The worse thing that can happen to anyone is when where one expects help and justice becomes a den or coven of extortion and manipulations.
Where one expects a haven, a dungeon surfaces and where one expects fairness, halo effects and prebendary tendencies stand staring to skew and distort facts.
The problem with Nigeria and the various insecurity lapses that hunt her isn’t only leadership failures but more of the complacency, connivance, toxic eggs and moles in the Force.
They form clusters of holes, channels and windows to misappropriate funds, siphon money, divulge sensitive information, give in to ingratiation at the detriment of the nation’s security for whatever it is they stand to gain.
Recently, the Kuje Correctional Centre was attacked and inmates walked away unhindered.
Severally the National Security institutions have been attacked, made a joke of, by bandits and Boko Haram members, leaving our Security teams and its architectural settings helpless,falling not only like packs of cards but wobbling flat-footed in moments of crisis and distress calls.
Nigeria and Nigerians have been beaten roundly, rounded up, made severely to bow and lick the boot of insurgency, in the face of millions and trillions of dollars, budgeted for military hardwares ,which most times get into private pockets.
As the country fester in insecurity, insurgency, kidnapping and banditry, the very custodians of the nation’ Security architecture, prosper, living beyond the comfort of what their due monthly pay and other genuine incentives could possibly give them.
In all these, it becomes one to be argued and debated about if the bone hung around the dog for protection and safe keep has not become the very menu for the dog and its hangers on, feeding fat, while the very reason for the fund is left unattended to.
Kidnapping is gradually becoming a booming bussines with high rate of return on investment.
How much of aiding by our Security agents/ persons to this bandits, Boko /Haram daredevils who probably may be interfacing with them for material gains remains a puzzle.
This wouldn’t sound Greek to anyone except one who has chosen to play the ostrich after many stories of moles being detected in our military formations.
It leaves much however, to be desired that after many years of huge budgetary allocations Nigeria is still being held by its balls by insecurity, squeezing it harder by day and making it difficult for Nigerians to breath freshly.
The ant that eats the wood isn’t far from the wood. Sadly nobody is doing anything about it, and as long as it remains so, our walk to liberation from the grip and operation of insurgency may be a long unending journey.
Not many Nigerians would be free from the toxicity of the bad eggs that populate our Security agencies expecially the Police Force.
This cliché of the Police being ones friend is more of a scam than real. To some who have had bitter and most gruesome experiences in the hands of some Police officers, dealing with criminal/ would be preferred to have anything to do with a Police officer.
These are people that have run to them expecting to have a haven, a safe place, justice and fairness only to be treated with the inverse of their expectations in a very brute and inhuman way.
A whole lot of infiltration happens in the Force, all manner of characters enrolled, causing bad image to an institution that ordinarily should be a bride many if not all would woo and have a predilection for.
The Police Force should be a place for those with high level of moral and ethical values. A place for those with passion to do things right without selfish interest and monetary inducement. It should be a place where issues and matters are judged with fairness, equity and justice without being influenced by fraternal connection, monetary inducement and other factors that may skew fairness.
It shouldn’t be a dumping place for social miscreants who for lack of anything to do for a living opt for it as a cover to continue in the path they are used to.
Police Force and other security agencies should be without spots and stains of members being caught in the web of either facilitating or aiding crime and criminality. Such stories of some of them being accessorise before or after a crime have been one too often. Isn’t such a contradiction? Enforcer of law and order, who gets caught in the very act he is commissioned to fight?
How criminal can some of this bad and toxic eggs be ? How inhuman and inconsiderate can some of them be when dealing with issues and matters brought to them? How enticed can some of them be with money and material things to get justice parodied, allowing the highest bidder not justice and fairness to hold sway?
As we talk about these security bad eggs so also we are concerned about other arms and segments of either the government or the society that have become a channel for perversion of justice, fairness, equity and a festering hole for corruption, nepotism, tribalism etc a hydra-headed creature maring progress and stability in the country.
The new Nigeria we all cry and clamor for will be a far cry, a mirage, more of a paper tiger if nothing is done to weed off all government agencies of masqueraded bandits, kidnappers, Boko Haram, criminal and gangsters. They are there in their numbers. If nothing is done this vision of a new Nigeria would be like pouring sparking water into a container of irredeemable dirt.
At times I wonder who is more criminal, daredevil in corruption and stealing, between Boko Haram, bandits, kidnappers and the bad eggs in the security agencies and government establishment? The former may be informal and violent in operations while the later may be formal and civil in stealing. If you ask me, they are different sides of a coin.
The police should up its games in building confidence in people. Though there are good police officers, very professional in conducts, sadly many are just the opposite, same is applicable to other security agencies. Weed off these toxic elements from the Force, I bet you insurgency, banditry etc will be a past tense in a while.
Jarlath Opara
