A non-governmental organisation that advocates for promotion and advancement of democracy and good governance, International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, has said the war against insecurity has not been won because the Nigerian security forces are not in tune with modern security approaches.
The group also claimed that the nation’s forces are battling with internal corruption, illiteracy in ICT security and intelligence gathering, deficiency in mental security and intelligence skills among other deficiencies.
According to Emeka Umeagbalasi, the Board Chairman of Intersociety, Nigerian security forces must be restructured and their personnel and bosses re-trained and de-radicalised before it can make any headway in tackling terrorism and banditry rocking the nation.
Umeagbalasi, a criminologist and researcher, said, “The Nigerian Security Forces (NSFs) are inches away from being converted to full blown ‘Tribo-Islamic Gendarmes’ and to stop this from being the case, they must be urgently restructured and their personnel and bosses comprehensively retrained and de-radicalized.
“The “Fulanization” factor in the Security Forces must be frontally addressed including weeding out all the reportedly clandestinely conscripted ethno-religious killer elements in the Security Forces during the disastrous years of the Government of Retired Major Gen Muhammad Buhari (May 29, 2015-May 29, 2023). The Nigerian State must also drop and discard the infamous “State Jihadism Project” and take the country back to its supposedly secular status.
“We are making bold to say that the security forces of Nigeria will never make any meaningful progress in the areas of the country’s territorial and citizens’ security and safety as long as the Nigerian Government continues to beat about the bush and rigmarole in securitization absurdities, frivolities and irrelevancies. It is also regrettable that about 85% of the country’s security personnel and bosses are still starkly illiterate in ICT security and intelligence including “Man-Mental-Machine” Policing and Soldiering.
“Most of the country’s security personnel and their bosses are starkly computer illiterates with gross deficiencies in mental security and intelligence skills. Few of them that are well read have become “professorial or doctoral morons” having been grossly drenched in pandemic corruption and other corrupt practices.”
He alleged that many atrocities are being committed by the forces which have led to deaths of thousands of innocent citizens across the country.
The board chairman of the human rights and democracy research advocacy voice said the organization’s findings revealed that “In past eight years and four months (August 2015-Dec 2023): Over 100,000 unarmed and defenseless citizens of Nigeria have died directly or indirectly outside the law in the hands of the Nigerian Security Forces (Police, Military And Spy Police) in 28 major conduct-atrocity operations during which tens of thousands of innocent citizens were deadly tortured and secretly held without fair and evidence-base trial and several thousands of others permanently disappeared during custodial abductions and incarcerations.”
