- With attacks on land, rail and air, where is the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of movement?
If the Minister for information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, ever had any reason to re-evaluate his idea of what authentic information from his office should be, the bloody and tragic attacks on Kaduna airport, the Abuja-Kaduna rail line, the killings in Southern Kaduna and the drowning of some women and children escaping attacks in Niger State, amongst other security breaches, must present some damning lessons.
The minister had at a media briefing declared that, “Nigeria is becoming safer everyday with the strings of successes being recorded in the fight against Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits and other criminal elements”. He was also full of praise for the men and women in the security agencies. Ironically, the bandits seem to have moved from the North East to the North West and North Central.
The sad attack on the Kaduna International Airport on March 26 reportedly claimed the lives of two workers there. There has been no clear picture of how the security breach at the airport happened and what is being done to prevent further attacks on both the same and other airports across the country. The military claimed the incident took place outside the perimeter fence of the airport.
We are saddened by the loss of several lives in the attacks, curiously all happening a few days after suspected bandits slaughtered more than 30 people in Southern Kaduna. However, these latest incidents are more than red flags on the state of the country’s security architecture. The highways have been infested by bandits who kill, maim, rape and kidnap citizens. Then many people resorted to travelling by rail, the safety of which is now being threatened by the attack on the Abuja-Kaduna rail line. Before now, passengers on the Lagos-Ibadan route were stranded in the bush when fuel suddenly finished in the train they were travelling in. Today, we are talking about attack on an airport.
Invariably there is now violence on the roads, rail lines and the airports. With very underdeveloped water transportation which might equally be attacked by sea pirates given the seeming lack of intelligence, the country might be in for a lot of trouble. Transportation is the pillar of all economic and social sectors. This therefore calls for the greatest sense of urgency in solving its hydra-headed problems.
Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, expressed his dissatisfaction with some members of the cabinet that seemed to have derailed a proposal by his ministry to acquire security drones for surveillance which, in the ministry’s assessment, might have prevented the sad rail incident from happening.
While we understand the reasons for the minister’s revealing outburst, we believe that the lack of critical assessment and vision about the Nigerian economy and development is not in the transport sector alone. Almost all sectors suffer from a systemic failure of sound planning, execution and evaluation of policies. And nothing can change until we as a country have a real introspection about what a working system entails and the implication for development, or lack of same.
The rail and airport attacks are not just about the failure of intelligence, they are about the abysmal failure of the chain of a system that is broken on several levels. How come the colleagues of the minister did not give an urgent thought to his suggestion? Why is security not prioritised in the country? The provision of physical infrastructure like roads, railway and airports does not equate functional security architecture; so the terrorists are moving from highways to railways to airports, negating the essence of them all.
We could suggest a shutdown of the Abuja-Kaduna rail lines until security is guaranteed. But it sets up a dilemma. The road transport on that corridor is also in peril. We can only call for an urgent and painstaking approach. Now, it is not just a question of provision of drones but what an expert like Dennis Amachree, a former Department of State Services (DSS) director said recently in a Channels TV interview that the recent visits of Vice President Yemi Osibanjo, the governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, and all the media glitz over the tragedy is a misplacement of priority. The government must learn to let experts do their jobs. Intelligence would have helped in preventing most of these security breaches.
Mere drone acquisition solves little problems; there ought to be tracking systems, surveillance gadgets and all relevant cameras that can capture the plans and movements of evil planners. Observations must be quickly followed by immediacy in response and that is where the predator drones are needed as they come armed and unmanned to deal with situations like the ones on long rail tracks, highways and airports.
Such gadgets have been in use in places like Afghanistan; Nigeria can seek the help of the US in this regard. Politicians and government appointees are often not well-equipped to handle security issues. The experts must be involved in risk assessment, intelligence-gathering and execution. There are modern eye-in-the sky systems that remain inaccessible to terrorists. Modern security is so high tech and must be beyond the terrorists’ capacity.
On a general note, we must reappraise the due process department as a government agency. While its role helps bring order to governance and accountability, there are issues that must be handled with urgency. The bureaucratic bottlenecks of the civil service must be reviewed to prioritise issues of urgent national importance, like security.
We must re-evaluate the fact terrorists seem to work ahead of the system. It is shocking that they seem to have driven travellers from the highways to the rail lines and seem to be succeeding on the rails and airport, having carried out successfully the attacks and there seems to be no accountability in terms of arrests of the bandits or even full information on the passengers.
It is scandalous that the manifest of the ill-fated train was released by the Kaduna State government. It was reported that about 398 passengers purchased tickets for the train, 362 actually validated their tickets, eight bodies were recovered with 26 passengers injured. We wonder why this information is not coming from the railway management. Why are there reports of unrecorded passengers? Why are there no clear data of the names and addresses of the passengers? This tacky record reminds us of the defunct Nigeria Airways that was basically ruined by the indiscipline of the management which treated the airline not as a business but as a pseudo-charity organisation on which many people lived on free tickets, even for international flights. The lack of proper records and documentations says a lot about the management of the refurbished rail tracks and coaches.
Again, we expect some punitive measures for negligence; we expect people who have failed in their duties to resign honourably. Beyond that, however, they should be prosecuted accordingly. Nigeria cannot continue with impunity in public service. We want every passenger accounted for and families made to get closure for their family members affected by the tragedy. Let every human life count and be counted!