CAN TECHNOLOGY FIGHT NIGERIAN CRIME? By Emmanuel Onwubiko

The year 2012 will go down in political history as the period in which the crime fighting capacity of members of the Nigerian security community was stretched beyond limits.

The whole of North Eastern States of Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, and North central states of Gombe, Bauchi and Plateau have faced unrelenting bombardments by armed Islamic religious insurgents who have declared war on the Nigerian state in their avowed determination to carve out what they termed as Islamic Northern Nigeria. The North Western states of Sokoto, Kaduna and Kano have also become theatre of warfare and major battle fields of the armed Islamic insurgents who have successfully detonated several improvised explosive devices with deadly consequences on the lives of scores of innocent Nigerians even as property valued at several Billions of Naira have been destroyed by these bomb explosions.

For want of an effective crime/terrorism fighting mechanism to check the rising rate of bloody attacks by the armed Islamic religious insurgents in parts of the North, the Federal government for over six months now, declared state of emergency in the most disturbing flashpoints of this spate of violence. The Federal government of Nigeria has also increased the deployment of operatives of the Nigerian Armed Forces and the State Security Services [SSS] to these major terrorism flashpoints following the inability of operatives of the Nigerian police Force to battle this unprecedented insurgency successfully.

Although the spokespersons of the Nigerian military and the State Security Services (SSS) have separately told Nigerians at different media events that they are on top of the serious security challenge confronting the nation, not too many Nigerians are convinced about the veracity of these claims because members of the armed Islamic insurgency have upped their bloody campaign of terrorism resulting in the bombing of some significant places of Christian worship even as scores of innocent by-standers including Muslims have lost their lives in these targeted bomb attacks including the recent bomb attack that rocked Kaduna state.

Not a few people knowledgeable in the field of security have blamed the total absence of modern crime fighting facilities and poor training/capacity building of operatives of the nation’s security community for the upsurge in sophisticated crime of terrorism in the North and the unfortunate resurgence of kidnapping and abduction for ransom payment of innocent persons by armed kidnappers in the Southern parts of Nigeria.       

These sets of Nigerians have also canvassed the use of technology and other state- of –the- art crime fighting facilities by the Nigerian security operatives to effectively combat the unprecedented upsurge in bloody violence and terrorism in the country.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English language, fourth edition specifically defined technology as the “application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives”.

In seeking effective technology to battle the growing crime rate and terrorism-related attacks in all parts of Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan recently travelled to Germany on a state visit whereby important aspects of the bilateral consultations he held with high profile German political and business leaders were concentrated on possible ways that Germany can assist Nigeria with technology to wage effective science-driven battle against terrorist and armed kidnappers in Nigeria.

The Nigerian government is aware that crime and terrorism are the fastest ways to kill the local economy of any nation and so finding workable technology-driven solution to the growing phenomenon of terrorism and sophisticated crimes in Nigeria is the best approach to salvage Nigeria’s local economy from imminent collapse. Like most thinkers, I am of the considered opinion that President Jonathan is well on the right track to attract effective foreign technology and security architecture to fight our local crimes of terrorism which has wider implication of hurting our local economy and dwindling our respectability before the international community.  I am however skeptical that unless the Nigerian government and committed key players in the organized private sector settle down to work out home-made technology and security architecture, it is a big gamble to rely on foreigners to donate their hard earned technological skills to fight terrorism that is far from their shores except and unless Nigeria is ready to pay through our noses.

While watching proceedings at the bilateral consultation between Nigeria’s President Jonathan and German Chancellor Mrs. Angela Merkel in Berlin, Germany, recently, and seeing the Nigerian leader begged his host for assistance, the question that beckons is when will Nigeria grow up and stop playing the role of a never-do-well nation going cap in hand begging the developed countries to come to Nigeria’s help?

In the words of President Jonathan: “As a nation, we have security challenges because most investors talk about security. At present, we have the local terrorist group, code named Boko Haram. From publications on this terrorist group, it paints a very gloomy picture as if the whole country is in tatters. These terrorist operate in some states in the North-east part of the country but go into other states from time to time”.

