 Ministry shuts down federal government colleges amidst threats and Sarah Psu's iNEC over vote buying in a kitty. This is Plus Politics, I am Mary Anacom. The Federal Ministry of Education has directed the closure of all federal government colleges in Abuja following security threats on the unity colleges located in the FCT. It would be recalled that some of the federal government colleges had been asked to vacate the school premises on July 20th, while others were closed on July 26th. Now the director of the Press Federal Ministry of Education, Mr Ben Guang, said the decision was as a result of rising insecurity and threats to lives and well-being of the students. Discussing this with us is Dixon Osage, he is a criminologist and global security analyst. This is so good to have you join us in the studio, Dixon. It's been a long time. I wish that we would have conversations like this on a better note, but unfortunately, this is what we're talking about today. So it started, there's been a string of attacks, the KuJay prison, an attack of the president's advance team. Of course we still had the lingering issue of the passengers on the train that are still in captivity. And then of course, the turbaning of a so-called bandit by an EMEA and then threats to Mr President, threats to the governor of Kaduna State and here we are. The FCT is saying that schools need to be shut down. Now a lot of people are wondering why we're not getting the kind of reaction that we would expect from a government that seems to be fighting terrorism or that their mantra would be they wanted to put an end to terrorism. So I mean, you're a security person, I'm guessing that you might have an answer for us. What type of answer do you want? I'm just wondering. All right, you see, you just gave a brief analysis of what we're going through in Nigeria. Too much of security issues, which are always classified as multi-dimensional security threats coming from various angle of effederation. And that tells you and I that the government is not prepared to solve the situation or perhaps they are incapacitated because I see no reason where a country of over 200 million people will have a lot of military generals. I can tell you have a lot of military generals. We have a lot of police officers. We have the DSS. We have the Navy, Army, Air Force. We have a lot of security agents. At the last count, we have about 25 security agents of various departments and various formations to forestall the spread of insecurity in Nigeria. And I can tell you for free that the federal government has spent a lot of billions in these security issues, trillions of naira, I mean, I would say. And you see people on bikes going after our military, going after our people and just succeeding. To be very honest, I think the government has failed us wholeheartedly. Nigerians are dying every day. Our security agents are dying every day. It's so painful, Mary Ann, because sometimes I'm just speechless, you know. Because I see no reason. The president himself is an ex-military general. I just want to imagine how will an ex-military general be going through this kind of mess? It's an embarrassment to his population. The president is no longer a military general. He does have a general. It should have the experience. It should not be his job. I mean, that's why the president has AIDS and has these Chief of Defense staff. He has the Minister of Defense and all of these people, the DSS and the... I mean, so he has all of these people. I mean, yes, the box stops at Mr. President's table, but can we say that these military generals, in your words, and these guys who are the hem of affairs when it comes to our security, have been able to do their jobs pretty well? Can we just blame Mr. President for people's incompetence? Well, you know, he's the leader. Like the last service chief spent about five years in her office, and I was so amazed at how you allowed these guys to spend five years in office. I think a lot of damages has been done before these guys left, and insecurity don't give room for damages. When you give room for damages, then you spend a lot of time for damage control. Presently now we are going through damage control, damage control in the areas of terrorism, damage control in the areas of banditry, damage control in the areas of kidnapping as well, because most of these guys have seen the vulnerability of our security agents, and they knew very well that the military and the security agent cannot contend with them, simply because I think we are playing with those guys. You know, what is happening in the United States is a war situation, Mary Ann. A war situation is a situation whereby you need to declare full-blown war against these guys. When you take over 999 of human lives from terrorism studies, it is a war situation because each life matters. But here I think Nigerian lives don't matter, just like those of our brothers and sisters in captivity for over 60 days or whatever the case may be. I saw some video moving around the media space, how they are being tortured in their own fatherland. I don't think it's a mistake to be an Nigerian. I also don't think it's a crime for you and I to be an Nigerian. We are in Nigeria and it's not our choice to be an Nigerian, but