I watched Malam Jafaar Jafaar, publisher of Nigerian Daily provide some interesting context moments after his medium broke the news of the blast on the Kaduna bound rail by some bands of terrorists on Arise Television mid- last week. That was even at a time when the debate still raged as to whether there was any blasts at all, let alone on the Kaduna-Abuja rail network. As I would learn later, the former senator representing the Kaduna Central district, Shehu Sani, had actually reported this on his Facebook page. He said the bandits planted an explosive that damaged the rail track and shattered the windshield of the train’s engine on Wednesday evening.
The Nigerian Railway Corporation had, as if to compound the confusion, initially denied only to concede later that an incident did in fact, take place. A terse statement from Fidet Okhiria, said that the explosives damaged the rail track at a spot between Dutse and Rijana, and that the corporation was making efforts to restore train services on the route.
“Efforts are currently ongoing to ensure that the train services along the Kaduna-Abuja route are fully restored,” he said.
The meat of Jafaar’s intervention was that the Nigerian security agencies actually received some intel alerting them to the imminence of the blast. He alluded to some specific targets mentioned in the report which he claimed the agencies had; efforts to reach the police and perhaps other agencies – all to no avail. In the end, the Nigerian Daily publisher gave valuable clues as to why some officials should be called in for questioning for what amounts to acts of gross dereliction of their duties, while also calling for serious interrogation and possible overhaul of the extant reporting structure under which egregious failures bordering on breaches of national security could take place!
Talk of the tragedy merely echoing the typical Nigerian tragedy: one bored official on getting the intel quips – what of it – convinced that the big man on the reporting line probably has better things to do with his time. That one passes on to the next in line, who although convinced of its actionable contents, does not care a hoot. Indeed, he merely assumes it’s a trophy of sorts for a day’s exertion, as against setting the trigger to scupper a looming conflagration. And when it then happens…trust the grandmasters of the lecture circuit holding a world press conference to rationalise/deny/vilify and, ultimately to exculpate themselves!
Talk of the Nigerian version of intelligence utilisation!
Well, it’s been more than 144 hours since. No one has yet to be called in for questioning. Indeed, mum has remained the word between then and now from the police, the Department of State Security and other agencies.
Is it a case of being too embarrassed to admit the obvious? Or perhaps that they do not think Nigerians deserve explanations on why the blast could not have been aborted despite the prior intel received?
Guess matters of security are for the closet even if citizens are daily reminded that security is everyone’s business. In the meantime, the locomotives have since Saturday returned to active duty belching their smoke through the thick Abuja-Kaduna forests – never mind that the distraught passengers are still in states of shock or suspended animation!
Left to Rotimi Amaechi, our minister of railways (or is it transportation?) the incident, if it happened at all, is probably just one of those countless but minor footnotes in the nation’s calendars of catastrophe. The minister is since back on his desk with a new energy and resolution: to talk some sense into those fellows in the Federal Executive Council who before now could not be convinced that the railway corridors needed to be protected!
To yours truly, that itself is some revelation! I mean the minister’s implicit admission that the Federal Executive Council, right up till now, could not have envisaged the possibility of the rail tracks constituting soft targets to local vandals and their unscrupulous foreign cohorts?
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Not after the stories daily told of some unscrupulous Nigerians and their Chinese counterparts making brisk business from harvesting rail tracks and sleepers only now being fairly common! One such haul, apparently headed for a steel factory somewhere in Ogun State was intercepted by the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the Nasarawa State Police Command. That was in May – some four months ago. Among those reportedly taken in was a Chinese national, Marra Thai and an aide of Nasarawa’s Governor Abdullahi Sule and 13 others. Also in the same month, this time in the coal city of Enugu, the police and the local vigilante, apparently acting on intelligence, swooped on a gang of outlaws attempting to vandalise railway tracks at Nkwubor rail-line.
Of course, if one had imagined that the vandals would restrict their heists to the sprawling network of disused tracks littering every corner of the country, Nigerians would, in the same month of May have a taste of the new broth being prepared; the brigands extended their reign of outlawry to the newly delivered Itakpe – Aladja – Warri line. This time, the vandals cut several sections of the track around Kilometre 30, Adogo, in Kogi State. All of these – we told were going on – while Minister Amaechi was making frantic efforts to persuade his colleagues in the Federal Executive Council to buy into his digital security template!
Last week the ‘vandals’ would remind us that the country is still at war; more than that, they also served notice that nothing is off-limits; that all is fair in war!
Those who still doubt the progression of the so-called roving band of outlaws to their the mutation into bandits and to what is finally their unrestrained embrace of raw terror, and so believe that the rest of us should join in their wild semantic sophistry apparently know a thing or two that the rest of us do not yet know. However, while our common rationality still subsists, it’s probably not too much to ask them to consider the programmed mass murder that would have eventuated had the vandals had their way – from the coaches careening off the track at those ungodly hours of the night, with the scores of the bandits lurking nearby moving in to finish what they had planned all along! By then, there would just be enough passengers alive to hive off a hefty ransom from Nigeria’s subdued mass!
Talk of the terrorists that they have misnamed bandits being on the march; from missions to down fighter jets, they have their sights now set on the railway’s terra firma!
We must of course thank God for the tragedy that was averted. Also, we must hold Minister Amaechi to his promise to fish out the terrorists who planted the explosives on the rail track.
Even at that, the job would not be considered as nearly half done. Nigerians deserve to know whether some officials had actionable intel and neglected to take action or pass on to the appropriate organs of government. They need to know why basic things were not in place before the commencement of the rail services. For while Nigerians might have been in the race to join the rest of the civilised world in rail transportation, it stands also to reason that such small but basic things as comfort and security are actually what signals our arrival into modernity!