A Professor of Criminology and Deviant Behaviour at Bingham University (BHU), Karu Nasarawa State, Samuel Unenwojo Odoh Odoma, has said that non-State actors in the South East and across the North are the greatest threats to Nigeria’s internal security.
He also noted that Nigeria suffers monumental loss whenever a security operative dies as a result of insecurity.
Professor Odoma who spoke at the varsity’s 6th inaugural lecture tagged “The Imperative of Securing Nigeria’s Security,” said other implications of insecurity is that it dents Nigeria’s image, scare investors, retard the growth of the nation and causes erosion of respect to security operatives.
“Whenever an operative dies, it is a monumental loss to the nation. What it costs a person to recruit, train and retrain a security operative from the point of entry to the point he is able to provide security is unquantifiable. Having trained such a person and deployed to where he is expected to discharge his primary responsibilities, only to be killed at his prime, means more than his demise to the society,” he said.
He said national security operatives such as the Armed Forces and the Police and other policing agencies have suffered serious casualties and losses that can only be envisaged by an Army involved in conventional war with another country.
“Nigeria is not at war with another country but only contending with insurgents and insurrections from within,’ he said.
Explaining that the mantras of unknown gunmen and bandits have become the greatest threat to Nigeria’s national security in recent times, Professor Odoma stated: “The activities of unknown gunmen have become deadlier, and thus paint a gloomy picture of our security system because of the lack of inter and intra-agency synergy required for a robust security system. Activities of unknown gunmen have flourished uncontrollably in Nigeria as the entire security architecture has been infiltrated.
“All the attacks of unknown gunmen on security agents in Nigeria have resulted in painful loss of lives and materials of the state security personnel.”
Odoma noted that the formal agencies of social control in Nigeria must step-up their ‘game,’ saying that “the noise about ‘unknown gunmen’ appears needless. It only suggests the failure of the government and its agencies to come to term with modern management of threats and insecurity.”
Earlier, the Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Haruna Kuje Ayuba, said from the records available in the varsity, out of the 35 Professors, only five have presented their inaugural lectures so far and that of Professor Odoma took the number to six.
First published in Daily Trust