President Jonathan further stated: “The area we expect our development partners, especially countries like Germany, to help is in terms of our security architecture, training and providing us with some modern equipment. You have to fight terrorists with technology because terrorists do not need to come with a rifle and you confront them one on one. They will surprise you; they will not come to engage you except to defend themselves occasionally. So, you must have superior technology to monitor them and know how you can relate with them. And these are the areas we believe that countries like Germany and others and even the United Nations (UN) can assist us.”

Nigeria needs to harness our local talents and resources to build effective local technology and security architecture to tackle the growing security challenges because those big brother nations like Germany and the United States of America can only do so little to help us since they are also in serious war with international terrorist in the last decade.

President Jonathan should direct the nation’s ministries of Science/Technology and Education to work out effective strategy for the development of efficient crime fighting technology and security architecture from the numerous research institutes that abound in Nigeria.

The Federal Government can also collapse the office of the National Security Adviser with the Ministry of police Affairs to establish the Department for Homeland security and part of the function of this new office should be to effectively implement the national crime prevention program research and assistance projects with the primary goal of working in partnership with notable defence research institutes in Nigeria to develop home grown technology and crime fighting architecture.

Additionally, Government needs to realistically reorganize and reform the Nigeria police Force by weeding out all the bad eggs and recruit fresh hands with the competence and higher academic qualifications that will accelerate better and further capacity and skill building programs for the police operatives. The nation also needs to set up a crime data so as to track down criminals.

The Nigerian government should also adopt the Chinese and Japanese models of technology transfer whereby thousands of gifted and talented nationals of those nations were sent to the best science schools in the United States and Europe to get the best of Science Scholarship and to return on completion of these specialized courses to be re-engaged in vital Science and Technology sectors of their countries.

Like most thinkers have stated, I believe that technology helps to improve public safety in several ways and the more these technological and security architecture are home manufactured, the more sustainable they would become.

It is a fact that enhanced criminal records and identification systems keep high-risk individuals from obtaining weapons or positions of trust. The Nigerian police Force and a few other security outfits are infiltrated by fifth columnists who are actively working in partnership with dangerous terrorist to carry out the spate of terror attacks all across the country. The Nigerian Government needs to weed out these bad eggs immediately. The Delta State government recently arrested a serving Deputy Superintendent of police for aiding and abetting the growing kidnapping crimes in that state and incidentally, the indicted police officer headed the anti-kidnapping unit of the Delta State police command.

While not discouraging the current Nigerian government from seeking foreign technology and security architecture to fight Nigerian crime, it will serve the long term interest of Nigeria if we can design and implement our local mechanism for inventing and using these innovative crime fighting technology and security architecture for our betterment.

*       Emmanuel Onwubiko, head, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, writes from www.huriwa.blogspot.com.

       

23/4/2012      

AMERICANS ON AFRICA: HOW KNOWLEDGEABLE? By Emmanuel Onwubiko

In 1988 when I enrolled in the Catholic Senior Seminary in Owerri, Imo State for my philosophy course, I had the singular honour to have been couched by some of the finest scholars/priests most of whom have had extensive contacts with White scholars/priests in the United States and Europe. One interesting fact I was privileged to have learnt from these intellectuals who spent several years of post graduate studies in the United States of America and parts of Europe including Germany, Italy and Spain just to mention but a few of those places, was the unbelievably limited knowledge of Nigeria and parts of Africa by citizens of the United States of America and Europe about Africa as a continent and about some of the nations that make up the black continent of Africa. A particular doctorate degree holder in Sociology who taught us Sociology and Anthropology shocked most of us in the lecture hall when he disclosed that in the early eighties when he emigrated to the United States for his graduate and post graduate courses that a Child walked up to him demanding to see his tail because the said child was indoctrinated with the racist idea that black people are the closest to wild monkeys and therefore still go about with tails in their buttocks. He also told us that he met some high school students in a part of the United States of America who stridently asked him to prove or disprove the fact that Africans still live on top of trees. Some of those children attributed their weird belief in the story they watched in one of their national/local electronic media that showed pictures of heavy floods in parts of Southern Africa whereby some persons were rescued from trees by some foreign aid workers from Europe.

