By Mohammad Dahiru Lawal
SIR: Ever since the turn of the decade, this country has witnessed an unprecedented decline in national security on a scale that can be described as shocking and that’s on a softer note.
The horror we are witnessing across the country these days, have no singular definition in comprehensive logic. Every account of attack is so mentally deranging, so much so that I am scared of looking into my web feed to access updates lately, because the available dispatch on both our conventional and social media spaces is nothing less than the story of guns and blood.
Due to events of the past few weeks from abductions on the Abuja-Kaduna highway to killings in Zamfara, Borno, Benue, Kaduna, Plateau and Ekiti states, many are outraged not only because attacks have become consistent, but because is spreading frequently, daringly and more audaciously, eroding every semblance of the availability of anything like national security.
It is a fact that we have descended into an anarchic society where annihilation of citizens is becoming louder than the national anthem.
What exactly is going on? Ineptitude, conspiracy or sabotage? How on earth will someone not be safe in their own home not to talk of spaces they choose to traverse?
What happened to our national intelligence? What happened to our military prowess? What is happening to our country?
What level of imbecility will make an overgrown nation with a well constituted security structure that includes armed forces with the best training, policing and intelligence agencies allowing themselves to shudder under the reigns of men of the underworld?
I can understand if the service chiefs – commander in chief inclusive – are inept, clueless and incapable of tackling the situation, but what I cannot understand is the reason for their lack of emotion, their inability to feel and display the kind of rage we as citizens are experiencing right now and at least appear as if they are tackling the issue with that feat of rage – unless of course culpability and lack of political will have a query to answer in the corridors of power.
That the people in charge of making it right are acting as if they are insulated from the kind of pain and anguish we are going through due to wanton bloodletting on our land makes me wonder the kind of power and levity they are enjoying that makes them so hardened.
I am astonished that the president is not consistently spitting fire and brimstone, I am astonished that the service chiefs are not clenching their fists and making a stampeding thump with their feet, I am amused ministers and cabinet members are not running helter-skelter in rendering their portfolios that may in one way or the other, be relative to combating insecurity.
There is no gainsaying that what is going on today is the cumulation of our collective carelessness from ages ago that has created an improvised society ravished by societal hopelessness. This is what is coming back to haunt us, otherwise even if conspiracy and culpability are factors, insecurity will never find a fertile ground to thrive because the lots of young people who are currently fueling it, wouldn’t be a readily available breed.
Besides the knee-jerk approach currently being deployed by all strata’s of our security structure, consistent incursion with the aim of crime elimination should be prioritized, while non-kinetic approach such as political will, calculated interactions, prioritization of citizens nationality and livelihood, effective social behavioral and change communication methods, coordinated cyber-warfare among other compelling strategies by all levels of government, stakeholders and citizens should be deployed with immediate effect.
We all need to wake up otherwise sooner or later, there will no longer be us.
- Mohammad Dahiru Lawal,
Kano.
