EDITORIAL: It Has Come To The South West
The attacks on Oriire Local Government in Oyo state makes it unambiguously clear to even the deluded that everywhere in Nigeria is now in the frontline in war against terror. Nobody, nowhere is now safe against the mayhem unleashed by the marauders.
We cannot but commend our valiant officers in uniform. In their patriotic call to duty, they have consistently gone beyond the call of duty.
We once again call for extra funding for them and members of their families. Nevertheless, there is now a compelling need for a review of strategy and tactics.
We are making this call for the upteenth time as a patriotic duty and it is an urgent request. It is clear that its commendably positive result coming out of the combined attacks on known beeheaves in the North East and North West.
They are now changing their strategic focus and dispersing South wards. Alarmingly we are hearing of attacks in the last two days in Ogun State! In thier battle for survival the terrorists are showing the fires element of supply, they must be caught napping.
As far as the South West is concerned. We must now on the rebooting re-equiping the amotekun and expanding the forest rangers . It is clear that both are under equiped and the two formations do not have adequate boot on ground.
Both issues have to be tackled with ferocious energy. We there to suggest that bilateral agreement should be negotiated with the British and the United States amongst other to send trainers to retrain them. Retraining must also focus on the use of technology as a fighter modus operandi.
The South West is clearly now enticing to the terrorists because it has a lot of mining sides outside of the control of the State. This is now an issue, for with constant bombardment the marauders are loosing a lot of their traditional site of funding. They now have to look elsewhere. What must be done is that we have to develop Special Forces to secure unbehave of the State areas of illegal mining activities both actual and potential. It is clear that there is a limit to how much the criminal can extract from kidnapping and adoptions. Illegal mining clearly provides higher and steadier returns.
The source of funding must be cut off in addition, the State must now loose a combination of intelligence network as well as the incorporation of technology to trace the movement of funds.
The heart rendering seems from Oriire Local Government now makes it urgent to review the safe school initiative. This was put together as a response to the attacks on schools, and a lot of foreign donations was involved. The initiative has been so serious that an esteem former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was brought in to be involved in the scheme. Alarmingly bit has been a specular failure. This is a disgrace to the nation.
We therefore call for an urgent forensic audit of the funds under the strict supervision of civil society incorporating bodies such SERAP, BUGGEIT, The institute Chartered Accountant in Nigeria (ICAN) and so forth. The audit must be a full public glare and those who have been tampering with the funding in the process endangering the life of peoples and students must be fished out and brought to book. Not only as a deterrence but also as a face-saving measure to redeem the country in the house of the international community. Further more, there must be restitution of a punitive type.
The Safes Schools initiative has to be restored under a new operating and driven by civil society and not by bureaucratic. This time local communities, traditional institutions parents -teacher association as well as old students must be at the driven sea of the revived project.
Incorporating local community will ensure that local intelligence gathering will be at the epic center of the safe garden initiative. The government must send out the above new operational guidelines in order to gain vitally needed foreign funding as well as enthuse local donations.
This must be done quickly for we are in a race against time as we cannot considerably consider an alternative whiçh could lead to shutting down if all schools nationwide. This will be catastrophic for a country that already hideously has million school children out of school.
Today, we are at a cross road and we must accept the country at war, there must be attitudinal changes, if necessary we must now consider running a War Economy.
Painful realities have to be adjusted to and cannot be wished away. Our hearts go out on the eve of Eid adha to the parents, the loved ones and all, the communities involved in the carnage at Oriire Local Government.
That an innocent school teacher shepherding his wards was so brutally killed drive home the point that we are dealing with monsters and the response must be ferocious.
