A CURIOUS ACCOUNT
BY OBED AWOWEDE
The report that a suicide bomber of the Boko Haram extremist sect was responsible for the June 16 bomb blast that rocked the parking lot of the Police Force headquarters in Abuja must surely rattle Nigerians. As expected, the imagery of the suicide terrorist sneaking up just about anywhere in the country – a man unafraid to die for his cause, a mobile bomb – is frightening and may well be the undoing of even the most elaborate security plan. That was the point President Goodluck Jonathan sought to convey when he visited the Police Headquarters; everyone is vulnerable. So, in a way, like the suicide bombers of the US’ 9-11 attacks and the UK’s 7-7, the Nigerian Police Force has found in the Louis Edet House bomb its own 9-11, where the argument as it has been insinuated, is that a well-fortified, security - conscious and competent establishment was only penetrated by the doomed machinations of a suicide bomber. In the September 2001 (9-11) attack by the militant group al-Qaeda, the United States’ Defence headquarters, Pentagon, famed as an impenetrable fortress was also a target in the suicide air strikes but it was saved by the heroic acts of the passengers in the doomed flight who chose to perish elsewhere than give the suicide bombers the satisfaction of striking at the heart of the US military establishment. That may well be the fate of the lone policeman who chose to check out the suspicious car that bore the suicide bomber at the Nigerian police headquarters.
It is the story told by the police about the June 16 bombing of a section of the police headquarters. What this would suggest is that the ‘pentagon’ of the Nigerian police was so impenetrable that it took a suicide bomber to cause havoc. Perhaps. But if you visit such militarized establishments in Nigeria or anywhere you know that access is not as easy as the police made it look, neither is the checkpoint moved from the gates to the car park as they explained. Curiously too, the man who manned the gate and possibly one of the dead people was a traffic policeman, who also went to inspect the car housing the suicide bomber. That is odd.
It is possible that the account given by the force spokesman Sola Amore is indeed the way things went but his statements and the photos of the damage do not bear him out, they raise more questions than answers, they tell us plainly that we have more reasons to be more circumspect about the Nigerian Police Force.
There are three reasons to query the account:
One is based on the psychological profile of the average Nigerian establishment and their leaders. It is un-Nigerian, very unlikely, for anyone that lives in Nigeria knows, that a convoy of the IGP or any other egocentric public office holder (and they are many) would be tailed and his armada of police escort do not move to stop the car. In this case, the bomber not only tailed the convoy to the police headquarters, the gates, which are usually shut, were left open for this same car to go right in after the IGP had been flagged in. Again, the car was not stopped for check at the gates but was allowed to move to the parking lot where the said unfortunate police officer made to screen the occupant and was killed.
I am also bothered at the haste with which the police brass gave out a casualty figure of two, only to turn around to tell us two days later that eight persons died, and we may yet be told more. What this tells me unfortunately, is that there was, as any perceptive Nigerian has come to expect, no serious work done to examine the crime scene and get to determine the cause and harm done by the blast. It is the basics of crime management and should tell us the impact.
Thirdly, I am suspicious of the account that there was a suicide bomber, who having successfully gained entrance to the police headquarters is satisfied to detonate his explosive in the parking lot, taking with him only a few lives. I would have thought that given the profile of the typical suicide bomber, he would have been determined to make a dash for the IGP or the main building and caused maximum damage. He may well have executed his task on the way to the police headquarters by perhaps ramming into the IGP’s car right in traffic, if indeed Hafiz Ringim was his target, which I am in no position to counter. I think the police should come clean on the real nature of that attack or be more specific with the details, else critical assessors of their statements thus far may well believe that the police top brass is unable to come to terms with the possibility that bomb was planted in a vehicle right in the parking lot and remotely detonated.
Doubts aside, our fears must move us as a people to address the issues that make security such an unsure enterprise. There is little doubt that Intelligence has failed throughout the country, yet if you experience the informal nature of relationships in our communities you must wonder why Intelligence fails. As a journalist, you wonder why it is so easy to fish out criminal tendencies in our institutions and that commonplace capacity cannot translate into the security forces. Nigeria is porous both for and against the potential terrorist or robber! So you get this impression that any security force that applies itself diligently will deliver results. Beyond the platitude that ‘the killers will be fished out’ and ‘Nigeria is still safe’ dished out by our leaders (remember IGP Ringim had said the same thing in Borno only two days before the Boko Haram took the war to his doorsteps), we need to address the issues of security and safety more fundamentally. The starting point I think is for the police to admit that it is incapable of policing the country as it is structured. Then, we must now look to devolve security by allowing for police forces run by states. This will take a bold move on the part of the Jonathan administration working with the legislature and the various state governments. Having had a good run in the north and Abuja lately, the Boko Haram may well fancy making a statement in the commercial capital Lagos. The impact for a country looking to get out of the woods will be too much, even now. The platitude of Ringim does not give me hope.
