(Editorial) Lagos Mega city status and insecurity

Lagos State, the economic and commercial hub of the nation, is facing a new challenge that may threaten, and vitiate its ambition to become a destination of choice to investors and tourists. Since the past administration in the state particular attention has been given to security and the leaderships have spared no cost to ensure the security of life and property. The purpose is that the huge investment in infrastructure transformation achieves the desired intention of making the state indeed a mega city.

However, it seems that some misguided and criminal elements in and around the state seem to be desperate to thwart and destroy the good and lofty vision of successive leaders in the Lagos. In the past a year there have been celebrated cases of kidnapping in different parts of the state, which put in grave jeopardy efforts by government to improve security and social life. In the past few years, we have had some broad day bank robberies, kidnapping of traditional rulers, some landlords in an estate in Isheri, Ogun State etc.

But the emerging trend now is the invasion of schools by armed men who take their time profiling the children of rich parentage before abducting the number of their choice with no challenge from security agents.  First, the Babington Macaulay Anglican school Ikorodu was invaded and some eight students were taken; then they moved to Epe where another school was attacked and some students seized; emboldened they moved to the Turkish-Nigeria International school at Isheri Riverside Ogun State and took some students, and a few weeks back gunmen abducted six students of Igbonla Model College, Epe, Lagos, who are yet to be freed by their captors. This is coming seven months after four students and two staff were kidnapped from the same school.

Both the Police and the government seem to be passing bucks and nobody is taking responsibility for these developments. Insecurity is at the heart of the unattractive and hostile investment environment in the country and Lagos ambition to change this situation is in direct contradiction to the rising trend in the state. Outside recurrent expenditure, Lagos has made the highest investment in security infrastructure in the country including the federal government and all this is in imperil without stemming this rising threat.

Although, this problem may appear to be localized in Lagos, its implications and ramifications go beyond the state and point to deeper national malaise and institutional atrophy. Every society confronts certain challenges but it is its capacity to devise ways and strategies to deal with such that makes it a functioning one. However, the confounding dilemma is that Nigeria faces problems that defy solutions not because we are incapable of finding realistic and practical options but simply due to our refusal to confront the brutal facts and deal with them.

Kidnapping, like the ones in Lagos state, are community crimes and demand community policing to tackle; general perception of the issue is that the federal police is incapable – ill equipped and outmanned – to address the challenge. The kidnappers even wrote to the school about their intending visit and the Police were invited. However, it was after the Police had left for the day that the kidnappers made good their threat.

Lagos Police boss, Owoseni, admitted this much when he said that they cannot afford to man every school in the state or station a detachment permanently in any school; thus buttressing the fact that the present Police is not adequate to curtail the crime. As such the massive investment being made by Lagos to tackle insecurity may be water poured on stone in finding effective and lasting solution to the problem, because if the police that has the statutory mandate to handle the problem is structurally incapacitated, then nothing else can suffice in the circumstance.

That we have an upsurge in this nefarious trade in spite of the recent passage of a law by the state House of Assembly making kidnapping a capital offence shows that the criminals also understand the dynamic of our dysfunctional security architecture. Since coming to power in 2015 Governor Ambode has made direct intervention of over N5 billion equipping the police, even providing two helicopters; beside the regular contributions of the Security Trust Fund.

The problem we face here is applying wrong strategy to a situation that requires system overhaul. The security situation in Lagos is symptomatic of the inadequacy and inappropriateness of the federal force. Lagos as the third largest economy in the sub region can comfortably and conveniently provide a functional and effective policing system suitable to its immediate need. Shackling a state and economy that is trying to breaking forth into the league of modern mega cities in the worlds with an anachronistic security apparatus is to put a new wine in an old wine skin or bottle; it will implode like what is happening. It is not only self defeating but a deliberate waste of scarce resources.

Lagos has the resources to deploy security personnel to every school under threat. Luckily, this incidents happen around definite and identifiable corridor along the coastal areas which makes it easier to police, because once a problem is known and defined, it is half solved. But this is not so in the present case due to the fundamental structural issues inhibiting the performance of the Police. It is impracticably unrealistic to post a policeman who hails from Sokoto and may not have seen a big river to the creeks of Lagos and Bayelsa to curb crimes being committed by natives who had lived all their lives in the area. It is both an environmental and psychological mismatch.

It is the candid opinion of this newspaper that the problem will not go away soon without resolving the issue of state police. Therefore, it will be in the overall interest of the state to push for constitutional amendments that would address this and other subsisting challenges confronting the federation. Lagos has the wherewithal to undertake a sustained campaign to push it through.

Fortunately, the same party, APC, controls both the state and the federal government, making it fairly easier implement if the party can put its house in order and there is the political will. We are also mindful of the fact that this is a volatile political matter but that a problem is difficult and a truth bitter is not a pretext or excuse to shy away from it, especially if it will provide the needed succour and amelioration to such debilitating conditions.