we are in Nigeria by grace. So I think we need to start holding our leaders accountable. If you cannot perform, just kindly resign and leave this office for people that can come in with strategy. I'm sorry that I laughed. I'm wondering, has there been a precedent or any leader that has stepped down in this country on whatever capacity? No accountability. Well, I mean, so I think that this is just a mere statement, but let's go to the core of insecurity in Nigeria. What do you think is at the core and what do you think it's continuously fueling it? Certain people, certain analysts will say, well, because we're paying these kidnappers, we're funding it. Some other people will say that violence, electoral violence is also at the core of it. But I want to know, is poverty also at the core of it? I agree. Is bad governance at the core of it? If you want to go into causative factors of insecurity in Nigeria, they are multidimensional, and you would have mentioned. Yeah, in Nigeria, we're suffering a lot of police brutality, educational brutality. Our students have been after school for over six months, but I'm not mistaken. There's educational brutality, tribal brutality, religious brutality. You can see what's happening here in Nigeria. We've not even gotten into the 2023 election. There's a lot of fights here and there because of the Muslim ticket taking out a particular sect of the religion. That is going to be another big issue, and it's going to be big issues. Then also, we're talking about poverty, which you're actually right. You see, like the Al-Marjiris, when you go to the north side of this country, you find a lot of Al-Marjiris. I was born and bred in the north. I was born in Medugria, grew up in Sokoto State, and Zaria, so I understand the lifestyle there. Al-Marjirism has been mismanaged here in Nigeria. When you go into the tradition or the history of Al-Marjiris, there are people that go into religious learning just to go and learn more about religion and get knowledge and excel in their lives. But yeah, we mismanage Al-Marjiris. We see them on the streets begging for bread and butter, begging for mass, begging for food and drink. Our leaders are robbing them of their future. Each time you rob them of their future, you are creating risk in this country because a jobless person on the street or a child on the street is a potential threat to the government tomorrow. When I say potential threat, I mean it's going to be a threat to the government tomorrow. Take for instance now, you have about 15 Al-Marjiris on the street that don't have jobs. They always depend on the elites, the big men in quotes. They would go there and they would start singing in their dormitory and be praying for the big men. They would come and share them. One, one thousand and say, ah, yankadede, yankadede, yankadede. Al-Badesah, Al-Badesah, you understand. They are telling them that God should give him more to give more. So those guys, when these terrorists approach them, there is a terrorism employment this time around. When these terrorists approach these guys, they tend to fall to these terrorist guys and they pick up arms against them and say, hey, the past 50 years the government does not care about me. The past 10 years the government does not care about me. I'm always on the street. So let me pick up these arms as an opportunity for me to strike against the state. And most of these guys that are going into terrorism are banditry. They are making, they are cashing out a lot of money. Just imagine the amount of money that has been cashed out by these guys that are creating up our people in the cardinal expressway. We are talking about hundreds of millions of naira in the Nigerian territorial space. So most of these issues needs to be addressed by our government. And militia might never eliminate terrorism or banditry. We need to start looking at the problem holistically, educational-wise, we need to check about it because counter-terrorism comes with about five components. The first component is political components. Political-wise, you need to bring in state actors. Let us resolve the issue. What's the problem? Just like this Muslim-Muslim ticket. Well, in the case of these so-called bandits who are faceless, who are the actors. But who do you get to? Who do you talk to? Because you see security agencies will keep telling you that they don't know these people. We don't know where they are. So how do you bring them to the table? How do you do that? You can bring them to the table. Bagheni with the devil is a sign of weakness. Why would you want to baghen with somebody who will eliminate Nigerian lies? But he talks about state actors and non-state actors. Yes, yes. When I talk about state actors, I'm talking about people in the affairs of government. For example, if I'm in a political party or for example, maybe you robbed me of my mandate, I would want to make your state of government. But we haven't seen most of those things happening here in Nigeria. So you're saying that politicians in this country have banned in the last couple of days? Of course. Of course. I can categorically tell you that. And that is the truth because you cannot tell me that most of these things happening, we have no resolution to it. These people are from territories. They're from villages. They're from homes. Okay. If you want me to clarify that I will confirm my facts to you about the tabanning of this guy in Zanfarah states. Why has it been tabanned? On what ground? Is it because they've succumbed to his attack or his ill activities? We have a lot of issues to handle here in this country. But the truth is that I think some people are out there to hijack the Nigerian states and trying to maybe create unrest in Nigeria. 