By Paul Onomuakpokpo
It is far from reprieve for the citizens as the country lurches
from one dismal failure to another. While they are still choking under the
weight of an economic recession, their miserable existence has been further
blighted by worsening insecurity.
Of course, it is not
for nothing that the citizens loathe the country’s security agencies. It is
just a way of their expressing their outrage at the incapability of the
security operatives to deliver on their mandate of protecting life and
property.
But in some rare
moments when the security operatives exude flashes of professional brilliance
and depart from the path of turning their guns on the citizens, they often get
well-deserved accolades. This is why the police who have succeeded in smashing
the kidnap syndicate led by Evans in Lagos
have rightly been lauded for their courage and professionalism.
Yet, the praise is
subdued. It is drowned in the phalanx of posers their success has triggered.
Why did it take so long to get him? Why are kidnappers still on the prowl? And
why are the pupils of the Lagos
State Model
College , Igbonla, Epe,
still being held in captivity over 40 days after their abduction?
These are questions
that the security operatives are not likely to provide answers to soon. In
other words, the citizens are still haunted by insecurity. This is despite that
even soldiers have been heavily deployed on the streets to boost security. The
House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara who was recently alarmed by this
heavy deployment declared that the country was under a state of emergency in
peace time. In fact, the citizens have lost confidence in the ability of the
security operatives to protect them.
This is why the
Governor of Niger
State, Abubakar Bello has said that he no longer has confidence in the state
security agencies. He is alarmed that there has been an upsurge in crime
despite the huge amounts voted for the security agencies.
This failure of the
security agencies has made some residents of Ikorodu to sell off their houses
and other property and fled the community. But those who still have the courage
to stay behind have initiated their own efforts at protecting themselves. They
have launched their vigilance groups. But these vigilance groups have become
sources of anarchy and jungle justice. But what did we expect from a people who
cannot trust the police to protect them? Or a people who do not trust the
judicial system to dispense justice if they hand over the suspects to the
police and the courts? The citizens also do not trust the political class.
These kidnappers and ritual killers work in collusion with the political class.
It is politicians who send Badoo members to get human blood for them to
legitimise their positions or secure new ones. Badoo members do not use guns to
kill their victims. They use stones. They do not often rob their victims. All
they want is their blood which they take on handkerchiefs. In this macabre
quest for blood, they have wiped out whole families of parents and children.
When blood-thirsty
criminals like Badoo members are arrested, it is politicians and other
so-called big men and women in the society who ask the police to release them.
If they are ever prosecuted, their backers ensure that they are not served
their well-deserved comeuppance. Ikorodu residents are well aware of this
absence of justice, thus they have resorted to jungle justice that is now
claiming innocent lives. The latest victims of this self-help were the three
young men who were lynched. It was only after their gruesome death at the hands
of vigilance group members that it was discovered that young comedian Chinedu
Paul, popularly called Think Twice,
and his two mechanics were not Badoo members.
It was discovered too late that they were going to tow the comedian’s broken down vehicle.
It was discovered too late that they were going to tow the comedian’s broken down vehicle.
Like the
undiscriminating vigilance group, the police cannot extricate themselves from
culpability in the murder of these young men. The police knew that Ikorodu was
under siege by Badoo but they were not available in the community in the night.
If the police were alive to the urgent security challenges of Ikorodu, they
would have deployed their operatives and vehicles to be patrolling in the area.
The vigilance group might have handed over the suspects to them and after a
thorough interrogation they would have known that the young men were innocent
and they would have saved their lives.
Now, because the state
government cannot tame Badoo, this new plague is spreading to other places like
Ogun State . This was how kidnapping began in
the eastern part of the country. Then the police were fond of boasting that the
kidnappers would never get to Lagos .
But after they were dislodged from the east, Lagos became their haven where they give
pre-attack notices to their victims but the police cannot do anything to preempt
them.
Obviously, the Lagos State
government is waiting for one big person to be a victim before it seriously
tackles Badoo. It was the same way that a past government waited until those
close to it were either assassinated or robbed by hoodlums using commercial
motorcycles before it decided to restrict them to certain areas of the state.
Yet, if the state government cannot secure a tiny part of the state, Ikorodu,
it cannot convince us that it can secure the whole state. Thus, the spectre of
Badoo attacks and those of more ferocious criminals hang over all the citizens.
While it is good that
the government of Akinwunmi Ambode is building roads and bridges, it should
take cognisance of the fact that the ultimate test of good governance is not
the building of bridges and roads through which government officials award
contracts that benefit them but how much the lives of the citizens have been
improved in real terms. What can be a better measure of good governance than
the protection of life? It is not that Badoo has only struck once and consigned
itself into oblivion because of the fear of being hunted by security agencies.
Its attacks have been regular. Why can’t the state government and the security
agencies massively deploy security operatives in that area? Or is this a case
of wilful negligence? After all, stopping the marauding Badoo may not be a top
priority to the state government as its officials are not only heavily
protected, they live in areas where such blood-thirsty hoodlums would not have
access to them.
Those Badoo-racked
residents of Ikorodu constitute that segment of the population in Lagos who do not know
that there is a government run by Ambode at Alausa. The government may only
come to them skeletally and thus they have taken their destiny in their own
hands by eking out a living no matter how miserable it is. The government owes
them the responsibility of providing them the security they need to exist in
peace. This it can do by repelling the Badoo members who are variants of
barbarians who are bent on unspooling the gate of civilisation in the state.
A nice piece by Mr. Paul Onomuakpokpo. But there is, however, one glaring error in his submission. The writer claimed that kidnapping started in the East. That's very wrong. Kidnapping began in the Niger Delta as a kind of protest by the militants to press for better deal in the sharing of the fruits of oil exploration in their land. They first targeted oil workers and expatriate staff of multi-national companies. Initially, they were not asking for ransom, but only went into negotiations with government and oil companies to secure the release of the kidnapped, mostly foreigners. Later they began to kidnap some Nigerians too. Soon, they began to demand for huge ransom, which led people to start talking about the “crimilisation of the struggle”. It was much later that kidnapping spread to the South East, and soon reached other parts of the country.
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