 Well, it's still the breakfast in Plosive, Africa. It's time for us to talk about insecurity and specifically the issue of kidnapping. According to research conducted by the SBM Intelligence, which captured a period from July 2021 to June 2022, over 500 incidents of kidnapping were said to have been recorded with no fewer than 3,420 Nigerians and foreign citizens abducted across the country. This is even without the addition of unreported cases that are still unknown due to poor quality of data and documentation in the country. The report added that about 653.7 million Nair was paid by Nigerians to free victims of kidnapping, abduction from July 2021 to June 2022. Now on July 2022 alone, eight Nigerian abducted peasants exchanged 800 million Nair for their lives while a kidnapped Pakistan national handed over the sum of 200 million Nair to kidnappers is ransom. Over time, the government has been heavily criticized for her attitude towards security challenges in the country, including kidnapping by terrorists. But in response, President Mohammad Buhari had said that, you know, had launched the national crisis management doctrine, a doctrine that provides detailed methodology for national crisis response, outlining how the various relevant MDAs should interact at strategic, operational and tactical, you know, point to all of this. Moving away from, you know, strategic response, if you like to say, to managing of the crisis, the government also, the president, responding to it in the beat to cop insecurity. You also have the revised national, you know, scheme, national digital identity policy for SIM card registration that was launched. The president said that NIN registration is crucial to combat an insecurity because the synchronization of the national identification number NIN across the country will provide a digital framework to combat insecurity and also strengthen the nation's economy. The president said, categorically, I mean, I'm quoting, the NIN will cover one of the weakest or the weakness in security architecture. We will be able to easily identify nor the personality of Nigerians. We will identify people easily, including the crooks. Have we fed really? With all of this, we have Emmanuel Kulei, who is a national coordinator of the NOP RIN Foundation, right here in Lagos State. Emmanuel, thank you for joining us. Thank you. So I'd like to share your thoughts, you know, on the issue. I mean, we have talked about how government has responded in terms of the budget allocation to different security agencies. We also look at the issue of management crisis and doctrine that was introduced, which allows security personnel to respond within 15 minutes and the issue of synchronization. We're talking about NIN now, SIM cards and what have you, but kidnapping insecurity seemed to be topping the chart and it seemed to be a thriving business in Nigeria. Why? The country and every other country that is actually willing to address issues of criminality, there are certain things that they have to put in place for them to be able to carry out to the assignment properly. The first question that always comes to mind when issues like this pop up is, what is the capacity of our security agencies in handling emergencies? That's the first thing. In fighting for other countries, we have in cities of peacekeeping missions and out of all the different representatives from different countries, we have always come out of. Why? Because in those places, we have been given the room and the necessary tools to work. When it comes to Nigeria, it's not really so because this is being carried out by an organized syndicate and it's actually a business in the country because the government has permitted me to use the term that the government has allowed this to happen. I will say that from Jonathan's administration until date, when the kidnapping started and all this, the government have paid series of billionaires, I think to circles, I think it should be one of the foreign countries among others, I've been collecting data in the country. So that means every call you make in the country is if they are not interested, if the government is not interested. It will know your location currently in Nigeria. Any call you make, any text message, any, they have been monitoring data. Yes, it's against our laws but there's no protection of data in the country. So foreign countries even have our data on their hand and the government itself have data. That means any call you make from any location to try to collect ransom or anything, the government is aware. It's only if it doesn't want to work with it and as of last year, I think about 70, 76 billion was paid to get data. That is why it's easy also that when you comment online, most times in trying to attack the government online, in the next, maybe a few millions or the next few hours, you hear that that particular person has been arrested. Have you tried to imagine how come they are able to track this person? It's because they have that data if they want. And these persons, they make call. And if you also check, there are certain times there are certain persons within the country are also followed up that they are going to negotiate with these terrorists in several parts of the country. And guess what? They are mostly being escorted by either the police or the military. So that means these terrorists, wherever they are within the country, especially those in the bushes, they know where these people are. So it's a question of the willingness, the mindset and having people at heart that yes, you want to actually clean this for the better. But the government has not been proactive one and they have been a clear court plan in trying to address these issues of insecurity. Most times, you see our service chief waiting on the president to direct them to go and carry out their work. You don't need to be directed if that is your mandate. You have been given the responsibility, our service chief, to address crimes in the country. But most time they wait on the president to permit them. Why? So that is why this case of crime will continue to go on linger until we start looking at competence, people that are competent enough to be able to handle certain positions and people that are willing enough and patriotic enough to fight for the good of the land. People are suffering, people are being taxed in all aspects. Anything you do in the country from recharge card to data to salaries, to even the money keeping bank, everything has been taxed. But the simple reason you are taxing people and using this money, taxpayer money to pay security agencies or security agents and still they are not doing this work, not that they don't know where these people are. And also concerning also the side of