A Security Consultant, Captain Umar Aliyu (Rtd) has said that Nigeria has been going round in circles in her fight against terrorism.

According to him, the post-mortem of Abuja security in the past 30 days, leading to the Nyanya Park bombing is appalling, considering that terrorists had been kept in the Federal Capital Territory, close to the seat of the Presidency.

He noted that the “Guantanamo Base is nowhere near the White House…That is a no-no.”

He stated that the security of Abuja had been waning and this led to the Nyanya bombing incident, which was shocking to him, as he thought Nigeria had gone past such attacks, having experienced a similar incident before in Kano.

On the availability of many security agencies expected to be curtailing such attacks, Aliyu said, “When you have everybody doing one thing, that one thing becomes nobody’s job because everybody will believe somebody will do it. And when everybody believes somebody will do it, nobody will do it.

“When you have people in position not because they know what to do but because they know somebody, you will have a department where everybody knows everybody but nobody knows anything.”

The retired Nigerian Army Officer noted that the result Nigeria had been getting in its security system and fight against terror wasn’t matching the investment it had put into it. The reason according to him, was that people have been in positions in the past 20 to 30 years not based on meritocracy but because they knew someone.

He however, pointed out that it was okay to put known people in position but stressed that they must know the job for which they are in position. He said that he had listened to Nigerian Security Chiefs speak and he could tell that they were deficient. “Nobody is a repository of knowledge, as you don’t have to know everything, but you can build a strong team” else “the price to pay is what we saw in Nyanya, in Kano, in Yobe and in other states in the last 3 days.

“In the last 3 days we’ve seen about 400 people lose their lives because somebody somewhere is not on his game. Somebody is meddling with our lives. We have to get serious about who does what and how he does it.”

Capt. Aliyu agreed that on paper and policy wise, there were roles and responsibilities well spelled out for the security agencies but there were no measures of success, there were no key performance indicators, there were no milestones for measuring results.

He insisted that for every amount spent, there has to be clear breakdown of what would be achieved with such monies and how it would be done, with emphasis on demanding to know how the job would be done.

“We cannot begin to monitor how every money was spent but we can track performance”, he said, adding that “Nigeria needs to start holding people to account on their briefs”, else it embraces the option of looking for alternative people to do the job.

On the importance but supposed inadequacy of database in the fight against terror, Capt. Aliyu opined that “database is all around us.”

The Ex-Nigerian Military Intelligence Officer referred to a colleague working with the intelligence agency of another country, who told him that all the intelligence they required in Nigeria were in the pages of any newspaper that is published in the country, as they are about indicators.

“Intelligence is not as we see it in James Bond films, it is simply the ability to have insight, and you will have insight when you have imagination, when you are innovative and you have a measure of meta-cognition”, he explained.

With newspapers and journalists brought into the discussion, and expatiating on Security Journalism, he said: “Our security agencies don’t see journalists as partners in progress; it’s more of a Tom and Jerry approach.

“I’m looking to see that day when journalist will be inducted, when they will attend courses and be able to see from the perspective of the security agencies because all of them use information.”

He also criticized the Police for placing the FCT on Red Alert when the incident had already happened. He noted that such measure was supposed to be used before an incident with different levels of alerts for different situations to prevent occurrences.

Speaking further on the capacity of the security agencies, he stated that if Nigeria rebased its security agencies like it did the economy, “the results will shock you.”

“Some weapons being used by Nigeria’s security agencies were last used during the World War”, he said.

He advised that going back to learn from its past would be the best way for Nigeria to move forward, adding that if Nigeria had learnt from the Kano incident, the Nyanya bombing would not have happened.

The security awareness of Nigerians was also emphasised as he provided deep insight into how to keep densely populated areas which were well known to be potential terrorists’ targets constantly safe with everyone having a role to play.

Assuring Nigerians that all shall be well, Capt. Aliyu expects that the Nyanya Park would be shut down for a week for the security agencies to get to work and come out with findings that would help investigation geared ultimately towards preventing a future occurrence.