 This warped thinking dominant among Westerners about Africa as a dark continent is further reinforced by the coordinated fashion that the foreign media colour the stories that emanate from Africa and have consistently depicted Africa as a never-do-well and God-forsaken continent where only civil wars, famine, diseases, war, political instability, military coups have become persistent so much so that the western media carefully promoted the idea that the political elite in Africa instigate wars so as to corner the 'blood dimonds' that abound in most of these African countries to themselves. The Western media that cover Africa concentrate on reporting conflicts as if to say that Africa is a theatre of warfare. These credibility deficit in virtually all segments of the society that are played up in the western media about Africa has generated a stereotypical misconception of Africa as a continent ravaged by all the negative indices that abound in a typical dark continent. This is the foundation they have laid for most of their younger ones so much so that not too many of the American citizens or Europeans have quality knowledge about Africa.

 In 2005 when I participated in a Chinese government's funded tour of some provincial cities and villages in China by selected African journalists, I also had the misfortune of interacting with some Chinese Villagers who confided in me that we were the first set of black persons to have visited their part of China and that they rarely see black people. These revelations never constituted any surprise discovery to me because I am aware that greater interaction and diplomatic contacts between African nations and China became more consolidated only in the turn of the twenty first century or rather the 1990's when the quest for solid mineral and crude oil resources compelled the Government of China to become much more involved in the international scramble for African mineral and crude oil resources to satisfy their increasingly domestic demands for these essential commodities because of the tremendous expansion of their economy. But for me, the first time I learnt of the limited and very poor knowledge of Africa by some Europeans and Americans, I was shocked because of the fact that Nigeria's interaction with the West predates the pre-independence era of the 1960s' and so one would have expected that most Americans and Europeans ought to be profoundly rich in the information and knowledge of Africa and especially Nigeria but I was wrong to hold this perception.

 Reason- only few days back, the United States of America issued a statement from the States Department whereby the Government of the United States headed by a Black man Mr. Barrack Obama exhibited large scale poor knowledge of the Nigerian society and especially about the ongoing terrorism that have swept across parts of the North East, North West, North Central and parts of the Federal Capital Territory which took international dimension some months back with the devastating and cruel attack of the United Nations building in the heart of the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory. The United States Government was reported as issuing a statement whereby the United States' political administration stated that the boko haram related bloody campaign of targeted killings and bomb attacks were motivated by the poverty-related situation in the North and that since those responsible for the insurgency are capitalizing on the widespread poverty in parts of the North, the Federal Government headed for the first time in more than fifty years of Nigeria's independence, by a President that hails from the Ethnic minority, should create a commission or ministry to cater for the North.

It is unbelievable that in these age and time that the United States/Nigeria's diplomatic relationship has blossomed that some important Government officials in the United States of America still show some poor sense of judgment that portray them as being completely bereft of sound and quality information and knowledge about Nigeria and Nigerians. Why for instance will a powerful unit of the United States Government reach this half baked conclusion that economic adversity which in their thinking is predominant in the North is to be blamed for the upsurge in targeted attacks of places of Christian worship most especially and selected Government institutions in the North? How can any diplomat or official connected to intelligence gathering in the United States of America build this false premise about a serious and deadly issue as the widespread terrorism in parts of Northern Nigeria and hurriedly locate the foundation in the so-called poverty that is predominant in that region in the estimation of the United States Government officials as if other parts of the Nigerian society are insulated from poverty? Well, if anyone is in doubt about the poor quality of knowledge of Nigeria by some officials of the United States Government, the revelations in the wikileaks cables concerning how the then United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Ambassador Robbin Sanders relied heavily on gossips from some politicians as the sources of her intelligence whereby she spoon feeds her nation's States Department with as the basis for formulating policies on United States relationship with Nigeria, should change the wrong impression or clear any lingering doubts. The question to be asked is whether the United States government has consistently failed to invest heavily in getting quality and accurate information and knowledge about Nigeria so that their foreign policy direction towards Nigeria would be properly guided and become knowledge-based rather than hearsay and gossips picked up from some doubtful sources? How can the United States Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs, Ambassador Johnnie Carson sworn in on May 7th 2009 and who indeed reportedly served as United States Ambassador to several African Nations not make concerted effort to gather intelligence and knowledge-based information before writing the most recent report concerning the terrorism that rear its ugly head in Northern Nigeria? Ambassador Carson's report on the Boko haram's insurgency is substantially bereft in accuracy and facts? Is Ambassador Carson unaware of the origin of the Boko Haram insurgency which has its root in Islamic religious fundamentalism which was in the considered findings of a reputable historian Professor Takena N. Tamuno, facilitated the growth and development of religious sects?