23 is coming. It's around the corner. There's going to be a lot of unrest. We need to be prepared. It's not all about God forbid, but we must be prepared for the unexpected. I hate to sound like a pessimist or someone who's an unbeliever, but when you say that the elections are here and we need to be prepared, we still have our plate full. And it doesn't seem like anybody is trying to unpack that. And then we have, like you have said, 2023 is around the corner. If we're unable to deal with 2022, who's to say that we can deal with 2023 and what it has to offer? That's the problem here. So what we need to start doing presently, I saw it later going around the media space that the President says, deal with this guy before 2023 runs out. I laughed. Security is not magic. Security is process. The hierarchy of protection is very clear. The hierarchy of control is very clear. The top most priority of any governance is the protection of human lives. You measure your success by the protection of human lives. You can't tell me an ignorance are dying every day and you tell me your administration is doing so well. Because human lives are irreplaceable. Your phone is replaceable. Every other items are replaceable. So we need to start looking at the protection of the human lives. Let's take place top priority on our lives. If we don't place priority on human lives, we can succeed. Now, for me to tell you that we don't place priority on human lives, truly, those guys, 16 engineers that we're kidnapping, they're not trying to attack. They've been captivated for over 60 days. That is to tell you that this government or the Nigerian state does not place priority on human lives. And American was kidnapped some years ago, last year or three years ago, in the Nigerian borders around the area. They flew in commandos, great guys that came in, busted the terrorist camp and retrieved the American. That tells you how the American people place priority on their citizens. If you don't place priority on your citizens, you suffer setback. And that's where social contract comes to play. Social contract. Give me protection. Give me amenities. Give me infrastructure. Give me good education. Nigerians now, most of our people are out of school. And a lot of them will definitely venture into crime because they need to get out of school, get something to do, and have a living. But at the time, you're just sitting at home jobless. It's going to be sad. And it's a sad one. Let's talk about us, the people. Before we go back to Mr. President, we're going to dissect Mr. President a bit. You talk about social contracts. A contract is between two people. And if our social contracts has been one way or the other violated on one hand, are we also not playing a role in this violation? I ask because there are people who are in support of what is happening in the country, in support of certain politicians who you know are part of the problem. And there are also people who are on the other side saying we want some form of responsibility. But how do we, as Nigerians, do you think we hold our leaders accountable enough? Because if Mr. President ran telling us that he wants to fight insecurity, he was going to put it to bed. He was going to bring employment to young people. He's not done that. He was going to fight corruption. Share money around 5,000. I was expecting my 5K. I've not gotten my 5K since 2015. What is our role as Nigerians? Because it's not enough for us to say we're just seeing that responsibility to the president because he is the one that we've asked to lead us. But what about us as followers? What are we doing that we're not doing? Well, I think you make a fantastic point. We are centralizing our problem. That is not supposed to be true. That's not supposed to be it. But the truth is that they say that if anything goes wrong, you hold the head of that home. So definitely we're going to hold him because he is the leader of the fierce of this great nation. Basically what we need in this country is the societal attitude and change individually. For example, there was a paper that I was interviewed in Punch News a few days ago about some police people that arrested some Nigerians and take money from them. About, I think, 50,000 or something like that. And I realized that both the giver and the receiver are both liable. So here in Nigeria, we need to start looking at accountability playing from the horizontal and the vertical playing in the sense that those who live office must be made to come and give an account. Who's going to make them give an account? We need to create an institution that will be in charge of that because you can't just... There are so many institutions. How responsible are those institutions? Then that is to tell you that the