule) and this has its requirements. It requires tolerance, understanding, patience, horse-trading, give and take and all the rest and above all, to strengthen institutions. And most importantly, also, we should have provision for good governance so that people will have impacts of democracy but what we have now is that people are neglected, and a lot of things that ought to have brought good governance to bear are no longer there.”
He said investing in science and technology would help the country in fighting banditry and kidnapping.
“The current one is the issue of kidnapping and banditry. How do we stop that? We have to invest in science and technology, especially the Information Communication Technology because these guys (terrorists) work on information. I doubt if any of these bandits will just wake up and say, today, I am going into kidnapping; they have people that provide information for them; they have people that invest the money they get from ransom. To what extent have we tackled these issues?” he asked.
Usman insisted that “Security is a collective responsibility of all citizens and unless they (citizens) are educated, then these nuances will continue to operate in a circle. Security operatives are limited in number and they are not magicians; they rely on information from Nigerians to succeed and when there is much gap between those governing and those that are governed, the haves and the have-not, then people won’t have interest.”
He said the Nigerian security forces have all it takes to deal with insurgency.
“I can tell you that the Nigerian security forces have all the equipment to decisively deal with insurgency. Today, no Nigerian territory is being taken over by Boko Haram. People need to know that fighting terrorism and insurgency involves the whole gamut of Nigeria and not the security forces alone,” the former army spokesman said.
