 The federal government on Thursday began uploading the data of 60 terrorists and other criminals to the International Criminal Police Organization's database. The terrorists and the other criminals were among those who escaped when a terrorist group, the slavic state of West African province, bombed the Kujae Correctional Center on Tuesday night. Meanwhile, the Ondo state governor, Rotomiya Korodolou, has raised the alarm that terrorists are moving southward to take refuge in the forest. He reiterated that he reiterated the need for the creation of state police to ensure security lives and property. Now, Ondo said that Nigeria police force is overstretched on the staff and lacks the capacity to adequately secure the people. And joining us to discuss this is Honourable Rua Shaolou Koum Keoum, my begger partner. He's a member of the House of Representatives and, of course, he represents a constituency in Tairapa state. Now, it's good to have you join us, Honourable. Thank you very much, my dear. It's really interesting that this conversation has continued to linger, even though it happened on Tuesday. It's reverberating every other day. Now let's start by looking at the fact that two events took place on that day. Many people have, pundits have said that the attack on the president's advance team was a distraction strategy to get to the prisons to free these so-called terrorists. And this is not the first time we've had prison breaks. We've had so many. We've had in Kogi state. We've had in rivers. We've had even in Lagos state. And one would wonder, why do we keep having these things play out again and again? Do we never learn from the past? I don't know whether it is because we don't want to learn or because our institutions have actually collapsed and we're living in denial that we need to do something very drastic to get Nigeria back on track. You see, the high-profile attack on the convoy of the president, as well as the attack on Kujie, actually cover a lot of horrendous things that are taking place in the country. The daily killings by a full army militia or headsmen have continued. In my home, in my constituency in Tarawa state, the last few days, a large number of people have been killed. Several villages have been ransacked. For the same time, we've heard about terrorists asking five villages across the state to evacuate. We've had soldiers killed in Shiroro area. So a lot of crisis is happening in the country, which of course simply means that the terrorists or whoever they are, far from being dismantled or far from having been technically defeated, have actually regrouped or have not even been dealt with in the first place, and they pose a greater and more present danger to Nigeria now than before. Now, let's go to what the governor of Ongo state had to say about this. Now, he spoke about how overly stretched the security agencies are especially the police and they're not having the capacity to protect us. And so I'm asking, why do we have a police force that's unable to protect us when this is their core duty, this is their core responsibility? And over the years, in fact, under President Bahari, there has been reassigning of officers. We've also had 600, if not 6,000 new police officers recruited into the police force, even though we still understand that we don't have enough manpower. But what do you think the challenge is in making sure that our security agencies are fully equipped and empowered, or are we using them for the wrong reasons? Well, the fact of the matter is that the situation we have in the security system is that there is complicity from the very top in my own, in my opinion. The fact of the matter is that the police, the soldiers act on instructions that are given to them. By the very evolution of the political society, which the Nigerian state happens to be one, we surrendered all our arms, our weapons of coercion and violence to the state. We believe in understanding in a social contract that the state will protect us and the state protects us by having what you call the police, soldiers and so forth, who are asked to go out. We think something like this, the question is you ask, were the soldiers or the police instructed to go out and take some actions? In the National Assembly, the security agencies have come under very strong criticisms every day that they are not effective, they are not efficient and so forth. And we've had challenges or questions about corruption and so forth. I do not want to deny and I have no reason to doubt the fact that there could be and there are certainly a lot of issues of corruption within the security agencies. But these same security agencies of ours, the police that we have, the soldiers that we have, when they go out of Nigeria, they perform very excellently well in peacekeeping. As a matter of fact, it was Nigerian generals who coined the phrase, specifically General Joshua Dogon Yaro, who coined the phrase that became an international intellectual phrase, this enforcement from peacekeeping. Nigerian soldiers, Nigerian Army developed the concept of peace enforcement. Peace was enforced in Liberia, peace was enforced in Syria alone. Many that are soldiers have the capacity to do what they need to do. But why are they not performing excellently well in Nigeria? My opinion, the first place to start is to ask the questions, have they been given instructions to go and do what they need to do? Several places that communities in the Middle Belt have complained. Soldiers or security agencies patrol the main roads. They don't go out of the main roads. And you have a situation where the Fulani militia or headsmen who are now metaphorsing or have metaphorsed into bandits and so forth, operating in five minutes away from the main roads, far away from the eyes or the attention or the instructions of the security agencies to deal with them. So the first question to ask is that have the soldiers as security agencies been given the appropriate instructions by the president? That is one. And the second level, I do agree with the fact that we are underpoliced. We don't have enough security agents or personnel in the country. The ratio, Nigeria has one of the lowest ratio of civilian population to people, to persons who are officially armed to keep peace. A country that is in the type of crisis that we have. I think on the index table, we rank among the lowest. But having said that, we also have to point out the fact that if you look at it, Nigerian police, our population is 220 million people. That is what our population is said to be. And we have about 300,000 or so. They are about policemen on the street. A small country like Germany, which has about 80 million people, has about 400,000 policemen on the street. If you look at our armed forces, our armed forces, the total strength of our armed forces together, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Army, we discover that we don't have the armed forces, people that should be on the street to be doing what they should be doing. We don't have them. They are not there. I doubt it whether the creation of state police, good as it may be, will solve the problem. Simple reason. Most governments cannot have a staff strength, small-saving staff strength of about 3,000 to 4,000 or less, and they cannot pay staff salary. So the question is that people have asked that if you now allow a state government to recruit 10,000 policemen, bring them and arm them, who is going to pay their salary? But you see, we have to balance out that there is need for local actions because having one police inspector general or to give instructions to over 300 people in the questions that are far and diverse means that you are going to have several points of failure and you are not going to get the best. And that is what is happening in the country today. So what do we do? Because we saw a governor Zulam saying to the people in his state as a result of the fact that they have been unable to