The ease with which hoodlums whether as terrorists, militants, assassins, kidnappers, armed robbers and common criminals in general, operate, outwit and out-strategise the nation’s security agencies (all of them), has made many wonder whether any such agency truly exists that is capable of offering deterrence to underworld operations in the country. At a time when suspected Boko Haram violent campaigners attacked a church inside the Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Jaji, Kaduna State, members of the House of Representatives, for instance, not only lamented the worsening insecurity in the country, but stated the obvious, which is the fact that nowhere is safe, security wise nationwide. Since the attack on Jaji, more embarrassing security breaches, like others before them, have been trailing the nation.

The latest was the killing, last Saturday night in Amorji Nike, Enugu State, of the Kwara State Commissioner of Police, Chinwike Asadu by unknown gunmen. Indeed reports, Tuesday, had it that barely 24 hours after the Enugu incident, faceless gunmen also killed one Umaru Ali Jenga, the Commandant of the Police Mobile Training Camp in Maiduguri, Borno State, alongside one traffic warden. The following day, it was reported that gunmen killed a Divisional Police Officer, Abubakar Digire Ahamdu, his deputy whose name was not given, and eight civilians caught in the cross fire in Gwoza, also in Borno State. It is obvious that the Presidency has, by now, become weary of extending condolences to families of victims of the festering insecurity situation; and making hollow promises that have hardly abated the reign of terror in the country.

Preventing the commission of crime seems absolutely impossible. Not even the rigorous experiment Sean Malinowski (PHD), a Captain from the Los Angeles Police Department, United States, is conducting with the University of California in the Foothills Division, California; which seeks to predict where offences will occur and deploy police before crime happens, has proven otherwise. In Los Angeles, according to reports, when police officers are not responding to calls for assistance from the public, they will traditionally have ‘downtime’ when they choose where to patrol and use their ‘gut instincts’ to decide where crime is most likely to take place, so they can disrupt and prevent it. So far, however, it appears widely agreed that ‘predictive policing’ is an inexact science. That is one of the reasons the slain Kwara Police Commissioner cannot be blamed for being so relaxed, despite the security network around him, to the point that he was caught like a fly by common criminals. So, until proven otherwise, the bankable options to crime prevention and control remain punishment for crime and taking remedial measures to stall the recruitment of additional and, perhaps, more vicious criminals into the crime industry.

Unfortunately, quite disappointing has been the roles of the Nigeria Police itself, in collusion with some lawyers, the judiciary and some criminally-minded Nigerians, particularly the privileged and politicians, in frustrating and making ineffective lawful processes meant to fish out criminals, diligently investigate their cases, prosecute and punish them so that others would be deterred. Instead of doing a thorough job of their primary duties, the routine refrain in police circles, especially when they want to massage their ego, is ‘a crack team of detectives’; without any major criminal investigation, including heinous assassination cases, being scratched with success, let alone being cracked. One of the most recent, handy instances is the investigation of the murder of Olaitan Oyerinde, the Principal Private Secretary to Governor Adams Oshiomohole of Edo State, who was shot dead in his residence in Benin towards the middle of last year. The Oyerinde murder investigation has been so horribly messed up between the police and the Directorate of State Security Service (DSSS), long after some suspects were arrested, that the governor publicly expressed his suspicion, recently, that security operatives were behind the killing.

Such unresolved assassination cases are as countless since the nation’s return to civil rule in 1999 as they have become boring to recount. But most striking to recall would include Chief Bola Ige, killed in Ibadan while serving as the nation’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice in December 2001; Dr. Marshall Harry of the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), murdered in Abuja in the first quarter of 2003; and Chief Aminosoari Dikibo, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) top shot, also killed in 2003, to name just a few. It will, therefore, be an intriguing achievement if the recent killing of their own, the Kwara CP, can transform the police to true crack detectives, by fishing out the CP’s killers, doing a thorough investigation and ensuring that those who felled him are prosecuted and brought to book. But if they (police) fail, then may it be clearer to all that a poisonous snake has bitten the nation; and has stricken to death all the doctors that would have saved the land from the dangerous snake attack. Indeed, nobody is safe.