‘FG treating US warning on ISIS, Al-Qaida, B’Haram infiltration to South with levity’

By Ihesiulo Grace

19 August 2020

News

By Amaka Agbu

Executive Director of a nongovernmental organisation, We The People (WTP), Mr. Ken Henshaw, has accused the Federal government of treating the warning to the Nigerian government by the United States of the infiltration of ISIS, Al- Qaeda and Boko Haram into the Southern part of the country with ignominy.

He spoke with the Daily Times Monday on the sideline of a press conference organised by theNiger Delta Dialogue (NDD) for the presentation of a report on
insecurity in the Niger Delta region in Port Harcourt.

The executive director said that the Federal Government had not shown any serious commitment to ending the hydra-headed security challenges plaguing the nation, whether it was the threat from ISIS, Al-Qaeda, a resort to militancy,
communal clashes and other criminal activities.

He, therefore, concluded that the federal government, over the years, had consistently failed the country by treating all the threats to security with levity.

He said: “I do not think that the Federal government is taking this threat or any threat along the line of security seriously. I think that this government has consistently failed in terms of providing security for the lives and properties of
Nigerians.

This government has proved itself totally incapable of responding in any meaningful, sustainable and prudent manner to security challenges.’

He also said that the warning by the United States of America of the presence of the terrorist groups did not come to him as a surprise. “For me the report that ISIS is now part of Nigeria is not a strange one at all.

What is ISIS? It is an ideology. That ideology has always been here. It is the Al Qaeda ideology. It is the Taliban ideology. It is the Boko Haram ideology. That ideology is everywhere. “They are ideologies carried out by people and we know that there are Nigerians who, apart from Boko Haram, support the ideology.

So when the US warned Nigeria against the infiltration of ISIS in the
South, it was not strange to me,” he said. “I think that this government has consistently failed in terms of providing security for the lives and properties of Nigerians.

What we have seen in the last decade or so is that the drivers of insecurity seem
to be increasing on a monthly basis.

New dimensions of security are emerging. “In the last decade or so, the
Niger Delta has seen the rise of cultism and gangsterism. We have seen kidnap, armed robbery, cultism, terrorism, human trafficking cutting across every
part of Nigeria. In the Niger Delta region. It simply shows that the problems do not seem to be going away. They are actually increasing.

At least in the last decade, the Federal Government has not solved one insecurity driver, instead more have added and compounded,” he stated.

On the way forward, Mr. Ken Henshaw said that the solution
to the unabated security issues in the country would be solved if the Federal Government and the security class would take seriously the recommendations provided by the Niger Delta Dialogue.

“The way forward is what we are doing here. We have documented very far reaching recommendations across the region and they are contained in our policy briefs.

“This event is just the first step in pushing the recommendations we have made for going forward. Moving from here, we hope to carry out robust engagement with
stakeholders and policy makers.

We hope to push for the acceptance and the implementations of those recommendations by the political class,” he said.

Also speaking with the Daily Times at the end of the conference
was Mr. Igho Akeregha, the Abuja

Bureau Chief of The Guardian newspapers and the Team Lead, Media Advocacy who expressed fear over what he described as the incursion of Northern youths in
the Niger Delta region, settling in bushes and hiding under the provision of the constitution that every Nigerian has a right to live anywhere in the country.

“The infiltration of the region by Northern youths into the Niger Delta region is a very serious issue.

Across the six Niger Delta states we have seen a growing incursion into the region by a certain group of persons. They invade the bushes, the farmlands. They grab the land.

You just wake up and see them assembled in a place. My fear is what may come up as indigenous resistance which may result in an uncontrollable situation,” he
warned.

The Niger Delta Dialogue presented its 20-point research outcome on the solution to the insecurity in the six states of the region, one of which stated that the Federal Government should enforce the existing laws against criminality and illicit circulation of firearms.