The regular gridlock on the Apapa road, in Lagos, has been described as a serious security concern with higher consequences on the population and the economy in the event of an explosion.
A security consultant, Col. Francis Okosun (retd), said this, on Channels television monitored, on Monday morning, by our correspondent.
He said careless action especially from a smoker, could raze the whole place down but blamed the DSS officer in charge of the area for the negligence of duty and called for action by the security assets of the nation assigned to the area.
Okosun argued that the inaction by the nation’s security over the years was unacceptable and required a penalty on the DSS and police officers in charge of this area.
“Do you see the traffic grid in Apapa? It is an accident waiting to happen. Take the traffic situation in Apapa, people are seeing just tankers and trailers on bridges. Have you considered the possibility of somebody with evil intention take advantage of that situation in Apapa?
“If you are the DSS observing Apapa local government for example, and you have the kind of mayhem, gridlock and madness that is happening in Apapa and nothing is being done in terms of analysis, interpretation of indicators to a higher authority, for them to solve the issue of the Apapa gridlock, then somebody is sleeping, that person there should be made to account for it.
“Look at the number of trailers; look at the number of tank farms; you have an active Naval base in Apapa, you have the Mile 2, Oshodi and the Mile 2, Badagry road, all it takes for a contradiction to happen, is for a careless cigarette smoker, to strike his match stick, boom, one tanker goes on fire, the whole town goes on fire.
“Then we are back to our senses of what ought to have been done, what should have been, who did what? We look at problems in the face and we refuse to address them,” the retired Colonel said.
Okosun who argued that officers of the separate secret police are not doing their jobs also called for the sack of the Director-General of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA) whom he alleged was sleeping on duty while the nation burns.
According to him the NIA which is the Nigerian version of the CIA has failed the country because of its inability to provide actionable intelligence, to quell the rising spate of insecurity in the country.
“What is the NIA doing not being able to locate the confluences of these bandits, kidnappers hoodlums in the forest, what are they doing?
Somebody is a DG there and you are telling me that the man should earn his pay, what is the man doing?
“The man is sleeping, and if he is sleeping give him a break let him go and sleep at home.
“Form the local, to the federal, every unit of it is guilty of complicity, is guilty of ineptitude, we can do better,” he said.
Okosun maintained that the District Police Officer (DPO) in charge of police districts are answerable to a higher officer of that space and should provide intelligence to the officer of their space.
He said the same applies to the Directorate of Secret Service which has officers in the troubled areas of the country and wondered what they are doing in their defined space, within the timeframe, insecurity cases are experienced in these areas.
He said officers assigned to such areas should be held responsible for their actions.
The security expert said: “He should be able to account for that geographical configuration, if he is unable to do so, then, he is either removed or made to account for his lapses.
“The police and the DSS are the ones down to the grassroots to account for what happens in that geographical configuration. The police and the DSS are to account for the area.
“The local government is the responsibility of these organisations that I have mentioned.
“What is at okay is something that someone is paid for, to identify, isolate and you see you cannot sit down in the studio and get the details of what happened in Plateau or Katsina and all other states.
“Suffice to say that in Basa local government of Plateau State the officer who is responsible for that ground, ought to have access, sources, agents, informants around, if you like, some technical inputs or access to be able to interpret the indicators.
“There are indicators, these things just don’t drop, there are indicators that can be identified and interpreted. Once these are identified and interpreted, the result which is now intelligence is now being fed to the customer, the customer in this case is the agent of the state.
“In each instance, this thing happens in time and space, someone is paid to monitor this space and in a time frame, therefore, these persons or these persons are paid to do so.
“The man in Katsina has different indicators as the man in Plateau and Lagos right now, each is trained to assess intelligence.
“It is intelligence you come up with that you consider when you consider these factors, look enough of the rhetorics and politics of what is different between Katsina or Plateau and Lagos, it is true that whatever these intervening factors are, the bottom line is there is insecurity, there is death, there is bloodshed there is mayhem.
“The bottom line is that you avert these and you avert these by timely information is obtained; it is processed, it is sieved, it is assessed and then you get intelligence out of it.
“As it is, Intelligence is not readily available because somebody is sleeping
“The truth is that there is no operational commander that will not succeed with information, if he gets an actionable intelligence he will do better. Read my words, he will do better than we are in,” Okosun submitted.
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