On the School Protection Squad

Nigeria is like a giant sea beast. It has a tough shell on its back, hardened by years of experience, attitude and the peculiar Nigerian vibe that makes every Nigerian appear invincible to people all over the world. But as a whole, the country has a soft underbelly, and this underbelly is massive, and probably occupies three-quarters of the country.

Over the years, the enemies of the people of this country—the bandits and terrorists, the gunmen and criminal herdsmen—have mastered the art of targeting this tender underbelly, carving it up and feasting on it, leaving that tough exterior intact, looking all tough and intimidating. So, we find ourselves living in a reality where news of mass abductions is no longer shocking but is basically an everyday occurrence.

A week ago, 500 villagers in Zamfara were abducted in one fell swoop. That is not a small number of people to be abducted at once. It would have to take a massive failure of security for something like that to happen. It is an incomprehensible occurrence to a lot of people. A US-based Kenyan friend had, on reading the news, talked with another Nigerian to verify that something like that could even be possible. The Nigerian waved away this Kenyan’s astonishment and informed him that abductions in the thousands, not hundreds, are regular occurrences. My friend still could not comprehend it and had to call me to verify.

We have found ourselves in a situation where we have no choice but to be numbed to these developments that would have caused a tsunami of outrage in other countries. This soft underbelly of ours will be the death of us.

So, it is encouraging when news emerges of efforts being made to protect the vulnerable parts of our societies, like villages and schools, from where thousands of villagers and students have been abducted at great cost and shame to the country. One of those efforts is the recently announced School Protection Squad initiated by the Inspector General of Police. This, apparently, is a special unit of the police that will be trained and equipped to protect schools across the country from the menace of kidnappers.

The good news is that someone is thinking of a solution to the problems we are having as a country. The bad news is that this “solution” is not likely to solve the problem. I am not being a pessimist, just being practical.

With a massive, vulnerable underbelly, call it ungoverned spaces, in this country that we have, how does a police force that has lacked the capacity to serve and protect, as it was meant to, get to hand pick specific locations to protect?

According to Statista, as of 2019, we have 116,925 primary schools in Nigeria. That is discounting the number of secondary and tertiary institutions that we have. How does a police force of about 400,000, with half of them already engaged in VIP protection, provide units to protect these thousands of schools?

As a whole, the thinking is flawed. Anyone who has half a decent sense of football will proclaim the popular football maxim that says the best form of defence is to attack. Putting schools behind units of police officers is not a proactive attitude to security, it is a passive one and it is going to cost us. The entirety of the security structure is stretched across this vulnerable underbelly to sit behind barriers and barricades and await the storm of bandits and terrorists.

It is a perpetuation of the attitude of mounting checkpoints in response to terrorists’ attacks or threats of them. It is constantly ceding territories and rights, including our rights to free movement and our rights to life, to the criminals. We create what we consider safe bubbles and ask people to exist behind these checkpoints and sandbags, behind the scowling officers and their guns. Everything beyond that has therefore been ceded to the criminals and anyone who ventures into these spaces for business or to pursue their daily bread is blamed for whatever happens to them.

How long does the police imagine that it is going to put schools behind this School Protection Squad? How long will children learn behind APCs and sandbags as if they live in a war zone?

If Nigeria is serious about this issue, it would look for active means to eliminate the threats being posed to the country and its vulnerable populace by going after the bandits and terrorists. Instead of taking defensive postures, the security architecture should be primed for the offensive. Without the threats of bandits and terrorists, there would be no need for a school protection squad that, going by the antecedents of other police units, will bring about other problems and does not guarantee any significant improvement in security.

While I commend the IG for thinking of strategies to protect schools, I think for those strategies to be meaningful and result-oriented, they must be progressive. The SPS is anything but progressive and Nigeria simply cannot afford to be cutting corners in tackling this problem that has witnessed exponential growth in the last few years and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians.

The police force cannot cope with these challenges without the equipment, manpower and necessary training it requires. It is surprising that in view of the challenges that this country has been facing on the security front, that the state has not gone on a proactive drive to expand the police force, boost its numbers and improve its facilities and training.

Far too often, the solution has been to drag in the military to do the task they are not suited to, further weakening both the police and the military as well. So, both the military and police are stretched too thin to make any meaningful impact on any front. Who is paying for this? The average Nigerian who cannot send their children to school in peace, who can’t go to their farms and can’t sleep in their beds without fear. And as long as we continue cutting corners instead of addressing the problem frontally, we are only going to be nursing this ulcer that will eat more of the tender underbelly of this country.