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Security expert Dr. Ona Ekhomu has commended Governor Aliyu Bello Masari of Katsina State for terminating the peace deal between the state government and deadly terrorists, saying “terrorists lack integrity.” He advised the governor of Zamfara State, who is currently considering renewal of the state’s peace deal with bandits, to avoid the futile venture, as it would not guarantee peace.
Said he: “The recent massacre of 80 persons in Sokoto, 25 in Zamfara and over 120 in Kastina (this year alone) is enough indication that the terrorists are implacable foes.”
Ekhomu urged the northwest governors to adopt and implement the creative and synthetic security solutions outlined in his new book, Boko Haram: Security Considerations and the Rise of an Insurgency.
In a press release, Ekhomu advised the northwest states to apply the whole of government approach which they have used in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic to the issue of banditry as “banditry is a much more deadly threat than COVID-19.”
Ekhomu, who is President of the Association of Industrial Security and Safety Operators of Nigeria (AISSON), said that the so-called peace deals with bandits were “products of poor policy and intelligence analyses by the state governments, as they don’t address the causal factors of the terrorist attacks (banditry), which include mass poverty, social injustice, arms proliferation, ungoverned spaces and poor law enforcement.
“It is common knowledge that these terrorists, assassins, kidnappers, rapists, cattle thieves and robbers are people of low moral character. So, if you think that paying them a lot of money and signing a peace deal on paper with them will change anything, then you’re wrong. It is the nature of terrorists to be the personification of evil (mala in se). They can exhibit an infinite variety of human cruelty, depravity and greed.”
Ekhomu advised the northwest governments to urgently conduct threat assessments and vulnerability assessments of their jurisdictions, and create models of how the terrorists are conducting their campaigns of aggression so that they can predict where would be attacked.
He said that federal security forces could be called in as response forces once the aggressors are geo-located. He deplored the reluctance of state governments to spend money on security of their citizens, adding: “Buying patrol cars for security forces is necessary but not sufficient condition for better security in the states.”
