Panacea to Insecurity in our Nation

INSECURITY:

Where we are:

Boko Haram has seized swathes of territory and kidnapped scores of our children whom they use as human shield. They have hoisted their flags on Nigerian soil and they call our bluff.

Kidnappers have organized themselves into corporations. They have established training schools to train people in the art and many have graduated from their schools. Cults have overtaken our campuses.

Young unemployed graduates have become experts in cyber crime and everyday, they are coming up with new inventions to perfect their acts of criminality.

Armed robbers have moved away from attacking homes. They go in broad daylight to attack Bullion vans and walk into banks with a daring and sophistication unknown 20 years ago.

Baby factories are springing up across the landscape as human trafficking has become one of the quickest ways to become rich.

Militancy has not abated as pipelines are destroyed everyday to steal crude. Foreigners have joined the bandwagon. They come with supertankers to join in the bazaar to steal our crude oil.

Why are we in the Current Situation?

We are where we are for many reasons but I will touch on just a few. Our education system has failed us because it was not  properly implemented. The 6-3-3-4 system was supposed to create artisans and skilled personnel as part of its curriculum. That part was not implemented and so we have a pool of people who are unable to go to higher institutions and are also unable to get jobs at their level without necessary skills. They become feedstock for all the above listed crimes.

Our leadership has a tendency to ignore problems in this country until they become mountains and require surgery. As a matter of fact, ignoring problems appears to be state policy.

Our leadership through the years has embodied the policy of embracing criminals, giving them a pardon and giving them new national assignments. The message to the people is that –it is okay to be a criminal.

Fulani herdsmen and farmers across the country are in constant battle for right of grazing for cattle resulting in incessant killings.

Our Justice administration is too slow. We need to train more judges, build more courts and put a cap on the number of adjournments a case can have to speed up the administration of justice.

Years of operating the patronage system has meant that competent people are not put in charge for us to get best results. We put round pegs in square holes.

The morale of our armed forces has been destroyed by years of corruption, abuse and neglect by their leaders to the extent that a police IG was jailed for stealing money meant for the welfare of the people he should be serving. It does not get worse than that. He may soon obtain his own pardon and run for governor.

PROGNOSIS:

We will continue to linger in this state of insecurity unless we change the old way of doing things.

REMEDY:

Nigeria needs to build a brand new security architecture. We need an integrated Homeland Security that gets information and data from all security agencies and is able to use the information to analyze where new threats are, where they might be coming from next and recommend quick ways to nip the issues in the bud. Electronic surveillance and new technology and research will be carried out by the Homeland Security to keep us safe. The old bureaucracy that has characterized our security system will become a thing of the past. Lazy security reports that only tend to demonize opposition will give way to modern techniques of threat assessment. This is the 21^st century and we must think like we are actually in the 21^st century. The opposition is not the enemy. The Governor is not the state and the President is not the country. All of us, citizens of this nation are equal stakeholders in project Nigeria.

Grassroots approach to CONFLICT resolution is a road worth pursuing. If the Niger Delta militancy was resolved through a grassroots approach, there is no reason why the Boko Haram insurgency cannot be resolved in the same way. There are people whom they trust to negotiate on their behalf. Read article titled. (How to get our girls back by Mama Boko Haram), in the Nation newspaper of June 24^th, 2014.

One more puzzle in solving problems of insecurity is individual responsibility. We must as a nation begin to watch out for and report suspicious behavior and we should be able to do this anonymously.

 I understand that one of the biggest fears people have about reporting crime is their personal safety because they do not trust that the people they are reporting to might not be complicit in the crime. To this end, the creation of an emergency 911 system will be uppermost in my plans to address insecurity in the land.

We are in 2014. We must rise to the security challenges of these times with technology. British society rose to the challenge of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) with technology. In today’s Britain, cameras can tell your story from the moment you arrive in the country until the day you depart.

To solve the immediate problem of our girls in captivity I would grant full, unconditional and unequivocal amnesty to Boko Haram. We need peace to develop this country. That would be my priority. The British government with all its might eventually had to negotiate with the IRA. The Israeli government with all their might also had to negotiate with the PLO. Even the United States, the most powerful nation on earth had to negotiate with Iran in 1981 to set the American hostages free and in recent months, they negotiated with the Taliban to set one American soldier free. My name is Michael Ovienmhada. If you desire change in 2015, then, I am your man----the face of Change. We can build a country which works for everyone and not just for the few. God bless you and may God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.