Tackling insecurity: Alternative approach

..also published in Daily Trust

As a follow-up to my article titled “Killing spree amid intelligence gap” (Daily Trust, April 6, 2018), I once again address the costly impact of the huge intelligence gap in the way the Nigerian military and police tackle Boko Haram terrorists, ethnic militias, armed bandits, kidnappers and armed robbers that capitalize on the gap to perpetrate their crimes.

Though the military and police personnel engaged in these confrontations are constrained by many challenges that explain their failure to achieve a decisive victory, the ineptitude of the country’s three major security intelligence agencies i.e. the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the State Security Service (SSS) and the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) remains the most critical of all the challenges.

Leveraging diplomacy to tackle unemployment

…also published in Daily Trust

“I am Hajia Ramatu Damba, wife of the Ambassador of Ghana to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This message is in response to your article concerning the maintenance of mosques in Saudi Arabia. I read the article and feel I should contact you for more details because it happened that I travelled from Riyadh to Makkah and I saw so much filth in some of the mosques that I prayed in. So I ask you to direct me to the appropriate authorities to see if I could arrange for them to get some workers from Ghana for the cleaning of the bathrooms and the mosques. Both male and female.”

This largely self-explanatory note was a response to an article written by one Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi; a Saudi columnist with a leading Jeddah-based Saudi Gazette newspaper who had written an article lamenting the poor sanitary condition of public toilets attached to mosques along highways across his country, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He quoted the ambassador’s wife in a follow-up article titled “A suggestion from Ghana” (Saudi Gazette, Wednesday, July 18, 2018).

Where to stand in season of party switching

…also published in Daily Trust

As Nigerian politicians strategize to slug it out for nominations by their respective political parties in next year’s general election, the seasonal trend of party switching that usually characterizes the period towards the end of every four-year tenure is steadily gathering momentum.

While the political parties continue to receive their respective shares of gain and loss in terms of the number and calibre of politicians joining or leaving them, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) would of course end up particularly affected given the looming exodus likely to hit it in favour of other parties especially its arch-rival, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

Mass killing: Memo to the vulnerable

…also published in Daily Trust

In the face of the persistent Boko Haram terror attacks against defenceless civilians in the northeast, raids on helpless communities by armed bandits in Zamfara and Kaduna states, recurrent rounds of ethno-religiously motivated mass killing in Taraba, Benue and Plateau states all in northern Nigeria, it’s high time all communities vulnerable to such attacks due to their geographical locations resorted to whatever measures necessary to save their lives no matter the amount of sacrifice involved.

Need for Arewa narrative abroad

...also published in Daily Trust

When President Donald Trump of the United States, and while hosting his Nigerian counterpart, Muhammadu Buhari last April in Washington decried the “murder of Christians” in Nigeria, and in fact went ahead in his typical arrogant demeanor to effectively warn his guest that “We are going to work on that problem very, very hard because we cannot allow that to happen.”, I straightaway blamed his obvious ignorance of the dynamics of security crisis in Arewa on the sheer misrepresentation that some interest groups in Nigeria and their foreign accomplices always present to various US institutions, think tanks, public figures and NGOs, which in turn influence relevant US policy accordingly.