Not too long ago, I had reason to confront one of our correspondents on why he had not been turning in stories from his area of coverage and he reported that he could not access quite a number of the communities. It was in the tradition of the newsroom for me to scold him for non-performance and proven case of lack of initiative.
I remember insisting that what he was presenting as his excuse for low productivity was the very platform he needed for excellence with a creative edge in place.
I then was in the place of a form of a motivational speaker to encourage him to use his profession to serve his fatherland by documenting the reality of the dilemma of his time and circumstances. That sounded theoretically pungent and imperative in the exigencies of the times and the demands of the office. I then had reason to spend part of the weekend in one of the communities the correspondent is expected to cover in Ika North East Local Government Area of Delta State. Being a famed and widely acclaimed agrarian community I had my expectations, part of which was to buy some farm produce at a rate lower than what obtains in the cities.
What I however met was a state of hopelessness and despondency as the people no longer go to their farms which have been taken over by arms trotting kidnappers, majority of them of Fulani extraction. There I was, face to face with a community gripped by fear, paralysed by threat of abduction in the light of a failed national security architecture. I felt a strong need to interact with some members of the community.
A leading member of the community’s vigilante confirmed that the entire farm land had been completely under siege. Once famed for exploits in Agriculture with their market serving as a compelling place of convergence for traders from distant parts of the country, the people from the same community can no longer have access to their farms. The result is large scale hunger arising from the non performing state of the community’s economy. I engaged the vigilante officer in some form of informal interview and he confirmed the intensity of the siege and the vulnerability of himself and his colleagues in the face of the superior firing power and sophisticated weaponry of the marauding kidnappers and dare- devil criminal elements.
He told me of the level of collaboration among the various vigilante groups in the neighbouring communities and how the police have remained rather passive to the worsening plight of the community. He told me of how through self-help, concerned community stakeholders had purchased some drones that can get up in the sky to record happenings in distant locations and how they cannot dare to enter the forests to rescue victims in identified locations because of the superior weaponry of the kidnappers. He told me that many communities in the State had lost their key vigilante officers to the firing powers of bandits only for the families left behind to be forgotten shortly after. He was narrating to me the pathetic story of how his community had been under siege and how that has taken them from a flourishing agro based economy to the grip of food insecurity. I had fully followed with the rise in the food production profile of the community and the tragic turn of events arising from the epidemic of kidnapping, banditry, violence and terrorism.
I also did appreciate that the pervasiveness of the tragedy confronting the community would be better understood from the point of view of a national malaise of the tragic debacle of a failed security architecture. This has seen the country recording over 2,140 cases of kidnapped individuals across 24 States in Nigeria between January and July in the year 2024. It can also be recalled that the Eight years of Buhari as President recorded 17,469 abduction cases.
The implications of Nigeria on the throes of a deadly siege of kidnapping, banditry and terrorism range from abandonment of Agriculture, death of tourism sector, flight of investment and decline in night time economy. One thing that has become clear is that the Nigerian Police Institution of about 370,800 officers cannot effectively police the nation’s landmass of 923,768 square km or 356,668 sq miles. Close to 30 percent of the police officers are posted to secure VIPs and political office holders.
The average citizen is therefore defenceless, lives in palpable fear in a virtually paralyzed economy. According to SBN intelligence, between June and July alone, a total of N10.99 billion ransom was demanded and the sum of N1.048 billion was received as ransom. This confirms the advent of a ransom economy that appears to be thriving while the other sectors of the conventional economy are in comatose.
This has fueled the vicious circle of crime and outright terrorism. It remains a painful paradox that instead of the President recognising the urgency of the issue on ground, he is jetting out almost on a weekly basis, from China to France on the excuse that he wants to attract foreign investors. Even local investors are divesting and relocating on a daily basis on the account of growing insecurity. Instead of the current wild goose chase, could it not have made more impact for the President to address the festering security challenge thereby ensuring an investment friendly society where the safety of lives and property can be guaranteed.
Nigeria’s current security architecture has been wired to fail as Nigeria remains the only federal entity running a unitary police structure which has created more problems than solutions. All considered, the issue of State police is no longer a matter of debate but an option of urgent necessity if we are to get serious about how to salvage whatever is remaining in the sanctity of our sovereignty. Was about signing off on this edition when a friend called to inform me that he had been in a queue to buy fuel at N1500 per litre. That in deed is another dimension of a nation under siege. From economy to insecurity, from kidnapping to terrosism, the average citizen now lives in fear with government failing to provide any protection for lives and property.
