 From the terror of Boko Haram and Aiswab in the northeast to the Rambeidah Bandits in the northwest, Aipop in the southeast and other militants elsewhere, Nigeria has suffered a crippling security situation. And on May 29, we know that President-elect Bola Mettinibu will not only inherit the mantle of leadership from President Obama to Buhari, but also he will be demanding a task of ending Nigeria's myriad of security challenges. Now in over 10 years, Nigeria's security landscape has been shaped by war against insurgents such as Boko Haram and later on the Islamic State of West Africa province Aiswab in the north eastern parts of the country. New threat elements such as banditry and kidnappings have emerged in the northwestern region while age-old communal clashes as well as farmers and hairdress clashes have existed in many parts of the north central. And also under President Buhari, secessionist agitations by the indigenous people of Biafra, Aipop in the southeast and parts of the south-south have also snowballed into a major security threat that is threatening the country's unity. Joining us once again to discuss this is Chief Dallington Momo Umoru. He is a former consultant to the Presidential Committee on Small Arms and Light Weapons Prescott. Thank you so much Chief Dallington for joining us again today to continue this conversation. My pleasure. Great. Let's talk about the major issue now that Nigeria is having to deal with. Like I said yesterday, we've heard all kinds of tough talking, declaring areas no fly zones and saying we want to put an end to. In fact, the Buhari administration has continuously held on tightly to the statement that Boko Haram has been technically defeated. Just as I said in my intro, there's several other issues bedeviling the country's security. Let's look at strengthening our security forces. Several millions, if not trillions of Naira, is earmatched to fight security, not to talk of security votes that are never made open and so nobody can account for it. How well has the Buhari administration dealt with strengthening our security forces? My first guess was talking about increasing the number of soldiers because this is what the President-elect thinks that will be the solution to the problem. But is that the only way that we can deal with our security situation in the country? Apparently not. There's no way you want to say that increasing personnel will end insecurity in Nigeria. Security in Nigeria has a widespread as it is today. Of course, you are aware that the level of insecurity in Nigeria differs. What you find in the Northeast is not the same thing you find in the Northwest. It's not also the same thing you find in the North Central and then it's not what you find in the South, like the Southeast, the South-South and the Southwest. So, apparently, one solution cannot bring to an end the entire level of insecurity Nigeria is currently suffering from. But be that as it may, the basic problem, like I started with yesterday, is the issue of the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. The amount of illicit fire circulating in the country, particularly in the hands of the non-state actors, is the biggest problem we have. All of these crimes, whether terrorism, whether banditry, whether armed robbery, whether courtism, name it, whether kidnapping, none of these can thrive without the availability of illicit arms and ammunition in the hands of these criminals. So, apparently, Nigeria is under, the Nigerian military, the security agents have, are other personnel. Because the view is, let's look at it from this point of view, research has shown that for every day, particularly every 24 to 48 hours, one police officer has gone down or one police officer is maimed. The same thing goes to other security agents and then the armed forces. And when we are talking about the armed forces here now, we are referring to the army, the navy and the air force personnel. Some of them are permanently stationed in the Northeast or well at the theater of war. Many of them don't come back, you've seen stories at the time, the situation is better now. Before the matching order given by President Boari in about October last year, what we used to experience on a daily basis was bombings, killings of other security agents or the military or even the civilians who are not even armed. But again, going by the UN resolution, Nigeria is under police. Nigeria, the military, of course, has a primary responsibility to defend the territorial integrity of Nigeria. There are not civil cases. So those that are combating today are terrorists in whatever guise, in whatever phase. You have them drafted to the Northeast, you have them drafted to the Northwest, you have them drafted to the North Central, you have them drafted to the Southeast, you have them drafted to the South-South, you have them drafted to the Southwest. Election matters you bring in the military. Intracommunial issues you bring in the military, intercommunal issues you bring in the military, tribal conflicts you bring in the military, religious conflicts you bring in the military. And so how can you have it? But why do you think that that's the case? Because you see, we know the difference, especially the fact that we have a president, sitting president, who's a military leader, who was a former military president, who knows the difference between policing and the job of the military. But why do you think that the military has now been taking over the job of policing within the country as opposed to protecting our borders? Why do you think that that's holding sway? Two factors, I'll give you two factors, for