what you said about NIMC trying to also get data and trying to link BVN and all that to same and all that. This information just like I said, they have it if they want to work. But the issue is most time they only try to track persons when you are talking against maybe a bad policy or bad way they are implementing certain things. That is the only way that they track you. But those persons that keep threatening people online, they keep trying to even arrest a kidnapper or threatening or even people that have come out clearly to even say certain things or agree that they are responsible to killing and all this. It has not been followed. So for me, I would say the number one person in the country, the president, have not really, this is not really on agenda. And what is practicable currently has always been in trying to paint a different image from what actually he's doing. He'll come online or come on the news, give issue or press releases. But in reality, he's not doing that. What you talk about a government that is freeing terrorists, moderates and those issues have not been addressed. The fight against terrorists have not been won. And still yet you are freeing terrorists in numbers every time. Indirectly you're encouraging people to get into it. It's when you have won this battle and they are the end of the day, what can you do to address these issues or this numerous number of persons that you have arrested? All right. So quickly now, let's talk about you have mentioned the issues that you have mentioned. And that there's a lack of political will. Am I correct from the government? But if we look at the current reality as at August the 7th, 2022, which is not far from, you know, October, you look at the number of police officers that we have 371,000 police officers to police a country or a nation of 211 million people. And this is a statistics or data that we have as a time when the United Nations released 211 million people, 371. How do you explain all of this? I'll still continue going back to the first point, which I talked about the political will. When you don't want a particular agency or ministry to work, the better way or most times what government they do is they underfund you or under resource you so that you're incompetent to be able to carry out your mandate. At the same time, when also you have been picking up people that maybe are not competent enough, based on your own personal perception or be you give appointment not on competence and promotion. Oh, well, we seem to have a disconnection with Emmanuel Cooley, hoping that we haven't joined us in no time. But of course, he's talked about, you know, the connection with the issue of addressing kidnapping and security in Nigeria, the issue of political will from the ruling class. So addressing all of this issue of major concern. But if you want to talk about the work force, the police is an agency that decided with the responsibility of addressing civil unrest, of course, in a democratic situation. We're looking at numbers now. Statistics, what's the ratio? One is to 400 police officers. So one police officer, you know, is taking care of 400, you know, citizens. Is that really what we should be talking about? Emmanuel is here with us this morning. Thank you for joining us once again. Okay. So I was saying the officers, one, they are grossly inadequate to actually carry out the role of policing. But that is where community policing comes here. You cannot do everything. In the uncertain countries, we don't have this number of police officers, but they have something like the use tech, for example, they have cameras or campers in different areas, cameras on different streets, and they have tech center in, in, in certain, in maybe in each location, they have, so tech and they have emergency, pick up events and all that. So if there's emergency, if there are issues of criminality in certain areas of crime, those cameras actually pick off these persons and already, but these are countries that actually they are using their data, they have properly, and they are also being able to use this camp code. In our situation that we continue to make everything manual, we have officers that are inadequate, they are not, they are not, they are the racial concern to the 211 million persons we have. They are not good enough, but there are certain ways to address also these limitations, which they are said the first one is community policing. The work of policing concerns everybody, because the best protection you give yourself is you protecting yourself first. So that means the police have to work with citizens. When crime happens, the first persons that get to know about crimes is not the police. Most of the police get to report from third parties. That means people that are on ground get this information first. So if we have a certain number of persons, or each area, or each location, they have people within the community themselves that they have appointed to assist. In cases like this, they have like what they call in health, maybe first aid treatment before it gets to the police, before the police come. There are certain things the community on their own can do. If you go to a village setting before now, that almost everything is trying to get like modernized and all that. They had vigilante, even till they have vigilante, even in urban areas. These persons were arrested even on robbers. They were arrested. Emmanuel, you saw it's very critical that we talk about this. We're still grappling with the issue of not having vigilantes being armed. We're talking about firearms now. Armed robbers who are sophisticated, almost more sophisticated than the security agents, maybe from the police or the military. They have weapons. And so how do you even explain all of this? That's on the one hand. And if we talk about lack of political will, but we look at resource allocation because to say wherever your hat is, is where money is, of course, you would know how you allocate money, how you spend money is a reflection of where your hat is. And we've seen that the Nigerian government has been very, very consistent with budgeting and allocation for defense and security. But how come there has not also translated to the Nigerian police? Whose responsibility is to protect or, of course, ensure security and protection in a civil dispensation? The military is meant for external aggression and attacks. So I really don't know. Okay. So for the first question you asked, the thing is the armed robbers, where do they come from? Or these people that commit crime? They are from the society. And anything before it goes out, that means one or two persons are aware. Or the commit is where they are coming out from. They are either aware when they are going out or they are