NSCDC’s alert on terror

THE National Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) recently alerted all its state commands to the heightened plans by the terror outfit, ISWAP, Boko Haram and bandits to launch attacks on several states in the country, including Lagos, Abuja and Katsina. The leaked memo dated July 25, 2022 and signed by the Deputy Commandant-General of the NSCDC, Dauda Mungadi, addressed to all state commands of the corps, indicated that two separate bandit groups had also concluded plans to attack Abuja and other areas. The memo read in part: “We have received credible intelligence that the Boko Haram and the ISWAP terrorist groups have mobilised fighters and high-calibre weapons, particularly Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG), Anti Aircraft (AA) guns, and General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMGs),which they intend to deploy in the offensive on Katsina State.”

It is regrettable that terrorism is becoming a scarier problem by the day. For instance, the country’s plans for the 2023 general election might be hindered simply because the Commander-in-Chief of the country’s armed forces is already overwhelmed and exasperated by his statutory tasks. If anything, the precision with which terrorists operated across the country in recent times has confounded observers. It is clear that President Muhammadu Buhari has been thoroughly negligent in the way he has approached Nigeria’s security challenges. The situation is deadly serious: it confirms that terrorists have the ability to cause maximum damage.

Truth be told, the alert by the NSCDC High Command on the places and locations targeted for attack by terrorists and bandits across Nigeria is yet another indication of the deplorable level that insecurity has reached in the country under the President Buhari government. The alert reminds Nigerians that terrorists and bandits have largely taken over in the country with their vast reach and methodology and the ability to strike at will, and without the security agencies being able to do anything about it or being in a position to thwart their plots and ambushes. Indeed, the security alert shows that terrorists and bandits have mobilised sophisticated and high-calibre arms and ammunition, many of which are not even available to the security agencies for use in their operations.

There must be improved collaboration among security agencies to forestall the imminent threat to the lives and properties of innocent citizens. The NSCDC’s alert suggests that terrorists operate in absolute freedom and that they even have weapons that some of Nigeria’s security agencies can only dream about. They therefore have been able to make good their various threats.  Gradually, the country is becoming a failed state as security agencies get incapacitated by terrorists armed to the teeth. Yet, leaving Nigerians helpless and vulnerable to terrorists isn’t part of the deal that the Buhari government signed with them when it was inaugurated in 2015.

The implication is that the government is at its wits’ end and is not even in a position to use its intelligence wherewithal to go after these terrorists not only to disrupt their plans but to also apprehend them and ensure maximum punishment in accordance with the laws of the land, but has chosen only to inform Nigerians about the dangers it currently faces. This is very disheartening and it points to the helplessness of the government to respond adequately to the growing insecurity in the land with a view to assuring Nigerians of their security. The government really needs to ask itself what it is doing so wrong that all its promised and vaunted  strategies to address insecurity  have failed and are still failing. Evidently, it is time for the government to change its tactics and buckle down if it is not to lose the essence of its existence and standing as a government.

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Terrorist attacks: Security forces have full freedom to end menace ― Buhari