instance. Number one, Nigeria is under police. Even the Nigerian police as it is today cannot give you an exact figure of the numerical population of the Nigerian police. It's all about guesswork. They'll tell you 35,000. They'll tell you about 36,000. They'll tell you about 37,000. It is not their fault. It is so because number one, many of them are killed on daily basis or mailed. Number two, the military. The military are even those who train the police. They have special training. The military is trained far ahead of the Nigerian police. But unmarriedly, issues within the country are not supposed to have the presence of the military. But apparently because the police, we don't have enough of them. Even the total figure of the Nigerian police we have, there's also an issue. The police has what is called the SBU, the Special Protection Units. The Special Protection Units are used to protect the VIPs and the VVIPs. They are used to protect financial institutions and major other institutions. What we have annually or politically when you have a new inspector general of police appointed is that in most times at that point in time, they want to withdraw all the SBUs and ask them to return. But we get after what happens, those SBUs are sent back to the VIPs and the VVIPs. So how can you, how many of the police, how many of the 5,000 policemen, over 200 and 15, 216 million Nigerians? You don't have enough of them. Also when there's crisis, you have to bring hands from the military to assist the police, to quell down whatever companies the country is going through at that particular point in time. So the issue of personnel like he stated is very key, but that's not the basic one for me. The basic issue Nigeria needs because policing today has gone beyond the use of manual manpower, physical manpower. Across the world in developed countries, policing is done more with IT gadgets. I give you an instance. Look at what happened in Sudan, the crisis in Sudan recently. Where countries had to take away their citizens, right? America had to fly some of its citizens from Sudan. The rest of them that could not be taken away from Sudan were driven by road in buses, including the American Allied citizens were driven in buses and taken to over 800 kilometers stretch to another destination from where they found safety. Now, look at what happened. America didn't send physical soldiers or policemen to escort those buses for a stretch of over 800 kilometers. What America did was to deploy combat UAVs. When I say combat UAVs, I'm talking about combat on unmanned area vehicles. Talking about drones now. You remember the issue in Iraq and Iran and America sometime that created a very huge crisis where America took out two heavily one from Iran, one from Iraq. They monitored them from the Iraqi airport and then took them out with the drones without the physical presence of any military officer any American officer or Iraqi officer. Okay. And you remember that COVID-19 was what actually stopped, what would have become the third world war at that point in time. Okay, let me bring you back to the conversation. Sorry, because we don't have too much time. Let's talk about developing a national security strategy because well, we're also trying to set the agenda for the incoming administration. What should be the makeup of that national security strategy? Because if we keep having these issues of insecurity, it definitely one way or the other will affect governance as a whole. What would you be proposing? Well, the one of it is to revisit the security architecture as it is at the moment. What and what this government that will be living in a number of days did not get right. You want to look at one and the issues of arms smuggled into Nigeria. It has created a lot of devastation. The porous borders on the northern part of this country, particularly the illegal routes, have not helped the movement of illicit arms into this country. Okay. Now, the issue, like Yara Dua did, one of the basic things because this government really could not do or get right was bringing some persons to the table to negotiate with them, to discuss with them, to listen to them. For instance, the issue of iPop that is taking place in the southeast at the moment. The courts have asked that none of the cannons should be granted. But well, the security agents have their reasons for not releasing him up until this moment because apparently they are still doing their investigations and all of that. And the matter is in court. But the court has asked that the man should be granted bail, which is one of the demands by the Orhanese, the Orhanese indigo, which is also the demand of the governor of Anambra State who has also tried to wade into the crisis in the southeast. And then you also look at the problem of inter-gadrin. We really do not have enough gadgets for surveillance. We do not have enough drones, surveillance drones, surveillance UAVs, surveillance equipment that can also help in most other parts, like you have in the northeast at the moment. Equipment, do we have enough equipment to carry out all of this, what seemingly looks like war against terrorism? You understand? And then we're also talking about corruption. Corruption in the system, corruption in the purchase of equipment. And then we also need serious bilateral relationship with some of these countries that manufacture this equipment. We must, most of them have reasons to sell equipment to this country. Some of us do not know. There's also the black market, where in most times some of the countries have to go to purchase equipment. We need to go to these countries and convince them that this equipment