It made headline news when it was reported that four armed men kidnapped the wife of a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police, Hakeem Odumosu, from her residence in the Arepo, Obafemi/Owode Local Government Area of Ogun state late last week.
It doesn’t matter that her husband is retired because, at that level, Odumosu still enjoys some component of police protection, which is also extended to his family members.
That these criminals were able to break into that protection ring brings to the fore their temerity and brazenness, which ought to serve as a challenge to the Police and other security operatives. If such a high-ranking police officer is so vulnerable, then it means that the ordinary citizen surviving each day can only be attributed to divine intervention.
It is even more astounding that days after the incident, the Police are still talking about efforts to rescue her and appealing to civilians to be vigilant and strengthen security measures in their various places of domicile. Maybe they are waiting to be mobilised, as has become the custom where police officers demand millions of Naira for logistics from aggrieved relations before they can commence efforts to track down the criminals and rescue their victims.
What has become so disheartening is the effrontery of these elements who carry on their nefarious activities as if there are no security measures capable of bringing them under control.
To worsen the situation, the security operatives’ perceivable despondency suggests they have reached their wits’ end and have become incapable of devising methods of taking up the criminals’ gauntlet.
As a newspaper, we are reluctant to accept this situation, which explains why we persist in giving the security agencies and their operatives the benefit of the doubt on occasions when the urchins take the battle to their turf, as was the case in Ogun state recently.
But what happened in the case of the kidnap of that senior Police officer’s wife is symptomatic of what has become so widespread to the point that victims of the horrendous acts and their families ignore the security agencies and their operatives when they find themselves in such awkward situations by dealing with the criminals themselves if only to expedite the release process.
The ripple effect of the menace of these bandits is that some communities across the country have become desolate and deprived of life. During the just-concluded festive periods of Christmas and New Year, the cities were congested as returnees, especially those from outside the country, preferred staying in hotels rather than travelling to their homesteads and risking ending up in the hands of criminals.
We are worried because the security operatives know these criminals, who operate, in some cases, within the precincts of checkpoints and other supposedly security-deterrent measures. Even more disconcerting, in our opinion, is the attitude of these security operatives, who include the police, the military, and local vigilantes. There is a bold preference and eagerness on their part to collect tolls from travellers rather than ensure their safety.
It is essential to admit that security agencies and their operatives work under severe conditions, such as insufficient resources that stretch the commitment of an average security agent.
However, it is also pertinent to emphasise that resources will always be insufficient, given other competing demands. That calls for adroitness in managing what is available to achieve set goals and meet societal expectations.
That inevitably brings the discussion to the issue of corruption, which has become undeniably systemic, beginning with the recruiting process and the deployment of available resources.
The Police, for instance, cannot, in all good conscience, complain of a manpower shortage when their able hands are committed to protecting Very Important Personalities (VIPs). The intriguing dimension is that these officers are available to the highest bidder, whose VIP status is in doubt and who is out for a show-off.
On this page, we have pointed out the inadequacies of the recruiting procedure, which has become unpardonably politicised and, in most instances, bypasses the famed strict schedules of the Police high command itself as politicians take undue advantage of the lax processes of the Police Service Commission (PSC). The same can also be said of all the security agencies who, in a frenzy to appease their political godfathers and paymasters, throw standards to the dogs and flood the system with candidates of questionable character. Under normal circumstances, most of the recruits armed and equipped to protect the citizens have no business adorning the uniforms, which unfortunately licences them to kill.
Invariably, we are persuaded to argue that what is going on in the country presently must not be allowed to fester. It is bad enough that economic and social life is seemingly being put at abeyance as a result of the inanities of otherwise street urchins. It will be a tragedy of immense proportion if the nation allows the citizenry to become vendable objects in the hands of non-state actors who may be daring the security agencies and their operators to fight back if they can. We are getting to that point where anti-social elements, bandits and kidnappers are beginning to tell the rest of us to accept them as the new normal or go to hell. That is a brazen trend that must remain unacceptable.
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