Ibrahim Ahmad-Katsina is the Director, Monitoring and Evaluation, National Institute for Security Studies, Abuja. The former Director of the Department of State Security (DSS), who served as Special Adviser on Security to the immediate past governor of Katsina State, Aminu Bello Masari, in this interview, speaks on the security challenges Nigeria is facing and how to tackle them

There is this belief in some quarters that the military has decimated Boko Haram insurgents, following a long lull in their activities until their recent attack in Borno, which left over 30 persons dead and several others injured. What is the state of affairs as regards to insecurity?

Those are the dynamics of crime, signifying that there are no straight jacket solutions to security challenges. Criminal elements and terrorists seek the best opportunity to strike. That incident was an isolated case that needed to be studied and made a case study, so as to the factors that were responsible.

What made the criminal elements find the opportunity to strike with that devastating effect? In crime psychology, criminals study the pattern of lives of people and strike when the need arises. So, as far as I am concerned, that incident should be viewed based on the emerging facts that would come out of the investigation.

As stated earlier, it is an isolated case that can happen anywhere. Even in advanced climes, we experience such. In America, the UK, and all other advanced countries, they face this type of challenge because they just spring up. Criminal elements, especially the terrorists, spring up when you least expect; when you are relaxed, thinking it is over, but it is not over for them.

The fear is that after investigations, everything would just end there because in some many incidents, nobody was prosecuted. Why is that the case in Nigeria?

The criminal justice system in the country is weak. It really needs to be reviewed. You cannot inherit something from the colonial era and still apply it to this modern era. What should be done is simple; reduce the time frame between investigation and prosecution processes.

Again, most of the police or security agencies, including the DSS and the judiciary officers, don’t have the experience to understudy or undercover the current dynamics of security challenges that we are facing. I think the security forces, and the judicial officers need to have a round table to review the judicial process because when you prosecute someone for committing crime and then take up to 10 years before he is punished, maybe because of adjournments and other factors, it doesn’t speak well of a country that wants to fight crimes.

There should be special courts that can assist the security forces, when they finish their investigations, so that within three months, they are done with prosecution. That is what is happening in other countries but in Nigeria, somebody who committed a crime in the last 10 years is still being prosecuted until today, such that most people would have even forgotten about the crime.

Apart from parading the suspects before the camera; that may be the end because we don’t have a structured arrangement that can review the process. There is no monitor and evaluation mechanism, or checks and balances. The judicial process is archaic and needs to be reviewed. You cannot expect somebody to be prosecuted for a crime today, and the next date would be the next 10 years.

By that time, the person may have transformed into something else. The essence of punishment should be reformative, not punitive. When you punish the perpetrators, it should serve as a deterrent to others, but you keep the culprit in the cooler eating the government’s food and other things like that.

Nobody will know he has even committed any crime because people will forget and I think that it is our present situation. The judicial process needs review because the police are doing their best. When the police arrest people, they investigate them, and they take them to the courts, but when you get a lawyer, the lawyer begins to seek adjustment here and there. So, we need a complete overhaul of our justice system.

There is a belief in some quarters that the war against insurgency would have been won but for some people, including military personnel who are benefitting from the war. Do you agree with such a notion?

I think that is a sweeping statement. Let us talk about facts. Globally, military contracts are expensive; defence budget is also on the high side. In Nigeria; because of the general attitude of the people, the perception is that everybody to be the same. Let us be fair to the security forces.

What we need is accountability in the process. Everybody is a culprit in the system because the recruitment process is faulty. The budget process is faulty, the implementation process is faulty, and that is where you find the lacuna. I guess the accusation is coming up now because of the heat we are facing in terms of banditry, terrorism, and separatists agitations.

Do you expect the security forces to do magic? No! It does not work that way. What we need is a deliberate national strategic policy on combating terrorism, banditry and other associated crimes. When 9/11 happened in the United States of America, they reviewed the entire security architecture which gave birth to Homeland Security, with specific tasks to get officers that would be trained on insurgency, terrorism and counter-terrorism.

