War against insecurity: We will not fail — Security Service Chiefs
…Results only, no room for excuses — President Tinubu
…Tinubu may dialogue with bandits — Sani Yerima
…Deal with bandits according to the law — Security expert
By Ibiyemi Mathew, Moses Adeniyi, Joel Oladele (Abuja)
Nigeria Security Service Chiefs have assured Nigerians that they will not fail in eradicating insecurity in the country.
This came following a closed door meeting President Tinubu had yesterday with the Service Chiefs including the National Security Adviser (NSA) and the acting Inspector General of Police (IGP) barely two weeks after he announced their appointment as Security Chiefs.
Recall, that in his inaugural address on Monday May 29, President Bola Tinubu had promised Nigerians that security would be of top priority for his administration.
The meeting yesterday, Nigerian NewsDirect gathered was anchored on demands of the President on the Service Chiefs to deliver with concrete result on the task they have been appointed to perform without excuse.
The National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu who spoke on behalf of the Security Chiefs assured the President and Nigerians that the Security Chiefs will perform up to expectation in the objective of securing the Country for peace and stability.
Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, the NSA disclosed that the President directed them to work as a team and deliver on their mandate. Mentioning that the President has made the right decision in the choice of their appointments, he said the Security Heads have already started working with results now recording crime rate subsiding.
Disclosing highlights of the outcome of the meeting, he said, “We are here to thank Mr President for the opportunity he gave us to serve our Country and to serve his own government. We also pledged our loyalty to him, Nigeria and Nigerians.
“We believe the choice he made is the right one, the correct one, and we know what he wants for this country. We are going to work tirelessly to ensure that we accomplish that objective of securing our country, establishing peace, stability and let’s get our lives back.
“He gave us the assurance that he’s with us 100 percent. He told us that we must work as a team and that there’s work to be done, he’ll expect us to deliver and we’re grateful for the opportunity. That’s why we are here.
“Where we are today and you can see already things are improving in our Country. If you see the record of crimes and activities of criminals are going down, it will continue to go down. We’ll secure this place.
“Nigerians have seen the quality of the people that are given opportunity, they are probably some of the best we have and they are not going to fail you, they’ll certainly deliver,” Ribadu concluded.
President Tinubu demanded the Security Chiefs to deliver as a team the mandate placed upon them and not to give excuse but provide results.
In attendance at the closed door meeting included the Chief of Defence Staff, Major General Christopher Musa, the Chief of Army Staff, Major General Taoreed Lagbaja, the Chief of Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, the Chief of Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal Hassan Abubakar, and the Acting IGP, Kayode Egbetokun.
Tinubu may dialogue with bandits — Sani Yerima
President Bola Tinubu may dialogue with bandits in a bid to restore lasting peace and security to the country, a former Governor of Zamfara state has revealed.
Yerima said this to journalists at the State House on Monday after meeting with President Tinubu.
According to Yerima, “A lot of bandits have been arrested and killed, and I’m not saying government should just continue to just negotiate indefinitely. No, I said invite them.
“There are people, who repent in all religions — Islam, Christian, Judaism, with the fact that God, who created us once you repent after committing offences, after committing sins he forgives you, so there’s no way you can say Nigerians should not be forgiven if they repent.
“If they repent, they should be rehabilitated and reintegrated into the society and then measures should be taken to avoid reoccurrence of this menace.
“But, if they don’t the government has enough power, enough resources, the military, the security have enough capacity. I have confidence in the Nigerian security that they have enough capacity with the political will and support of the government to handle this matter. So, dialogue is part of governance,” he said.
Recall that Yerima earlier asked Tinubu to dialogue with bandits, just as the late former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua dialogued with Niger Delta militants.
Speaking with Nigerian NewsDirect, a security, safety, and crime management Consultant, Stephen Okwori said bandits should be dealt with according to terrorism Acts, adding that negotiating with them will only encourage them to keep engaging in the criminal activities.
Okwori noted that Senator Yerima sounds contradictory by advocating for negotiation with bandits as the current governor of his State already declared war against terrorism.
“It’s contradictory if Yerima is advising the President to dialogue with bandits when the current governor in Zamfara is against dialoguing or negotiating with bandits. It’s in the news that the current governor of Zamfara State said his government will never negotiate with bandits.
“My own opinion about it is, if you go ahead and negotiate with bandits, it will not pay, rather it will create factions among the existing bandit groups. If I am the head of a bandit group, and you negotiate with me and whatever you give me, I don’t take it down to my member, some other ones might feel aggrieved that I have gone to negotiate on their behalf and I did not come to report to them what exactly was given to me, they will decide to break away.
“That will create many factions of bandits and you will have to keep negotiating with more and more groups. And once you start something like that, there is no way you can go back, you will continue to negotiate endlessly and that doesn’t put you in the right direction to fight insecurity.
“The law about criminal elements is clear, if you are arrested, they will treat you according to what the law says. And if you don’t treat them like that, it will not serve as a deterrent to potential criminal elements that want to go into act of banditry or other criminal activities.
“They will see it as a lucrative business because they know that once you become a criminal, there are incentives for you from the government.
“They will now create their own groups, for the government to look for them and begin to see how to negotiate with them. The negotiation does not come like that, negotiation comes with some incentives, either monetary or otherwise,” He noted.
Speaking further, the security expert said the Niger Delta amnesty program Yerima based his argument on was never a success and shouldn’t be seen as a good precedence.
“The amnesty given to Niger Delta militants by late President Yar’adua that he based his claim on was also a wrong move. When the government negotiated with some of them then, some of them were left out and it’s still causing crises in that region.
“So once you start negotiation like that, it doesn’t really end well. Did the negotiation with the Niger Delta militants work? Has it ended any militant activity in the region? Militancy is still ongoing. Applying enough kinetic approach to some of these issues is not wrong but once you start something like that, they box you into a corner as a government, anyone that comes up as the head of such a group, you have to renegotiate with him.
“So, deal with non-state actors according to what the law says. Banditry, militancy and others,
they are all criminal activities. We have laws to checkmate them, and we keep amending these laws, what are we amending the laws for?
“Imagine a so-called repentant Boko Haram commander was on television days ago, he said he’s not comfortable with the way the government is treating them, all the promises the government made to them were not fulfilled. Can you imagine how many lives this guy has wasted, how many orphans he has made.
“They kill and still have the gut to say the government is not taking care of them. We have laws in terrorism Acts that specify clearly how to deal with all these criminals and you are coming to tell me that you have repented. How sure are we that they have truly repented when they go into other criminal activities like drug trafficking, they also act as spies to Boko Haram members that are in the forest. You can’t truly establish that they have truly repented, so negotiating with them for me, I’m against it,” he concluded.