aware where they are coming back. So they have a role. That is why they are too in addressing crime or generally any government for it to be successful. There's supposed to be cool leadership and good followership. So as fellowship or as citizens, it's our mandate or duty to report crimes to the police. But there are issues that have come out from people that are reporting discriminations to the police or to certain security agencies. Particularly we had a summit in Bauchi where a George actually informed us that in Yubei they had a challenge where most of these persons that came out to even report their relatives that were actually part of these terrorists. At some point these terrorists that were being arrested were freed. Some of them were arrested by the police that day and by the end of the day they were freed. And the bad thing about it is they actually informed these terrorists that it was your family member that actually reported you. And this was the person. And they went back and murdered these people. So other persons now became hardest apart it was reporting anything crime. Not that they don't know these persons but because of fear of their life they decided to leave things that way. And this has affected community police relationship and prevented more persons from coming out to report these criminals which normally even at the starting stage it can be addressed. Secondly the issue of budgetary allocation. The government just like I said earlier has not been sincere. They maybe have only been sincere in allocating budget to the military because all the from whatever goes on the budget for the military it's always been given. But as it comes to the police they have always been underfunded. That is why at some point the civil society had to push for them to have an alternative source of income which is the police trust fund for them to be able to also get some money to support or compliment that budgetary allocation. The budget allocation for the police have been very poor to date. And even when it's been approved when it's been released it's not released in full. This is our issues that have been in our system. That is why I've always been saying that we are good in putting things on the media. The government are good in putting things right. They put it right that yes they have been raising they have been giving this source of money and giving this budgetary allocation. But when it comes to the money reaching these particular persons that are supposed to use this money it doesn't trickle them. What do you talk about a government that up till date you are giving about the division about 35,000 for a quarter. You do what with it 35,000 error. So how can the police be able to use such a money to actually police a community when they are even grossly inadequate in numbers. So this is affecting their work. A particular police station around the state adjuvant police station where I go once in a while. They rent bosses to be able to carry out their work. And as of last year, early last year they were paying about 6,000 Naira daily to be able to hire a boss to be able to carry out their policing duty. Are we really serious? That is what I'm saying that and when you continue giving delegating the role of another agency to another one it becomes an issue within the country. It's the responsibility of the police primary duty of the police to police the society internally. But currently you see the military leaving their mandate of trying to address issues of terrorism or external aggression and all that. To come and be doing policing work. If the military can do their own work and then the police has been allowed to do their work internally. I think to a particular extent because a lot of times we keep hearing that certain persons that came to commit crime are not from this country. So that means even our borders is porous. So another thing again in addressing this is the interagency synergy. Which is very very important. No agency can be able to carry out this work completely and be able to address all these crimes. But they are learning to work together to an extent to be able to reduce these issues of I am better than this particular agency which should be respected more. Like the military always feel that they should be respected more than the police. This is not about you. You are not being given the mandate to carry out policing the country. Not so that you come and brag or to your ego and all that. No that is not the primary aim of you being in the military. It's to protect lives and property. And if all the agencies are looking at that. That is like the primary aim. I think they'll be able to work better with other agencies. And then they commit to do. They will also be willing to work with them. Yes the money there is always budgetary allocation. The most time the budgetary allocation is not being released in full. This is an issue and it has to be addressed. And when they are releasing money they also have to. So who is going to address this issue now? Is it me or is it you? We all have a role in playing. And for us we on our own can play a role in monitoring these budgetary releases. How much has been allocated particularly for us that work in the area of police reforms. No print foundation. We can work in trying to monitor the budget for the police. How much was being released. And then how it's been put into use. We did that in 2018 to 2019. Which we also interviewed certain persons. And that's why I was able to tell you that about 35,000 be released to a division for a quarter. That is how many months for 35,000. What can that do? So if at the national level of the president or the national assemblies coming out to make certain information like that in public there. Yes they are releasing money. The money is not trickling down. And the money another thing is not just giving out money. They are also supposed to have like a monetary and evaluation thing. They are supposed to and they have committees that are saddled with the responsibility. They have to monitor that what the money is being paid for is being used. Which is not the situation. And we can also monitor to see that these persons are actually what is being released. They are also being used. We have to go now. Thank you so much. I mean great insights that you have brought on the issue talking about kidnapping and security in Nigeria. And the reason why we're here despite all of the responses from government. We appreciate your thoughts. Thank you so much for having me. Alright then we've been speaking with Immanuel Iquli and National Coordinator New Pring Foundation right here in Lagos State. Thank you so much. We'll take a break and when we return. But time for us to look at our second conversation. Stay with us.