Stakeholders Express Unease Over Latest Security Threats in North-East

Speakers at the opening of the 12th North-East Zonal Conference of State Directors of Security expressed extreme unease over latest security threats and crimes that have the potential to spark a Boko Haram-like crisis throughout the region.

Beginning on August 21 at the Department of State Services’ Borno State Command, the conference will last for three days.

Alhaji Abubakar Ibn Umar Garbai Al-Kanemi, the Shehu of Borno, who spoke first about the security and criminal threats that are now present in some communities in Borno State, recalled that these threats, which were ignored, eventually led to the Boko Haram crisis.

“Security chiefs should, therefore, identify and nip in the bud all such criminalities and security threats to avoid a recurrence of Boko Haram,” the monarch, represented by one of his title holders, Alhaji Hassan Boguma, the Zanna Boguma of Borno, charged.

According to Mohammed Lawal Yusuf, the Borno State Commissioner of Police, “crimes committed by the traumatized youth population are emerging from the rubble of the Boko Haram insurgency.”

 The CP called for improved synergy and cooperation among all security agencies throughout the region, using the example of a growing group of criminals known as Malians who were wreaking terror in the Maiduguri metropolis.

Brig. Gen. Timothy Opurum the 7 Division Garrison Commander expressed skepticism regarding the Boko Haram insurgents’ ongoing conversion and surrender.

He questioned, suggesting that “the post-insurgency period should even be more important to us the security agencies in terms of intelligence gathering and sharing to nip all threats in the bud.

They (repentant insurgents) surrender and lay down their arms, but who knows if they are up to some pranks.

Declaring open the conference, Governor Babagana Zulum, represented by the Borno State Commissioner of Information and Internal Security, Prof. Usman Tar, concurred with all earlier speakers, expressing grief that new crimes and criminalities are emerging from the rubbles of Boko Haram.

He emphasized that “there must be strengthened synergy and cooperation to deal with the adversaries (insurgents and other criminals),” adding that “inter-agency synergy and cooperation must be upheld because no individual agency can do it alone.”

The conference was “in furtherance of the sequence of such quarterly conferences introduced by the State Security Services to bring together directors within the zone to deliberate on general and specific security situation of respective states, share experience on identified fundamental and contemporary security threats affecting the sub-region, and adopt practical steps/measures in neutralizing,”  according to Hussaini Abdullahi, the chairman of the organizing committee.