The primary purpose of government all over the world is to secure lives and property and provide the conducive environment for citizens to pursue and acquire the good things of life. The Nigerian Constitution describes it as the provision of security and welfare of the people, the prerequisite to which all elected public office holders must swear an oath to before assuming office.

Right from the days of ancient philosophers like Aristotle, Plato to great modern thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke down to the more contemporary John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, Harold Laski, among others it has been a unanimous imperative that the protection of human lives and property remain the cardinal objectives of the purpose of the state.

This underscores the reason making security of lives and properties of the citizens the fundamental barometer for measuring the performance index of any government. It is in line with this spirit that serious-minded governments do not hesitate when it comes to investing huge resources in ensuring that citizens enjoy maximum peace and security with their two eyes closed without any nightmare by men of the underworld.

In recent times, Nigeria has been bedeviled by one security challenge or the other. From the orth to the South, Nigerians have been gripped with the fear of insecurity ranging from activities of Boko Haram insurgents to heinous armed robbery, kidnapping, fratricidal communal conflicts, mindless killings, and other acts of terrorism and disruptive tendencies in the polity. These activities have taken an unquantifiable toll on the nation’s economy with thousands of lives and properties wasted for no reason.

In Rivers State, South-South of Nigeria, the  killing of about 17 innocent men and women who were massacred in cold blood on the crossover night of 2018, while returning from their spiritual duty to God was a sad one and one death too many. The continuous and unabated killings, looting of properties, and kidnappings in the State have practically landed the State in the pariah state better referred to as a no-go-area for investors.

In his strive to combat insecurity across the State, Governor Nyesom Wike launched ‘Operation Sting’, a multi-agency response team comprising the military, police and paramilitary to forestall acts of criminality, banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery, and other disruptive tendencies undermining peace in the State. This has, however, not delivered on expectation as killings and kidnappings are still being recorded across the State.

This has continued to make Rivers State to lose so many investment opportunities owing to the general perception of insecurity in the State. Obviously, nobody wants to invest in a state where its security architecture is in a shabby state. Since the dismantling of the checkpoints and other security infrastructure set up by C4I, an Israeli company contracted by the immediate past administration, the security challenges in the State have continued to escalate.

Under that ambitious security structure by the previous administration, all entrances into the state capital, Port Harcourt (Rumuji, on the Western flank, and Akpajo, on the Eastern flank of the East-West Road, and Oyigbo, along the Port Harcourt-Aba Expressway, on the Northern flank) had security checkpoints manned by CCTV cameras, while CCTV cameras were mounted on the 17^th floor of the Point Block building inside the State Secretariat complex, from where all the waterways into the city were monitored.

Also, all the major intersections in Port Harcourt City were being watched by close circuit television (CCTV) cameras, while police patrol teams with modern communication gadgets and in touch with an Emergency Response Coordination Centre inside the C4I office on the 17^th floor of the Point Block building were stationed within 500 meter intervals across all major roads in the city. This drastically reduced response time to distress calls to barely 10 minutes. Added to this was the profiling of persons caught in any form of criminal acts in a database that was being developed for the state. But this was dismantled thus returning the state to that dark era of the reign of criminals. The resurgence of combating insecurity, which ‘Operation Sting’ represents, appears to be belated and challenged by the political upheavals in the state.

In previous months, some local government areas in Rivers State experienced unrest, cultism, serial killings and kidnappings. Recall that Governor Wike recently withdrew the Certificate of Recognition of the Gbenemene of Baabe Kingdom in Khana Local Government Area, His Royal Majesty, King Monday Frank Nonyaa, following his purported indictment on insecurity and cult-related issues by the Governor. Etche LGA was not be left out of the debacle of high level of insecurity in the state as indigenes and residents currently find it very difficult to embark on their normal daily activities due to cult clashes, stealing, and kidnapping in the area. Motorists plying the Etche-Imo State road are robbed daily while travelers are kidnapped.  

Governor Wike’s threats to dethrone any traditional ruler whose kingdom experiences cultism, kidnappings and other forms of insecurity have been viewed as an obvious attempt to shirk or outsource his responsibility as the chief security officer of the state. It is apparently unthinkable that traditional rulers, who have no control on any aspect of the nation’s security apparatus and never swore to an oath to defend the constitutional provision of security of lives and properties, would be charged with securing their communities.

These desperation to pass the buck and or demonstration of incapability to rein in the men of the underworld thus putting a wedge on the pervading narrative of always having ‘unknown gunmen’ perpetrating crimes all over the state has general reinforced the perception of insecurity that has succeeded in scaring away investors from the state. Security challenge is a global issue and though we all have to put our hands together to fight insecurity in our environments, government at all levels in country should take the lead.