Professor Tamuno in his well researched book titled; 'STAKEHOLDERS AT WAR IN NIGERIA' published in 2012 gave a concise history of the Boko Haram-related terrorism in Northern Nigeria thus; "...despite security searchlights mounted by interested parties, at home and abroad, this frontiers in Nigeria facilitated the growth and development of religious sects whose members received training in Mauritania, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other hot Islamic spots in the middle East since 2001".

Quoting Shehu Sani's research, Professor Tamuno explained that Taliban infiltration from Afghanistan into Nigeria was known to the Federal Government since 1979-1989 and that the contact point was Katsina. How come that Ambassador Carson reached this faulty conclusion that Boko Haram terrorism was motivated by widespread poverty even when respectable scholars with considerable knowledge of Northern Nigeria have written to prove that religious extremism is to be blamed for the resurgence in terrorism-related killings in the North claimed by armed relgious extremists known as Boko Haram? Is Ambassador Carson and other officials of the United States Embassay in Nigeria not make effort to conduct thorough research to even discover that poverty is never a factor in the formation of Boko Haram but rather Islamic religious ideology as preached by the then 'Sahaba' group that was embraced by Mohammed Yusuf the founder of the Boko Haram fundamentalist sect? Shehu Sani recorded that "in Bauchi, Yobe and Borno States, many young people dropped out of school, including University students to join them, workers including highly placed administrators and Tertiary Institutions lecturers also joined them [Boko Haram]".

But why has the Western powers continue to overlook the important issue of gathering good enough information about Nigeria and the African continent even when the mineral and crude oil resources of these African nations are part of what sustains their economy?

During the period that British Colonial masters administered Nigeria, they also made use of indirect rulers to administer parts of Nigeria. Professor Tamuno recorded thus; "Non-Nigerians, in law and fact, were the rulers on behalf of their imperial taskmasters in Britain. Opportunism and sound common sense, however, dictated the need to associate Nigerians of their choice to help them administer a large Estate for the proper management of which they lacked local knowledge, particularly, language and resources in cash and kind".

 The United States of America's State Department must invest meaningful in their quest to gather correct information and knowledge about the Nigerian society before drawing any conclusion especially if such statements are meant to form parts of the general policy framework of the United States foreign policy guidelines. If they must be told in black and white, then the United States administration must be told that Boko Haram terrorism is not caused by poverty because waging such relentless warfare against the Nigerian state and to have sustained the conflicts that have lasted over two years that involved deployment of several foot soldiers on the side of the insurgents including the purchase of improvised explosive devices [IEDs], could not have been achieved by poor people. Far from it, poverty is not a factor in the unprecedented rise in terrorism in the North which have claimed several innocent lives of the very poorest of the poor among the civil populace.

 As if this gross display of poor knowledge of Africa and Nigerian affairs was not enough, the Times magazine of the United States in its recent edition, also came up with a frivolous publication whereby it listed the current under-achieving President of Nigeria, Dr. Good Luck Jonathan as one of the one hundred most influential citizens of the global community and even reached the ridiculous conclusion that the Government of Jonathan was waging relentless war against corruption. I ask-where is the war against corruption in Nigeria now when poverty among the populace due to lack of good governance has afflicted over eighty percent of the populace in the last two years? Where is the anti-graft fight for which President Jonathan is over-rated by Times Magazine when cases after cases have collapsed in the Nigerian courts especially those involving high profile political functionaries and rogue bankers with wide network of contact with officials in the Federal government? My conclusion is that the United States politicians or researchers including publishers of the Times magazine are either up for some mischief or they have been compromised with some heavy financial inducement from God- knows- where to reach these unbelievable conclusions about the Boko haram's terrorism and about the World rating of President of Nigeria that has failed to contain the unprecedented insecurity, impunity and lack of transparency and good governance in Nigeria.