deal with the insecurity to say, arm yourselves. This is not the first time we have heard a governor who seems overwhelmed talk like that. We saw the same thing happen in Benrey state and in several other states. So what is the solution? We have the House of Representatives, we have the Senate. What are measures that need to be put in place? You are saying state police is out of the question because of cost of the capacity of the different states. So what do we do? I mean, we have the paramilitary guys, the guys who seem to be like vigilantes of sorts in uniform. We have the ones in the Southwest. We have the ones in the North. But we also have the ones that are in the South this whom we really don't know what they're up to right now. So really, how can we control these people if we're unable to control our security and our apparatus already? And talking about facilitating the work that they do, that's another capital official. What do we do? Where do we go? Because terrorism is spreading faster as the clock ticks. So what do we do? Yeah, we have to go back to the very first contract that we signed, or presumably political scientists said, the people signed with the state. The people surrendered their arms, their weapons to the states so that the states will protect them. Now, look at this scenario. If we don't get the federal system right, we can never get the states right. Very simple logic. The fact of the matter is that we look at the terrorists, that the people that attacked the church in the Southwest recently, surprisingly, the federal court came out within hours to say that it worked, that went to attack the church. Very surprising that they knew that so quickly. But the fact of the matter is those people may not have been living in that state. They moved through different jurisdictions. Presumably, they may have moved through three or four, five states. So if the state, for instance, graces the state police, and the state does not have, if the state does not have, if the state does not have, the fact that the state, I mean, the fact that Hondo has that not even help Hondo at all, because these terrorists, and that is what happened around Hondo to be. Terrorism, people sit in very far places to plan acts in different locations. And so Hondo, you take me saying that I'm going to create my own state police in one location who knows of the problem. The problem still has to be attacked, and that is the best practice for the federal system, from the federal system. Unless, of course, if you don't attack it from the federal system, you can also have the problem. For instance, I know of some state governors, like Tarawa state governor, government, the river state governor, government, had attempted setting up those forces. And the federal government, the soldiers simply came and stopped them and locked up some people. So you have to, like people say, you have to sit down and write a global rules for Nigeria to be able to arrive at the solutions that we need to arrive. But our politicians are ready to do that. Again, Nigerians are critical of the body language of not just Mr. President, but of course, politicians in general. Let's not forget, we've had several of these cases spread across the country. The president always expresses shock. There's always one message from the Senate president or the speaker, but then there's no action following through. Several pundits have also said, I've spoken with security agents, security experts who have said that these terrorists have continuously read the body language of the leadership of this country, hence the continuous attacks. And the Senate president said yesterday that this shows a total failure of security agencies in this country and, of course, our ability to deal with insecurity. So where do we go from here? Well, you have been generous. The word in the street today is that government is complicating what is happening. So by saying that government is not competent, you are actually being very generous to government. The fear on the streets of Nigeria today is that government is complicit in what is happening. Complicit in what respect? People point to the fact that, number one, no terrorist has been brought to trial properly. All the killings that have taken place, even the few that were brought to trial and were in Kuji have miraculously been let out of Kuji or let themselves out of Kuji. And people ask the question, if you are driving, for instance, from here, from central area of Abuja to Kuji, you are going to pass so many checkpoints. Where were these checkpoints? People are also asking, government already knew that Eastwab attacked the church in those states. That means that government has information about the locations and where the Eastwab people are, what has the government done about it? How many of the terrorists have been arrested? How many of the terrorists are facing trials? So those are questions that people are asking. And the fact of the matter is that, yes, it is correct to blame the National Assembly too, because the strengths and the beauty and the efficacy of a presidential democratic system is that the legislature brings the executive to book. But in the last four years, three years plus, we in the National Assembly have said that anything the president brings who will accept everything that the president has asked for. Every couple he has asked for has been given, including monies that were taken out of the account of the federation before budgetary allocations were done. Now, there is nothing that this president has asked for, that he has not got. So what is the problem? But is the House also making sure that the executive gives account, because it's one thing. Nigerians also ask, we have so many security votes across the states of the federation. The federal government also votes monies, monies, trillions, in fact, to fighting insecurity. And of course, we haven't seen those monies. Is it honest not on the National Assembly to probe where these funds have gone to, looking at what is on ground right now and how many lives, how many more lives have to be lost in order for us to be able to come to a point where we say enough is enough? How long are we going to continue in this light? Well, I have said it, everywhere in the world, when people are tired of things that are wrong, they will rise up and they will change the wrong situation. By the time Nigerians get tired, truly what is happening, they will know what to do. The fact of the matter too, I must point out, is that a lot behoves on us who are in positions of authority to perform our duties properly with knowledge and with that fear of favor. Part of what is foiling the crisis in the country and part of what is making different groups, disparate groups to go into trying to protect themselves is the fact that the authorities appear to be biased or seem to be biased, to be protected for some people and to be unnecessarily hard on some people. For instance, with OPPO until recently when IPOP started killing people or allegedly killing people, there was really a whole violence that nothing that IPOP has said that some other groups had not said and those groups were not banned. It is IPOP that was banned. Well, if you have banned IPOP, why are you not banning the groups that are threatening Bramstone also in other parts of the country? These are conversations that need to be had, but unfortunately, we're out of time. But we want to say thank you. Honorable Rima Shawalu Kwewom is a member of the House of Representatives and he's been speaking with us. We appreciate your thoughts. Thank you very much. All right, we have to go. And that's the show tonight to On Plus Politics. We're wrapping up for all of you who are celebrating the holidays. We wish you a happy celebration as Salah comes up this weekend. But I'll see you on Monday when we talk more on political issues across the country and of course on the continent. I'm Mary Anacone. Have a good night.