Criminal gangs are holding Nigerians hostage with their indulgence in routine killings, kidnappings, armed robberies and raping of women, challenging, as it were, the authority of the state to guarantee security of lives and property. Sadly, the security agencies, especially the police, do not get a handle on this sticky situation. This is ominous, and it requires a decisive and emergency response from the government at all levels.
Some of the incidents are most pathetic and bestial. A gang said to beEiye “confraternity,” set a house ablaze in the Bariga area of Lagos, during which a 65-year old woman, Adegoke Adefuye, was roasted to death this year. And in a fit of inebriation, Aye “confraternity” killed 11 persons in Igode and Fakale communities in Sagamu to mark its anniversary recently. Just last month, gunmen raided Okwelle community in Imo State, raped a married woman in the presence of her husband and three children, before killing the couple, and then kidnapping the children.
A long-drawn supremacy gun battle between two rival cult groups in the Awarra and Assa communities, in Ohaji/Egbema Local Government Area, also in Imo State, has left scores of people dead; houses have been burnt; the community is desolate and property of those who fled looted. Soldiers deployed in the area last week, in the face of apparent police letdown, killed five of the hoodlums in a gun duel.
In Omoku, Rivers State, 11 people were killed after a clash betweenGreenlanders and Icelanders criminal gangs in June. Policemen are not spared either. No fewer than five of them were overpowered and abducted while on duty in the Okrika area in May. The state Police Commissioner, Francis Odesanya, in a seeming helplessness, said last month that his command was still searching for them. There is no end to these gory narratives.
But they underscore the broken nature of our internal security architecture or policing in the country and the urgency of introspection by the police on how to rediscover their groove. Evidently, they display, quite often, rank indolence, compromise and inability to be ahead of these criminals in intelligence gathering, which explains why criminal activities cannot be nipped in the bud.
The story of the notorious gangster in Benue State, Terswase Akwaze, aka Ghana, who has returned to his underworld life after a purported atonement a year ago, vividly illustrates this fact. He had surrendered 84 weapons to the amnesty committee set up by Governor Samuel Ortom. As he remains elusive, the government placed a N5 million bounty on him. Yet, he has granted a television interview from his hideout, amid a police manhunt for him, according to a media report. Arrest him or not, a former Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, Abubakar Tsav, laments that the state will remain under seige, as he controls a 200-strong-man gang, notorious for assassinations, cattle rustling and kidnapping in the Benue and Taraba conurbation.
Either in Benue, Lagos, Ogun, Rivers, Imo states, or elsewhere, questions will continue to surge. For instance, how the self-confessed leader of Eiye, Ibrahim Balogun, aka Small Jprong, who was arrested on August 24 in Lagos, has been operating since 2009 without being effectively put out by the police beggars belief. The CP of Lagos State, Fatai Owoseni, has the bounden duty to investigate this, beyond his avowal to locate his confederates who turned their base, Somolu, Pedro and Bariga areas, into theatres of war. “I had a lot of boys working for me. I have killed three persons… I cut them with knives. I shot some other victims,” Balogun intrepidly confessed during his parade before the media.
In states where this malevolence has spiralled, there is ample evidence that politicians played key roles. They arm and fund the groups for electoral thuggery, harassment and killing of political opponents. For proof, look no further than the manner militant groups in the Niger Delta and the Boko Haram sect in the North-East sprang up. Such blood-thirsty gangs are never dismantled once polls are over. Instead, they expand the frontiers of their criminal engagements until the next set of elections when they would be hired again.
However, this banditry is facilitated by the proliferation of small and light weapons. Customs officials intercepted 13 containers laden with illegal arms at Lagos port in 2013, just as the police recovered from criminal hideouts over 8,741 weapons, 7,014 pieces of ammunition and 164 loaded magazines in AK rifles in Anambra, Edo and Rivers states in 2014. Regrettably, dealers in this merchandise of death are never caught, thus keeping alive the supply chain. Apparently, citizens cannot sleep with their two eyes closed under this circumstance.
The Rivers State CP, Odesanya, is alarmed at the level of illegal arms in his domain, as he begins a mop-up crusade. He stressed that “what is happening in Rivers is also happening in other states.” He is absolutely correct. The Inspector-General of Police, Abubakar Idris, should be concerned as well. He should set targets for all the state CPs on the recovery of these weapons, just as the Federal Government can no longer overlook tighter control of our land borders through which most of these arms enter the country.
Criminals should be made to face the consequences of their action. This is an irreducible minimum obligation of governance that will make every Nigerian feel safe.