government... Well, the people who are running this... That is to tell you that the major problem we're having is leadership. Leadership-wise. We've seen countries like Rwanda that has been into genocide, into great war, one of the toughest war in the history of mankind. So vulnerable. Rwanda is one of the most beautiful countries today. Why? Leadership-wise. Because the leader, if a leader stands on his ground and say, hey, this has to be this, this has to be this, the citizens don't have an option because that is where you need to integrate the administration of criminal justice system with leadership-wise. If the government are taking supremacy in leadership because when you look at the executive, the judiciary and the legislature, most times the executive are taking supremacy over the legislature and the judiciary, which is not supposed to be. Everybody has a role to play. So the judiciary needs to be independent of its own statutory institution in the sense that if any thing come to the judicial line, I think we need to start addressing crimes and punishment with speed and momentum. And one of the reasons why crime has flourished here in Nigeria is because we have not been addressing it with speed and momentum. Take an example, Evans was arrested some years ago. It takes almost five or six years to award him some punishment or award him judgment. Why does it have to take five years for the judiciary to run a matter? We need to start looking at the judicial speed. We need to apply speed and momentum. Most times people say justice delays, justice denies. For me, I think our justice delays defeats on our judicial system. It makes the judicial system vulnerable. Is it, if we need to create more law cuts, less creative, we need to create more, promote more judges, less promote more judges. We need to add speed to the administration of criminal justice system. Most of these criminal guys that are in Nigeria, to commit crime and I tell you that they have perceived Nigeria as a vulnerable state. Just like last few years, some people went to the House of Assembly and cut away our maze. I was so surprised that if hoodlums can go into the National Assembly to cut away our maze of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, that tells you that the Nigeria state is vulnerable. That is why most of these guys just believe they can come to Nigeria and commit crime and go scot free. They are really succeeding in their goals. It takes me back to 2016 if you can. When we started having this issue of banditry, I said that had alleged that the people who were committing these crimes were not Nigerians. The question I kept asking was how bad is it for us that we would let non-Nigerians come into Nigeria and kill Nigerians and go scot free and we still throw our hands up in the air when we have leadership. There is also that, you know, story of all the people who committed crimes in Nigeria and that, you know, story of all the soldiers are thinly stretched. The police is incapacitated. And so what do we do? The governor at some point said, hey, everybody gets a gun. Not only does the state governor and governor say everybody should start picking a gun. Nigeria is not right for us to start picking a gun. If you pick a gun to the IT, I can tell you tens of people will start blowing off their head because even the stress in Nigeria is not for some people to take their lives. God forbid that should not be the case. For me, if you're talking about the external factors, that is where our military comes to play because the military is solely responsible for external aggression. Nigerians suffering from external aggression. Most of these guys, I can tell you, they are non-Nigerians as well. And that is why, you know, just like the way you treat your brothers, you can't treat your brother the way you treat outsiders. You treat your brothers with care. So most of these guys, they knew they are not Nigerians and that's why they come with this animal behaviour and devilish taking them to a government space, getting money from them. And that is where we need to start looking at identification process. We need to start looking at immigration as well. Nigerian immigration needs to be straightened. There is an agency in the immigration service known as the Border Management Agency that are solely responsible for the protection of our national borders. I have advised many times that the federal government should start looking at empowering the Nigerian immigration. The strength of the Nigerian immigration is not up to 35,000 personnel for a country of over 200 million. And we have about 1,400 irregular routes which these guys, irregular migrants are taking. I wouldn't want to use the word illegal because no human being is illegal. Yes, migration is migration. It's just unusual at the time. You are very correct. So we need to start looking at our border security because we have the process of our national border is also contributing. So a lot of factors are contributing to the spread of insecurity in Nigeria because a borderless nation is a known nation. If you have a poorer border, just for example, in this beautiful edifice, if you want to spray insecticide in these premises, what do you do first? You close your windows. If you