Nigeria And The Burden Of Security Challenges: The
Criminal Violence From The Oil-rich Niger-Delta
25 January 2011By Yakubu Muhammad Rigasa
Protection of lives and properties of citizens is the
paramount function of every responsible government in
every nation. This may be the reason why some
politicians cunningly but sometimes deceptively adopt
the campaign strategy of making pledge to provide
adequate security to the citizenry if elected.
Security defined as the degree of protection against
danger, damage, loss and criminal activity, and being
the backbone of economic and political survival of
societies has been the major priority by
people-orientated administrations at various levels of
governance. However, in Nigeria successive governments
appear to be too feeble to uphold this unequalled
function going by unfortunate happenings in the
country that pose unprecedented threats to national
cohesion. The infirmity of our government in securing
lives of the common-man is increasingly manifested by
misadventures that continuously wreck the nation a
great deal of havoc.
Prior to the 1st October, 2010 bomb-blast which went
off when Nigerians were joyously celebrating the
nation's independence from British colonialism which
ended in 1960, crises that wore religious and ethnic
coloration rent the air in different parts of the
country. In the cities of Bauchi and Maiduguri it was
security agents that unleashed an unquantifiable harm
to the structural hierarchy of a religious sect which
opened doors to the subsequent reprisals that have
desolated those places up to now. In Jos, the capital
city of Plateau State, the unstable sad situation has
been recurring intermittently.
The causative agent of Plateau's incessant unrest is
originally traceable to ethnicity save for the fact
that its escalating dimension clearly points to the
tacit involvement of some political interests from
within the state. All these are from the northern part
of the country. In the south, however, the criminal
violence has been from the oil-rich Niger-Delta region
where unregenerate notorious militant groups carry out
violent activities unhindered. They commit all the
heinous atrocities that shame any decent leadership in
the presence of international community. Kidnapping
has become rampant in the area; oil bunkering is a
famous lucrative trade; economic sabotage happens in
various guises that defy the lethal weapons and
expertise of all the task force agents deployed there
and so on.
The security challenges in this country are so
enormous that tackling them tends to be a herculean
task to even a government that sits up to its full
responsibilities. Treading the path of history will
only leave one with tearful eyes as the stories only
tell one about the ugly situation of our security
outfit that fails to tenaciously maintain its hold on
lapses that give fatal leaks to perpetrators of
various forms of crimes. The unfortunate incidents
which promptly occur into the mind of this writer were
the notorious Maitatsine upheaval in Kano; the
Kafanchan religious crisis of 1987 in Kaduna State;
the Kala-Kato crisis of Bulunkutu, Kaduna, Bauchi and
few other places; the 1992 Zangon Kataf
ethno-religious violence which spilled over to parts
of Kaduna metropolis and environs; the Odua People's
Congress (OPC) ethnic turbulence in Lagos and some
other South-Western states; the Kaduna turmoil ignited
by anti-Sharia agitations in March and May, 2000 which
also spilled over to some South-Eastern states in the
form of reprisal attacks; the Beauty Pageant debacle;
the current gun and bomb attacks here and there that
savage our peaceful environment, and a host of other
negative occurrences in the country.
It is sad that attacks of this nature and magnitude
which Nigerians used to hear them happening in some
countries are now gaining ground in their fatherland.
Worse still is the inability of this administration to
fish out those behind planting of bombs for proper
prosecution despite the president's claim of knowing
the culprits behind the Abuja independence anniversary
bomb explosion. One of the major factors obstructing
the success of halting this menace is unequivocally
the failure by the concerned authorities to sincerely
implement recommendations contained in the reports by
investigation panels usually set up after each round
of crisis to proffer ways of preempting its recurrence
and penalizing those found guilty.
Let all concerned remember that for this country to
develop, security system has to be upgraded to the
best acceptable standard in order to effectively face
the multiple security issues capable of derailing the
system and destabilizing the nation. The president
must call to order those regional bigots who heighten
the tension, heat up the atmosphere and widen the
dichotomous provincialism between segments of the
country without making any attempt at ending the
menace. The blame game must stop now!
©
EsinIslam.Com
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