Which is why state police should get accelerated attention to better dominate un-policed spaces

For kidnap victims, it has not been the best of seasons, given the rash of kidnapping and even insane demand for ransom this past one week.

The relative ease with which kidnappers forcefully march hundreds of our compatriots into forests, as bait for huge ransom, is absolutely unacceptable. Still, there is no magic about it. A simple logic drives this heinous crime: too much of Nigeria’s vast territory is either un-policed or is guarded by rag-tag vigilantes, which arms peter to near-nothing against the awesome arms of bandits, terrorists and kidnappers.

That is why the 37 governments of the federation must hurry to consummate state police to drive the national security response, in a well and true federal format.

Needless to repeat: a centralized Nigeria Police is frail, given our current grave insecurity challenges. State police — for states that can afford it — should plug most of the holes, other things being equal, before tackling other specific local problems.

Kidnapping may be a national crisis. But the burden, this past week, has been rather heavy on the North, particularly North West and North East, not discounting the rampant terrorism and fatal community clashes in Plateau; and sundry violence in Niger and Nasarawa segments of North Central.

Clearly, the North now rocks under that quake.

On March 7, armed kidnappers surrounded the Local Education Authority (LEA) Primary School, Kuriga, in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State. After, some 287 pupils and teachers were marched into the bush, as potent tools for bargain ransom. The compound also houses a secondary school: ironically in search of a more secure space, in light of the serious insecurity challenge in that locality — and then, the raid!

Sani Abdullahi, a newly recruited teacher witnessed the kidnapping on his first day in the school, though he escaped to tell the horror tale: “I resumed [assumed duty] at the school at exactly 7:47 am. I entered the Acting Principal’s office and signed,” he told a stunned Governor Uba Sani. “All of a sudden, the Acting Principal asked me to look at my back and when I turned, we discovered that bandits had surrounded the school premises.”

That was how teachers and pupils were frog-marched into the bush! Abdullahi, with some others, however later escaped to alert the village head, who later rallied their sorry security cells to try save the victims. That futile effort, however, led to the bandits killing at least one of the luckless vigilante corps.

On March 11, another 61 people were snatched by suspected terrorists in the Buda community of Kajuru Local Government of Kaduna State. Earlier on March 9, at around 1 am gunmen, assumed to be bandits, invaded a Qur’anic school in Gada Local Government Area of Sokoto State, seizing 16 pupils, widely called “Tsangaya pupils”: 15 males, one female.

Away from the North West, Amnesty International (AI) claimed 400 people were on March 8 abducted by suspected terrorists in Borno State (North East) — the epicentre of the now defanged Boko Haram. The number is disputed though, by Governor Babagana Zulum, who maintained the exact number was yet to be ascertained.

Still, the tragedy here is that the snatched were seized from the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps: Babban Sansani, in Zulum; and Arabic, in Gamboru Ngala. It’s a double tragedy: citizens fled their homes, running from Boko Haram, now kidnapped from IDP camps, supposed to be safe havens, with guaranteed security.

It cannot get worse but now is no time to despair. It’s instead time to act and act fast — and think even faster.

Talking about fast thinking: that audacious N1 billion demand by the bandits to release the Chikun 287, within 20 days or kill them all! That, to say the least, is cheeky, rippling with over-confidence, suggesting sheer impotence on the part of the government. But flipped, it could also be sheer desperation, powered by empty bluff.

The government should accept every help it can to call this bluff, free the abducted, and finally crush these felons. But it should also nurture and execute non-kinetic policies and programmes that war against poverty and create opportunities that shield angry youths from brain-washing and illicit indoctrination. It should also deploy technology: both to track the location of calls and eliminate hidden calls by criminals.

Still, why might suspected bandits be demanding N1 billion ransom at one fell swoop? It could well be that their terror infrastructure has been so smashed they wanted some windfall to re-arm. While the government should try everything possible to secure freedom for the victims — unharmed — paying a ransom might be procuring, for the criminals, arms and ammo for future kidnap raids. That joyfully tallies with the government’s publicly stated stand not to pay any ransom. We endorse it.

But that’s where actionable intelligence also comes in. That all of these raids have succeeded show the apparent collapse of intelligence, though we are in no position to know how many of such planned kidnaps prior intelligence had thwarted. The ugly thing about terrorism, however, is that the success of one raid — even if you abort 100 — gives the impression intelligence had collapsed. It’s not necessarily so.

Still, there is an imperative to further boost the intelligence network, if similar future kidnaps are to be curbed. That again brings the issue back state police.

State police can’t be effective, or even be complete, without a thriving intelligence network. Indeed, effective Intel ought to come with federalized police as a complete package: with adequate training, there appears more than enough “raw materials” for riled locals, pushed to the wall by bandit abuse, ready to “say something, if they see something”, to get rid of those pests.

With top-rate intelligence assured, the new layer of the federal policing network will take its critical place in the anti-terrorism, anti-banditry war.

As the military flush out hardened terrorists from their bastion (witness the fate of many Boko Haram commanders and cells), the Nigeria Police at the centre mop up the fleeing bands in the near-areas, while state police cadres, with arms upgraded by law, are embedded and positioned to decision fleeing terrorists to far-flung areas. Many of those, escaping with small arms, wreak havoc on locals, via opportunistic raids.

Again, there are ample vigilante cells in the affected northern states, that could be retrained and absorbed into the new state police, after the governments have carried out due diligence; but not before the trainees have passed a rigorous test of character.

Indeed, state police is the clear missing link in the terror war. Otherwise, terrorists escaping from the Boko Haram epicenter of the North East, or bandits fleeing from the heat of Zamfara, would not have found comfy homes elsewhere, if yet another cadre of state police had effectively dominated the remotest of places.

The time to act is now.

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