One of the three cardinal programmes of the immediate past President, Muhammadu Buhari, was to tackle insecurity in Nigeria. By the time Buhari left office on May 29, 2023, the spate of insecurity had worsened in the country. Thousands of innocent Nigerians, including students, were abducted. Some died, some sustained serious injuries. President Bola Tinubu, who inherited the poor security situation, similarly promised to tackle the problem on assumption of office. But so far, the problem has festered and appears to have even worsened.
The worst form of insecurity now is kidnapping for ransom. It has become too frequent. No person is spared and no zone is exempted. Terrorists like Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) hold sway in the North-East. In the North-West, sundry bandits are the problem. In the North-Central, it is bandits and Fulani herdsmen. In the South-East, it is unknown gunmen while South-West and South-South tackle different types of bandits and hoodlums.
In January 2024, Kidnappers abducted six sisters and their father from their home in Abuja. They killed one of the sisters, Nabeeha, and dumped her body along Abuja-Kaduna Road when the father could not raise N60 million they demanded. Nabeeha was a 400-level student of Biological Science at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria.
In August 2024, 20 medical students and one doctor were kidnapped in Otukpo area of Benue State. The students, who have since been released, are members of the Federation of Catholic Medical and Dental Students (FECAMDS) from the University of Jos and University of Maiduguri. At the time they were abducted, they were headed for their annual convention in Enugu. Medical doctors, priests, and many other very important persons are targets of these kidnappers. Some die while in custody. Others may live with the trauma of their abduction all the days of their lives.
A Nigerian consultancy firm, SBM Intelligence, estimated that between May 2023 and January 2024, about 4,777 cases of kidnappings had been recorded in the country. According to a global data hub, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), over 4556 fatalities and 7,086 abductions occurred between May 29, 2023 and May 22, 2024. Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed in its latest Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey (CESPS) that Nigerians paid a total of N2.23 trillion in ransom between May 2023 and April 2024. According to the report, 51.89 million crime incidents were experienced by households within the period.
Unemployment and the poor state of the economy may have contributed to this spate of insecurity. Greedy people with no moral values cashed in on the ugly situation to perpetrate crime in the country. Failure of intelligence is another factor which has made it difficult to tackle insecurity in the country.
Lack of arrests and prosecution of perpetrators of crime contribute to the worsening insecurity in Nigeria. Former President Buhari once ordered former Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to relocate to Benue in the aftermath of the killings in that state in 2018. The IGP ignored the President’s order. Buhari claimed later that he was not aware the IGP did not carry out his order. President Tinubu has also issued ineffectual orders which are not carried out.
As former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, observed recently, “The first thing the government should do is to deploy its agencies and forces to apprehend those perpetuating the killings because that’s the only way to address the problem. If they are apprehended, prosecuted and punished, that would serve as a deterrent to others.”
Non-state actors are emboldened to continue in their nefarious activities because they are in possession of illegal arms and ammunition. It is estimated that over six million small arms are in the hands of these people in Nigeria. Every effort to arrest the situation has proved abortive. Unfortunately, some of the arms are brought in through our porous borders. Some are supplied to bandits by our security agents. A report by the Auditor-General of the Federation in 2021 indicated that about 178,459 different types of ammunition got missing from the Nigerian police armoury in 2019. So far, nobody could account for those missing weapons.
To fight crime effectively, there is need for the government to embark on security reforms. Such reforms must include effective deployment of technology and intelligence-led policing for effective crime control. State police is also a must if we are serious about fighting crime in Nigeria. State or community police is more responsive than the central police whose numerical strength is less than 400,000.
President Bola Tinubu met with service chiefs and other heads of security agencies earlier in 2024 in Abuja to find solutions to the spate of insecurity in the country. That meeting has not yielded much dividend. It is important that government procures modern, sophisticated weapons to motivate the security agents to take the war to the enclave of the terrorists with a view to routing them from their hideouts. Government needs to assure the citizens that their security is guaranteed all the time in any part of the country. That is what it owes the citizens as a primary responsibility.