A little over a year ago, precisely on June 5, 2022, the ancient town of Owo in Ondo State was literally flooded with the blood of innocent citizens mindlessly spilt by some gunmen. The terrorists, who hurled explosives and opened fire on whoshippers during the Sunday service at St Francis Catholic Cathedral, Owo, despatched over 40 worshippers to the great beyond and wounded many more. They threw many families into anguish and shattered lives irreparably. The hideous attack was arguably the most brazen and horrendous by gunmen in the South-West in the recent times, not just by reason of the sheer number of lives that were lost in one fell swoop, but also by the choice of a location and the time of the deadly attack. The church, and indeed the people of Owo, have yet to recover from the gory and dastardly incident that disturbed the peace and tranquility of the ancient town. When the church opened temporarily on Easter Sunday, ten clear months after the incident, a member of the committee of the church dealing with the welfare of victims of the terror attack, Perpetua Ezibo, said some of the injured victims were still groaning in pain.
It is gravely worrisome that respect for the sanctity of human life has been virtually eroded as dozens of innocent citizens are killed across the country almost on a daily basis. And more worrying is the fact that the government and Nigerians seem to have developed the habit of moving on so quickly after news of incidents of mass killings are broken, leaving families, relations and friends of the victims to mourn their losses alone. Many are indeed wondering if this horrifying spectacle has now become a new normal to which citizens have become inured. The palpable official reticence to apprehend and prosecute perpetrators of terror attacks and get justice for their victims is also a veritable issue. Like in previous cases, justice for the victims of the Owo incident remains elusive as the government is yet to move beyond the usual platitudes of referencing ongoing investigations and the vacuous readiness to pursue and fish out the culprits.
And in spite of public reports about the arrest of some suspects, nobody has been charged to court or prosecuted in respect of the incident. Curiously, too, the Ondo State chapter of the South-West Security Network (Amotekun) and the Ministry of Defence are not in sync regarding the real perpetrators of the attack as the two public organisations announced different sets of suspects. Even at that, none of the suspects arrested by the two institutions has been made to have their day in court one year after the chilling and ghoulish incident. Thus, the seeming official reluctance to arrest and bring the terrorists to book necessarily raises some posers: Is the government saying that terrorists can just kill people at will and with impunity? If the killers are not tracked down, does it not stand to reason that they are likely to strike again?
This speaks to the utter irresponsibility and ineffectiveness of the security architecture that the government has emplaced in the country. It does not bode well for the image of the country and the confidence of the citizens in their government. The impression has been inexorably created and sustained that terrorists could just strike in the country, leaving plenty trails of their dastardly action without the government and its security agencies being able to successfully fish them out. It is even more disturbing that the monopoly of violence often ascribed to the government is being brazenly challenged with reckless abandon by violent non-state actors, leaving the government literally helpless. Why should terrorists and criminals be presented as having the upper hand in their control of the security space in the country while hapless Nigerians are left to lament the depth of insecurity where they have to live their lives? Why should a rag tag insurgent army be in possession of more sophisticated weapons than the State’s military personnel despite the humongous annual budgetary allocations to security in the country? Is intelligence being accorded primacy in the fight against terror in the land? Why should terrorists succeed often in carrying out nearly every attack without being proactively checkmated by the security apparatus?
It is important to stress that nothing else signposts the failure of government and governance more than the official inability to effectively discharge the basic and foremost responsibility of any government, which is to ensure security of life and property. Indeed, a government loses the essence of its existence if it is incapable of protecting life and property. And worse still, there is often sloppiness and a lethargic approach in prosecuting the few terror suspects the security agencies manage to apprehend, leaving many with the impression of official complicity in acts of terror in the land. The situation is further compounded by the frequent official announcements of a huge number of terrorists who have allegedly repented and are granted state pardon while families and relations of their victims have yet to come to terms with the loss of their loved ones.
It has, therefore, become imperative for the Nigerian government to wake up from its protracted security slumber, up its ante, and ensure adequate security coverage of the country. Truth be told, security-wise, the country is in a bad place. We urge the new government not just to take off from where its predecessor stopped. Rather, it should undertake an overhaul of the entire security architecture of the country in terms of strategy, personnel and equipment. More importantly, it should restore the significance of intelligence in the fight against terror. It is axiomatic that the current security architecture has not served and cannot serve the country well. It will therefore be counterproductive to have a situation of business as usual. Specifically, it will be apposite for the new government to use the unearthing of the perpetrators of the Owo killings and their punishment as the signal of a new and effective security governance in the country.
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