+     Emmanuel Onwubiko, head, Human Rights Writers' Association of Nigeria wrote in from          www.huriwa,blogspot.com.

20/4/2012

POLICE AND MATHEM ATICAL DOUBTS OVER KILLINGS By Emmanuel Onwubiko

I am very sure that if a combined research team from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the National Mathematical center of Nigeria should conduct a scientific research among one million school leavers to gauge their performance in Mathematics, no one would be in doubt if virtually all but very insignificant percentage of those to be interviewed would have made a pass in Mathematics from the general certificate in education’s examination.

In the last four decades, the fear of mathematics among prospective school leavers in Nigeria has become the beginning of wisdom. I know too well that we were counseled while at the junior secondary school level that the best way to overcome the psychological phobia of mathematics is to develop deep interest in the subject of mathematics but this wise advise never worked magic for most of us any way.

The above short real life story brings me to the theme of my piece which emanated from the developing story that the Acting Inspector General of police Mr. Mohammed Abubakar is likely feeling the impact of what I may call “the mathematical virus of doubts” regarding the exact number of Nigerians that are killed yearly by trigger happy rogue police operatives while in police detention facilities all across Nigeria.

In his mathematical doubts, the Acting Inspector General is reported to have copiously written letters to the chairman governing council of the Nigerian National Human Rights Commission, Professor Chidi Odinkalu to challenge his assertion that police operatives routinely kill innocent detainees through extra-legal means.

The Acting Inspector General of Police in his mathematical dispute over the exact figure of Nigerians that suffer extra-legal killings in the hands of the police operatives stated that Professor Odinkalu exaggerated the figures when he reportedly quoted 5000 [five thousand] as the number of persons killed annually.

Professor Odinkalu, in his reply told the Acting Inspector General of police that he (Odinkalu) was misquoted because he never mentioned the figure of 5000[five thousand] but rather 2500[two thousand five hundred] persons.

The Acting Inspector General of police is still in mathematical doubt of the exact figure of Nigerians gunned down viciously by police operatives through unconstitutional method of summary execution. The police boss is not concerned about the bad public image that rogue police operatives have brought to the policing institution through their criminal tendencies to execute detainees, but he is more concerned about clearing his mathematical doubts surrounding the real figure of those killed.

This is the sorry state that Nigeria has found itself that the nation’s police chief rather than activate mechanism internally to fish out, prosecute and punish police operatives indicted in the dastardly killings of detainees is seeking to use his so – called “power” to harass and intimidate Professor Odinkalu into submitting that the Nigeria police Force do not kill up to 5000 [five thousand] persons illegally yearly.   

April 18th 2012 (Wednesday) is the date that the chairman of the Nigerian National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has chosen to appear in person at the Force Headquarters Abuja to be “interrogated” on his claim that police operatives routinely kill detainees in violation of section 36(5) of the constitution which states that suspects are presumed innocent until proven otherwise by the competent court of law.

Section 36(5) of the Constitution states thus, “Every person who is charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty” even as section 33 (1) of the constitution provides that “Every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life, save in execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been found guilty in Nigeria”.

The question that is imperative for which the nation’s police hierarchy must answer is why many detainees are killed by police operatives in police detention centers through extra-legal means in gross violations of provisions of the Nigerian Constitution.

 The police as an institution charged with the constitutional task of institutionalizing a regime of strict respect to the spirit and letter of the principle of rule of law is empowered to inquire into areas that may require clarification with the fundamental objective of achieving law and order in the society for the promotion of public good/interest. The police are however not permitted to seek to use coercive force to intimidate or harass public office holders who are simply discharging their duties in strict compliance with the due process of the law as is the case with the disclosure at a public forum by the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission that the police serially kill detainees through extra-legal means.