open your windows, you are doing a bad job. So the windows here is talking about our national borders. If we want to have an effective security measures in our country, we need to shut down our national borders. Go into your government space. Take over your government space. First of all, we need to carry out an assessment. Where are the vulnerable rules in our national borders? Where and where are these guys taking through? Then project immigration services. I'm sorry, do we have many in my state? The way you can just literally cross over to another country. We know these things, but I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand why we sound as if these things have to be. We have to blindly try to look search for these things. Is it that we do not know the problem or we're not willing to deal with it? There's no political way. We don't have political way. If we have political way in Nigeria, I tell you Mary Ann, we'll be able to take out all these issues. Security's issue in Nigeria is only when the security agents take a departure from politics. Talking about that, let's get into the politicking of how over politicized our security agencies have become. I remember last year, if I'm not mistaken, the chief of defense staff had told us that we were cowards and that we should be able to pick up arms and fight these bandits. I cannot forget when he said that. And I'm sure that is being paid to be in charge of defense and this is what he tells us and this is also in general. We have so many generals. Again, should we be allowing politics into the security space? And what needs to be done to depoliticize if there's a word like that? What of the problem I've identified in the security relationship with politicians is because of greed. The national pledge has said it all. The national pledge has said it all. Most times most people just think the national aren't him. It's just a normal day-to-day music. It's an oath. The national pledge is an oath. Until our security agents begins to see the national aren't him and the national pledges and oaths, they will not do things right. Until they finally divorce between them and the politicians, they will not get things right because I see thousands of military and billions and trillions are being spent and some people are just taking over territories. Spent where? Because you see there's a question of where's the money? Trillions. I heard Ellie this year that trillions of Naira even dollars have been voted to security in this country. Let's not even go into the issue of security votes which is shrouded in so much secrecy. Where does that money go? I've never ever seen video soldiers complaining about the equipments that they're using to fight these so-called terrorists and the fact that those people are better armed than them and that was again swept under the carpet. So I ask where does the money go? Who's giving account because there's also cases where the National Assembly has an effective accountability processes here in Nigeria people will not be accountable. Talking about the billions and millions government has painted we've seen a lot of videos going around in media space our soldiers are crying Mary Ann I can tell you categorically that we have formidable military but I don't know what the problem is because as a former publisher of the Nigerian military what's going on wrong because the battle begins from the mind I have identified so many vulnerable areas of the Nigerian military first of all the operational strategy is highly, highly, highly porous then the tactical strategy as well because most times I've seen our soldiers being on the defensive line you don't be on the defensive line in a war situation in your own territory you go before you rebuild this has been done always by the military and the military should start looking at policing duty as well taking the departure from policing duty because some of the police duty are being done by the military by the military themselves so for me if we don't hope people are comfortable our soldiers will keep on dying in the battle field we've seen generals crying on the battle field more and more and especially as we're getting ready for the elections we need to be clear on our demands I'm guessing sure we need to be very, very clear on our demand our demand is to take back Nigeria to bring back Nigeria you know Nigeria needs to come back to its glorious days because I just imagine the president the type of army staff of Liberia some few days ago during their celebration send a message to Nigeria that the sacrifices of our soldiers bring Liberia to Stancy went to Syria alone brought Liberia to Stancy take out all the enemies by coming back to Nigeria they're killing them like chickens they're killing them like cows then that means that the Nigerian soldiers life does not matter if we don't put in strategy in place to ensure that we take out these criminal elements Nigeria will be override by these guys well let's hope that that doesn't happen in part of this conversation alright we'll take a quick break when we come back we'll be talking with Serap as they're asking the federal government well to deal with the issue of foot buying in the past election in Ekiti State stay tuned we'll be right back