TRACKING_____With the military high command appearing to be at its wits’ end and President Muhammadu Buhari’s insistence on not rejigging the country’s security architecture despite obvious failings, more Nigerians are appealing to government to change tactics.
In fact, a peeved former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen. Alani Akinrinade (rtd) says the Federal Government “should go to hell if it cannot provide security” for Nigerians, which it swore to protect.Akinrinade, also a former Chief of Army Staff (CoS) in an exclusive chat with The Guardian expressed concern over the manner regional security systems are springing up
He said: “There may be a lot of things that are not clear to me, whether the constitution precludes you from defending yourself, or looking after your own security, and that of your people. But I think it is only a stupid constitution, and the one that is inhuman that will prevent anyone from looking after his security, and welfare of the people around him.”
He continued: “The Constitution did not create governors but administrators…A governor must be able to make laws through his parliament and also enforce those laws using the police force, but our governors can’t even, though they are called chief security officers of the states. Where is the instrument for fostering that security because the police is not under their control.”
He lamented situation where governors spend too much funds that is not even in their state’s budgets to equip a police force that they cannot directly control saying, “the police is not the responsibility of the governors because it is a federal police. We must have known that something is basically wrong with the security architecture.”
While refusing to fault South West governors for initiating Operation Amotekun, or faulting them for waiting this long before taking off, he said, “when you are talking about timing, it is a bit difficult to fault the governors for setting up Operation Amotekun. All I know is that things got to a head and became unbearable, and so at some point the governors had to do something.”
“When you are boxed to a corner, you have to find an innovative way of doing things. And I don’t think the South West governors and even others in other geo-political zones ought to have been pushed to that kind of level if the Federal Government was aware, and bent on doing its job, knowing that security is the first role in any nation, or country. There is no way you will police a place like the so-called federation of Nigeria using one Inspector General of Police (IGP).
“There is need to breakdown the current security architecture. We should all agree that the present architecture does not work and we should now breakdown the police by having the federal police, which should have its own remit and responsibilities, then the state should have their own police, which will be responsible for them, instead of calling it all sorts of names as if we are quarrelling among ourselves?”
In dismissing the fear of the country breaking up, he stressed: “I don’t think Nigeria will break up. It will somehow get rid of all these people, who are too afraid to look after us. I think for me, that is what I will like to see. Let them go to hell. You can’t just sit down in one corner and say you are from Daura, or wherever it is, and the only people you know are those around you; no new ideas are coming, while people are being killed daily and they even have the effrontery to tell us that those people calling themselves herdsmen are non-Nigerians.
“Are you telling me that a Federal Government will be looking on when some foreigners shamble into this country and start doing exactly what they want? If there is a cabal that is making this mistake that Nigeria is going to break up, it is not, but we only need to be on the watch.”He called for the revisiting of all the recommendations that had been made on security, adding that it was the only way that the country’s unity can be sustained.
