Minister Nyesom Wike of Nigeria has said Nigerian authorities should invest heavily in digital tracking devices and high-level military vehicles for security agencies to contain the festering security threats all around the country.
“You cannot believe that equipment to track criminals is not there and when anything happens, security agencies go back to the Office of the National Adviser or the Force Headquarters,” Wike lamented on Monday, “This is not the way it is supposed to be.”
Nigeria’s military has been fighting an insurgency since 2009 against Islamic State-allied terrorists who call themselves Boko Haram (western learning forbidden) or Islamic State of West Africa (ISWAP) in the Northeast.
The fight has left it thinly stretched to tackle the motorbike-riding kidnapping gangs, known locally as bandits believed to be mostly from the Fulani-speaking ethnic group, in the Northwest and central regions.
Wike, who is the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), believes the Nigerian military would stamp out the terrorists and bandits if they had the necessary logistics.
He also said he would work with the governors of Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger and Kaduna, the four states bordering Nigeria’s capital Abuja, to curb the tide of mounting insecurity in the FCT.
—Ezinwanne Onwuka reports for TruthNigeria from Abuja.