and because the fear, the fear they have often are laid is the fact that this equipment, if they are sold to us, will go into the wrong hands and then they will be misused. Even some Nigerians from some regions, forgive me, I will not mention those regions, have written to some of these countries in Europe and America to say that they should not sell this equipment to Nigeria because they will be used against them, because they are oppositional in whichever form. In consideration of all of this, we need to build that trust with these countries who manufacture this equipment. You remember the story of the Tucanos? Setting government came. What is government was in the one who started the issue of this Tucano, getting Tucanos from America from those countries. But it took them a very long time before they could agree to manufacture those specific Tucanos for Nigeria. And even when they sold those Tucanos to us, you remember what happened? They placed conditionalities on those Tucanos. They said those Tucanos must only be deployed against terrorists. If you remember all of that, that was why the hand of the military in Nigeria and the Air Force, particularly, were tied because those Tucanos could not be deployed against the bandits. Oconti, Nigerian government took that matter to court where the courts not declared banditry as terrorism. We thought that, ordinarily, you couldn't have been able to deploy. Now, these are some of the ways this international committee tied the hands of this country from really going all out to fight against terrorism and the bandits. But thank God, all of that has been solved. Many of you do not understand the reason why the activities of ESN has gotten to the extent it got to right now. You remember that ESN is the militant group of the IPOC. IPOC created that body because they said they needed that body to tackle, well, whether truly or firstly, to tackle bandits in the area that were infiltrating the southeast. The southeastern governors also came together to put up a security arrangement and architecture and the quality of a Bubeagu that never saw the light of day. Where is that security happening today? Now, in Nigeria, what you find in different places are things that look like regional security bodies put together by certain regions in the country. If you come to the southwest, you have a regional security body. That is because these bodies are created either because the people of this government do not really have full trust on our security agents and the military that are doing very well or because that they want to also assist with this regional security benefits. All right. In closing, because we have just one or two minutes, many trusted President Bohari, knowing that he was a former military leader, to deal decisively with the issue of insecurity, being that he also campaigned saying that he was going to put an end to it. So what are the chances that Ebola met Tinnabu is cut out to deal with this insecurity if his predecessor was even unable to deal with it in closing? Well, if you ask me, I think Ebola met Tinnabu is in Nigeria and has lived in Nigeria and has seen the level insecurity go to in Nigeria. In his campaign, he talked about rejigging the security architecture. I will take you back to what he did in terms of managing security in Lagos when he was governor of Lagos State. You remember all of what he put together, the lives of Operation Street, the lives of the kind of architecture that he put in place in Lagos that brought down crime dramatically, drastically in Lagos State as government. Today, that architecture that he put in place is still running in Lagos State. You see that in Lagos State, you even have what is called a security trust fund. Now, there's something that I do not really support. Whether creating security votes that governors are collecting on monthly basis has not done Nigeria any good. What are those security votes that nobody is even aware of the sum that governors collect on monthly basis are used for? In Lagos State, you could say, well, it is channeled to us the security fund. We have seen physically what Lagos State government, over time government or internal government have done with the security agencies by assisting with equipment, by vehicles, they buy all of that to support. That's why you find security in Lagos better than most other parts. In other states, where you really have the problem of insecurity, you have it in Benway State. Now, look at what is going on in Plateau, in the northeast and all of that. What are the governors, how are the governors supporting with their security votes? Are they supporting the military and security agents? That is one thing I think the incoming administration of Bolagme Tunugu should revisit and propose a bill to the National Assembly in respect of that. Is a bill ever passed, the security vote, so that those counties can be converted to the purchase of equipment for the military and the recruitment of more personnel? All right, I want to say thank you. Darlington Momo, who is a chief, is a former consultant to the Presidential Committee on Small Arms and Light Weapons Press Come. Thank you so much for speaking with us on this issue. What will be happening to security in Nigeria remains to be seen. Thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. Any day. All right. All right. Thank you so much for being on the show tonight. We want to thank you all for watching. Don't forget you can also do some catching up with all our previous episodes. Just head to PLOS TV Africa on YouTube, like, subscribe and follow all our programs. I am Mary Anacone. Have a beautiful evening.