But in Nigeria, the average policeman, military man and DSS man is still operating with archaic laws that have no place for the emerging trend of crime and criminality. Let us tell ourselves the truth; we need to review national laws, policies and programmes on security management.

We always want quick fixes to situations, but we don’t want to sit down and find solutions to the problems. As long as you don’t sit down and review what is wrong, you cannot do what is right. The laws need to be reviewed; the processes must also be reviewed.

Ordinarily, any instance of banditry or terrorism should not pass one year in the trial and prosecution. But here in Nigeria, somebody will commit crime and his case will be lingering in court to the extent that his files would be missing. By that, there is no example that would serve as a deterrent. That is why people are getting encouraged to go into crime because there is no example of punishment that would serve as a deterrent to others.

We need to review national laws, policies and programmes on security management. We always want quick fixes to situations but we don’t want to sit down and find solutions to the problems

Could that be one of the reasons every part of the country has one form of security challenge or the other?

Globally, there is nowhere that is safe. It is part of human nature, but problems are meant to be solved. The issue of this type of criminality we are facing is one of the issues that shows that we need to sit down and review the attitude of the average person.

Somebody born in the 60s cannot be compared with the thinking and Intelligence Quotient of somebody born in the 90s because of the trend globally. We are now talking about Artificial Intelligence. So, if you assume the thinking of an average person would be like that of the colonial period, you are just wasting your time.

Let the political leadership and everyone get together and discuss solutions. Meanwhile, every crime has local content. If the community absolves you, the crime will thrive. If the community rejects you, it will not. When banditry or terrorism started in the North-East, the people became docile and unconcerned, and that was what encouraged Mohammed Yusuf.

The law enforcement agents will be pursuing the criminals, and the community will be shielding them. The same thing happened in the North-West. It is the same thing in the South-East. I think people should emulate the South-West, who, when the separatist agitation was on, isolated the criminal elements, including their families.

That was what assisted the security forces to identify them and nip the problem in the bud. That is the effective aspect of community policing, so let the communities rise to the challenge. That is what is happening globally. Community policing is the way to go. That is why the British and American and all other advanced countries excel.

Everybody knows each other in the community. If the North-West and South-East did what South-West did; all these crimes would not have been this big. This is because the people perpetrating these crimes are known to the people in the community. Crime will continue unless we tell ourselves the truth and act on it because an average criminal studies the pattern of response of the people before he strikes.

The moment they know that their society will not accommodate their acts, they will change location. So, t is the tracking system that should be reviewed instead of putting pressure on the security forces. If you want peace, don’t allow criminals to thrive in your community. If you cooperate with the criminal to deal with me, tomorrow somebody will cooperate with the same criminal to deal with you. Let everybody answer the clarion call. Crime and criminality do nobody any good.

Whatever incentive crime would give, it is short-lived but with the long-term effect of the negative consequences that will live with you for the rest of your life. We allow crimes and criminality to take over our rational thinking such that we justify our involvement in crimes. There is no amount of incentive that should encourage anybody to go into crime.

Every crime and situation has factors responsible. When I was in the United States Institute of Peace and we were discussing the emergence of Boko Haram; what led these young people to think of venturing into terrorism is religion. We know that an average person in the North uses religion to transmit political ideology. So, religion is a tool for mobilisation.

It is something the youth realised that the elite are using to manipulate the psyche of the people, and that’s what made them to also mobilise followers using the same tool. They use it for religious purposes, but under it, there is a motive. It is not religion. So, the government must know the psychology of the crime.

Also, it must find out what is making the recruitment process easier. Once you get that, you suffocate it. That was why I said that our security forces should be calm, you don’t respond based on sentiment or emotion. You will get it wrong. Respond based on facts and reality and you will get it right. Those involved in curtailing these crimes should go to the root of the problem and make the solution a bottom-up approach format rather than top to bottom. Let the government evolve a deliberate policy to study the factors that are making religion a veritable tool for destruction instead of development.