Three lessons on insecurity in Nigeria, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Policemen

First, insecurity will never be resolved under the watch of a president who would rather hear what he wants to hear than what he needs to know. Second, when presidents play fast and loose with public safety and security, the effects can be very long-lasting. Third, public officials charged with protecting the country are unfit for their duty if they choose to be presidential courtiers preoccupied with preserving the intimate relationship between their derriere and the glue that keeps him in power.

Nigeria's return to civilian rule has proven far more difficult than many had hoped. Of the challenges that have emerged in its wake, few have proven to be as enduring or chronic as that of ensuring public safety in the country. Since the beginning of the return to elective power, the country has struggled against insecurity.

After the soldiers withdrew to the barracks on May 29, 1999, the security situation in the country deteriorated. The struggle for money, power and influence among politicians escalated into a series of political assassinations. Different people and interest groups freely exchanged blame, assigning alleged responsibility for the killings.

As expected, the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo was at the center of competing claims. Following the December 2001 assassination of then Federation Attorney General Bola Ige, Charles Mafua, then Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Kaduna, said that "encouraged by the inability of the government to track down the killers of its judicial officer and other Nigerians, assassinations, political or otherwise, have taken (the level) of a national pastime, a very attractive and lucrative business for the many young and unemployed adults in our country".

Many people have also blamed the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), calling their handling of the killings “lethargic” at best. In response, many states created vigilantes, formal or informal, which ultimately seemed to create more problems than they could solve. The official security services, including the NPF, were ill-suited to their function. Institutionally, they were understaffed and their staff suffered from low morale.

In January 2002, a group identifying themselves as "the Warrant Officers of the Nigerian Army and their equivalents in the Navy, Air Force and Police and Base Inspectors of the Armed Forces and Police of Nigeria" released a letter to three prominent civil rights figures, including Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), in which they complained of continuing morale problems in the joint services inherited from the transition from the military regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar. Among the highlights of these pathologies, they complained that:

there was no security in the country, not necessarily because there was little army and police, but because many soldiers and police were used to protect serving and retired senior officers, their relatives and friends, and well-to-do people in society, leaving the wider society of ordinary Nigerians unprotected; the crime wave in the country has continued to rise alarmingly as m...