As things stand now, Professor Chidi Odinkalu has agreed to meet the Police in their own turf to provide some credible reports to support his claim that innocent detainees are wasted serially by police operatives. Bamidele Aturu, one of the nation’s bright human rights lawyers has written the Acting Inspector General of police to point the legal way to go about resolving the unnecessary mathematical doubts in the mind of the police chief regarding the extent of extra – legal killings of detainees by police in Nigeria.

Mr. Aturu, who is the legal representative of Chidi Odinkalu (a professor of law), told the nation’s police chief in plain language that his client had on March 5th 2012, at the annual conference of the National Association of Judiciary Correspondents (NAJUC) in Abuja, Nigeria delivered a talk on the theme “Plea Bargaining and the Administration of Justice in Nigeria”.

Specifically, Page 5 of the presentation contains the following statement “The response of law enforcement to the incapability of the legal system to ensure convictions is an epidemic of third-degree policing, torture and extra extra-judicial executions. By some estimates, the police executes well over 2,500 detainees summarily every year”.

By a letter to Dr. Odinkalu dated 16^th March 2012, the Acting Inspector Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed D. Abubakar, complained that Dr. Odinaklu had said that the Police execute over 5,000 detainees summarily every year”, and complained that this “statement is viewed seriously by the Police High Command as vexatious especially against the backdrop of its grave and negative implications on our National and Corporate Image”.

While not disputing that police personnel are indeed involved in a disturbing pattern of extra-judicial executions, the Acting Inspector-General in his letter said that “the assertion is highly exaggerated and therefore untrue”. He equally failed to provide any figures to contradict those provided by Dr. Odinkalu. Rather, the Acting Inspector-General requested Dr. Odinkalu to “provide evidence or facts to support your assertion, as well as verifiable statistics from which you made your “estimates.”

However, Bamidele Aturu recalled vividly that in a widely reported speech on 13^th February 2012, the Acting Inspector-General himself had publicly stated of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF): “Our anti-robbery squads have become killer teams.”

Conversely, in April 2004, then Inspector-General of Police, Tafa Balogun, informed Human Rights Watch researchers that the NPF killed 7,198 “armed robbers” from January 2000 to March 2004. This represents an average official killing rate of 141.1 or an average daily killing rate of about 4.6 persons per day. For the same period, however, Balogun’s successor, Sunday Ehindero, reported much different statistics in a July 2006 letter to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-judicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions.

In this letter, Ehindero, claimed that in the five years from 2000-2004, the Nigeria Police Force killed 2,402 and arrested another 20,314 “armed robbers”, representing an inexplicable difference of 4,796 killings between Balogun’s figures and Ehindero’s figures, according to Aturu.

Aturu recalled that in 2004 alone, the Legal Defence and Aid Project (LEDAP) documented 2,987 cases of extrajudicial executions by law enforcement agencies. This is roughly consistent with the most recent official police claims. In November 2007, Acting Inspector-General Mike Okiro reported that the police had killed 785 and arrested 1,628 “armed robbers” in his first one hundred days as IGP. This translates into a daily killing rate of 7.85 persons and a yearly rate of 2,865 police killings. Okiro’s figures also represent a kill-to-arrest ratio of 1:2.07. In comparison to the statistics announced by former Inspector-General Ehindero in 2000 (sic), Okiro’s data represent an increase of over 400 percent in the official statistics for police killings.

The law scholar concluded rightly that the inconsistencies in the official figures strongly suggest that deaths in police custody or encounters are not addressed with sufficient gravity and that records of such deaths are either nonexistent or very poorly kept.

These facts aforementioned were contained in a report titled: “Criminal Force: Torture, abuse and extra-judicial killings by the Nigeria police Force” issued in 2010 by the Network on police Reform in Nigeria (NOPRIN).

The nation’s police hierarchy should do internal clean up and punish all operatives indicted for these vicious crimes and should stop making Nigeria a laughing stock.                             

*   Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA; writes         from www.huriwa.blogspot.com.

16/4/2012