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Ideas help in bringing solutions to major problems of the world. Leaders with great ideas leave lasting legacies in the sands of time. According to Wikipedia, “In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. ”
So, leaders that birth ideas are regarded as game-changers. Oftentimes, however, these ideas are derailed, killed or truncated before full implementation. Ideas are like a newborn baby, their growth is largely dependent on nurture and other environmental circumstances. In the security community in Nigeria, there are leaders whose ideas would have helped in nipping insecurity that has bedevilled Nigeria since 2009. These great security leaders came up with wonderful ideas, commenced their implementation, but the negative system that has over the years truncated every noble idea caught up with their great ideas.
It is our inability as a nation to recognize ideas and thoughtfully and meticulously planned it into fruition for the overall interest of every Nigerian.
It was the greater security interest that propelled these great security icons who conceived security ideas , started their implementation but the Nigerian nemesis caught up with these ideas and truncated them without any better replacement.
These robust ideas were all-round security concepts that covered intelligence-gathering, community policing and the hard nut known as terrorism. These concepts roundly covered all the painful crises bedevilling the country since 2008. Upon his appointment as the Inspector-General of Police in 2002, Tafa Balogun had travelled to some countries and believed that emulating and reproducing the concept of community policing in Nigeria would go a long way in reducing the rate of criminality when the people are involved in policing their communities. So, he selected five police officers to be trained in countries like Britain and Spain; according to him, it would equipped them to train and impart knowledge to others. The idea blossomed but was truncated by his successor who swept the entire initiative that would have been the bedrock of state police, helping to nip insecurity in the bud. In an interview with this writer, Mr. Balogun explained, “The concept of Operation Fire for Fire is contemporaneous policing. In policing, whatever is adequate, that is what the police should provide for the people. Intelligence policing helps community policing to provide adequate security solution by tranquilizing every act of criminality.
“My idea of community policing was conceived after to my research and travels, where I discovered that there is a common denominator among all policing systems across the world and there is the concept of mixing with the people via the concept of community policing. This concept is working all over the world and it is working over there. That was how I was able to secure the approval of Ford Foundation to train 100 police officers every year in community policing, which would have helped the country solve its crime problems. Unfortunately, this was torpedoed immediately I left office.”
Indeed a country that ignores ideas that could have saved it from problems cannot progress. One noticeable bane of the country is the Pull-Him-Down syndrome, a situation where successors, due to personal, ethnic or religious misgivings, truncate noble ideas that could have helped in solving national issues.
A few months after his appointment in 2007 as the 13th IGP, Mike Mbama Okiro came up with a visionary idea while ruminating on the insecurity cloud hovering over the Horn of Africa, where Muammar Gaddafi was involved in internal terrorism while at the same time Chad and Niger were engulfed in high-tension insecurity. What started like a religious gathering later turned out into an abysmal intelligence failure on the part of all the security agencies. A year before the country witnessed the dastardly activities of the sect known as Boko Haram, Okiro, the top cop strategists, had come up with the idea to assemble a team of policemen from the Mobile Police Force to be trained in combating terrorists, should there be such incident in Nigeria. Okiro told this writer, “The idea came when it dawned on me that Nigeria was gradually being circled by countries like Libya and Chad that were already battling terrorism. So, I started thinking proactively. I then selected a team and trained them, in Egypt, Spain and South Africa. We even set up an anti-terrorist training school in Nonwa, Rivers State. Unfortunately, some uninformed people petitioned that I was trying to introduce terrorism when there was nothing like that in the country. The idea suffered policy somersault and frustration. In fact, the budget I prepared for the training school to kick off, was not approved by the government and the policemen were scattered and some were deployed to the highways. The idea would have saved the country.
“Do you know that no sooner did I retire on July 24, 2009, than the Boko Haram struck Maiduguri in the same year?”
Coincidentally, reports said that on July 26, 2009, a group of rag-tag armed militants stormed police barracks and turned Maiduguri upside down, shooting and confronting the security agents and this was the beginning of terrorist activities, as they were eventually known as Boko Haram with their leader Muhammad Yusuf (a radical Islamic preacher based in Maiduguri).
Among the visionary security leaders were Mohammed Dikko Abubakar and Solomon Arase, both uniquely focused on intelligence-driven policing. According to IGP Abubakar, “I upgraded the intelligence department and made an Assistant Inspector-General of Police to be in charge. Solomon Arase was appointed to revolutionize the department. A lot of high-grade equipment was purchased and we saw the need to introduce drones into the Nigerian security space. Had that idea been allowed to fester, all these bandits and kidnappers would not have been operational, because the drone is caapable of locating the exact position of these criminal elements. We introduced the system whereby funds were made available to officers at the divisional levels to enable them fund intelligence, thereby decentralizing the fight against criminals.”
These were visionary leaders whose ideas were not allowed to fester but due to either government or institutional hatred, jealousy, and reckless leadership, these ideas were trashed without implementation.
Any idea that is abandoned and not used is irretrievably lost but an idea used is profitable not only to an institution but to the society. According to an international advert, “Idea opens up the world.” That is why Nigeria is paying dearly for the mistake. If tomorrow such leaders emerge again, the country and the institutions they represent would not wickedly torpedo these ideas.
From all indications, intelligence-gathering has failed in the the country. The recent shooting of retired DIG Mamman Tsafe in his family home is a strong warning signal that the bandits can go for anybody, after all, they have attacked and kidnapped many personalities in the country.
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