Six singular security sweeps
Maybe it was the Sambisa Forest Effect that galvanised this country’s security agencies. In the last fortnight, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps [NSCDC], Nigeria Police, Nigeria Customs Service [NCS], Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC] and Department of State Services [DSS] all carried out six singular security sweeps, SSSS. Together, these operations made this country safer; they improved citizens’ confidence in the security agencies; they boosted the Buhari administration’s boasting power; and they also boosted Nigeria’s standing as a laughing stock in the comity of nations, all at the same time.
Two weeks ago Nigeria Customs Service scored its biggest public relations coup in a long time when its secret agents caught a truck at Mile 2 area of Lagos with 661 pump action rifles hidden in it. The rifles were hidden among steel doors in a 40ft container imported from China. Customs’ mufti-clad Comptroller General Colonel Hameed Ali said conniving Customs officers had allowed the container to leave the port but that undercover Customs agents went after it. The goods importer Oscan Okafor, the clearing agent Mahmud Hassan and Sadique Mustapha, the man accompanying the goods to their destination, were all apprehended while the two Customs officers declared wanted gave themselves up.
It was a narrow escape for Nigeria. Rifles are on the absolute import prohibition list but they still flood this country like the Ogunpa River. I was personally amazed that those shining guns came from China. All countries control trade in weapons made in their countries and one would think that nothing enters or leaves China without the Communist Party’s approval. We can only guess where those guns were destined for. Their possible customers in Nigeria range from armed robbers to kidnappers to herdsmen to communal warriors to insurgents to pipeline vandals to aspiring secessionists. Hundreds of lives would have been saved by that seizure.
Ten days ago, another singular security sweep was executed, this time by the Nigeria Police. Seventeen persons caught in the act of southern Kaduna violence were paraded at Force Headquarters, Abuja. Many newspapers rushed to say that the police had caught “killer herdsmen.” Yet, the roll call of the paraded men showed that killing in southern Kaduna is strictly bi-communal. The apprehended killers belonged to both sides of the communal divide. One of the apprehended men, Paul, an indigene of Kaninkon in Jema’a local government, told newsmen, “I sold rifles to most of the arrested persons here. I was arrested before but I repented. When the police came to my house, I admitted that I sold weapons and I took them to the house of the people that bought the weapons from me. I bought the weapons from a dealer in Jos.” Now at last the police have a very good lead into the southern Kaduna mayhem.
On Tuesday last week, there was another singular security sweep when men of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps [NSCDC] in Maiduguri intercepted two young women who were about to suicidebomb motorists at the NNPC mega station on Damboa road. NSCDC said one bomber panicked and threw away her bomb while the other was shot in the leg before she could explode the bomb. The captured bomber, a confused and bewildered looking 18-year old named Amina, said Boko Haram abducted her from Madagali two years ago, married her off to an Amir and then brought her from Damboa area after a three day ride on a motorcycle.
Nigerian newsmen however misunderstood what Amina said next. She said Boko Haram gave her N200 for her food and promised her that she would go straight to paradise upon blowing herself up. Several newspapers said she was enticed with N200 to do the suicide bombing. That is not correct; no one commits suicide because of money. The real puzzle is how any man can give you a guaranteed ticket to paradise and why he will not utilise the ticket himself, if he is so sure. For NSCDC, that episode was its biggest pr turn around since Oga at the Top.
The same day, Nigeria Police tried to upstage NSCDC’s pr coup. At an elaborate ceremony at Force Headquarters, chairman of its Special Joint Investigative Panel DCP Damian Okoro unveiled a pile of 111 million naira notes that he said was retrieved from 23 INEC officials in Rivers State. It was the largest heap of naira notes publicly displayed in Nigeria since 2002 when N3million was placed on the Speaker’s table during a House of Representatives plenary. Last week, a beaming Inspector General Ibrahim Kpotun Idris said the haul was part of a N360 million bribe that Governor Nyesom Wike gave to INEC officials to rig last December 10’s legislative polls in Rivers State. Police said three Senior Electoral Officers, who were at the briefing, admitted to receiving the money directly from Governor Wike.
Rivers State’s Commissioner for Information Dr Tam George however dismissed the charge as “shameful, defamatory and reckless in the extreme.” Trouble is, given the kind of do-or-die politics now associated with Rivers State, Nigerians were not surprised that this could happen. The only wonder is that police said nothing about the high likelihood that APC chieftains in Rivers did some bribery as well.
The mother of all singular security sweeps however took place last Thursday when EFCC agents raided a ramshackle looking house in Sabon Tasha ghetto of Kaduna city and found 9.8 million US dollars and 74,000 Pounds Sterling stashed away in a freezer. The money belonged to Mr. Andrew Yakubu, former Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. Yakubu told EFCC that the money was a gift, which is possible, even if the gift giver was probably repaying for an irregular favour. Official NNPC portraits of him in sharply pressed tuxedo suits showed Yakubu to be a very urbane oil technocrat. Why did he stash dollars in a fridge like a rural grain merchant? It is possible that Andrew Yakubu studied some books about the operational philosophy of terrorists in the 1970; “hide things where no one expects to see them.” Who will expect to find crisp dollar notes in Sabon Tasha, a place so hard up in this recession that even small denomination naira notes are hard to come by?
Two singular security sweeps carried out by the Department of State Services [DSS] however turned out to be a shattering anti-climax. Since 2015 DSS had been the most overzealous security agency in Nigeria. Last year its men clambered up the walls of Supreme Court judges’ houses in the middle of the night in order to collect evidence of bribery. Yet, late last month when DSS hauled in Apostle Johnson Suleman of the Omega Fire Ministries Worldwide over the viral video in which he urged his church’s members to kill any herdsman seen in their premises, the encounter lasted all of thirty minutes. Similarly, when former Delta State governor James Ibori returned to Nigeria last weekend after doing time in a British jail for money laundering, DSS also hauled him in but he soon exited its doors, smiling broadly and proceeded to a warm reception at Oghara. The once overzealous DSS appears to have lost its fangs.