Former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, was spot on when he blamed worsening insecurity in Nigeria on lack of arrests and subsequent prosecution of perpetrators of the dastardly acts. Speaking recently at Oba, in Idemili South Local Government Area of Anambra State during the 2024 summit and award ceremony of Merchants of Light School, Old Boys Association Worldwide, Anyaoku noted that what was particularly depressing was that these killings occurred and nobody seemed to be held responsible and charged accordingly.
“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,” Anyaoku noted. He called on the federal government to devote more efforts to tackling killings across the country.
Obviously, the high rate of insecurity in many parts of the country is disturbing. In the North-East, we contend with terrorists like Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). In the North-West, sundry bandits hold sway. In the North-Central, it is bandits and Fulani herdsmen that make life unbearable for citizens. South-East battles with unknown gunmen, while South-West and South-South tackle different types of bandits and hoodlums.
Tens of thousands of innocent citizens have been killed. Over two million others have been displaced. Some others were either kidnapped or wounded. In the recent orgy of killings in Plateau State, suspected Fulani herdsmen massacred hundreds of people and destroyed properties worth millions of naira in communities in Bokkos, Barkin Ladi and Mangu local government areas of the state.
The tragedy of our security situation is that after each of these killings, the Presidency issues an ineffectual order to arrest and prosecute the perpetrators. President Bola Tinubu condemned the recent killings in Plateau and ordered that the perpetrators be arrested and prosecuted. This has not happened.
This problem did not start from Tinubu. His predecessors did a similar thing. Former President Muhammadu Buhari, for instance, issued several threats and orders but did nothing much to ensure that his orders were carried out. He once ordered the then Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to relocate to Benue State in the aftermath of the killings in that state in 2018. The IGP ignored the President’s order and nothing happened. Buhari was to claim later that he was not aware the IGP did not carry out his order.
The worst is that, rather than deal decisively with bandits and terrorists, the Buhari government instituted what it called an amnesty programme for repentant terrorists and deployed humongous amounts of money to rehabilitate them. This gave a wrong signal that crime pays and, as long as one claims to have repented, one gets rewards for past criminal activities.
Reward for any action, both positive and negative, is a great motivator. When good is rewarded, it has a way of motivating one to do more. When crime is rewarded, it also has a way of gingering the culprits to commit more.
In advanced societies, it is anathema to commit a crime and get away with it. They have laws and they respect their laws. Security agencies go out of their way to track such crimes and ensure punishment for the perpetrators, no matter how long it takes. When Osama bin Laden, the founder of the Islamist militant group, al-Qaeda, plotted the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, he went home and rejoiced, not knowing that his end was near. The government of Barack Obama later smoked him out and killed him in his compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2, 2011. Though it has not completely stopped terrorism in the world, the US action sent strong signals to criminals that they cannot go scot-free when they commit a crime.
One major hindrance to fighting crime in Nigeria is that, even when criminals are arrested, it takes a long time to prosecute some of them. Since justice delayed is justice denied, such criminals often escape justice after such long delays. They re-emerge to inflict greater terror on the society. This has affected investor confidence in the country. It is important that we reform our judicial system to speed up the trial of criminal suspects.
We must begin to set clear examples with bandits and terrorists in our midst. It is not enough to announce that certain terrorists have been arrested. It must be seen that they have been adequately punished for their crime. Intelligence gathering and sharing among security agencies is the key to apprehending criminals and prosecuting them.
Government should also consider decentralising the police to make it more effective for them to apprehend criminals. There should be collaboration among the various security agencies and any security agent found to be collaborating with criminals should be fished out and punished accordingly.