The tensed and chaotic political atmosphere in the country may have inexorably transmutted into subversion, almost bordering on sedition against the nation’s constituted authority.Chief Albert Korubo Horsfall, Ex-Director General of the State Security Service, SSS, raised the alarm in an interview with Sunday Sun in Abuja, recently.He says that
the plot which began at the inception of the present administration three years ago, has gone on unchecked and has peaked at a dangerous level that could lead to the government being overthrown, “Not by force, but by politically running down its image.”
Horsfall who is a delegate at the on-going National Conference takes a deep look at the Boko Haram insurgency in the North and concludes that the application of 8 factors by the government and secret security agencies will rein in the murderers and bring the cauldron to an end.
The former chairman of the Oil Mineral Producing and Development Commission (OMPADEC) the precursor of the NDDC (Niger Delta Development Commission) throws more light on the activities of the National Conference vis-a-vis the expectations of Nigerians. It is an engagee.
Excerpts
I want to start with the National Conference that is ongoing. Nigeria is passing through a turbulent period now. Please situate the conference against the myriads of problems and security challenges confronting the nation?
The conference is going on pretty well. It can be better. We have had a few bumps here and there; but generally the important thing is that most participants at the conference, wish Nigeria to go on, stay together, and make progress as a nation-state; in the present millennium, and live up to our potentials as the leading African country, and also the leading black nation, whose population is one quarter of all blacks all over the world. That is a very important and positive position. So I can say that for certain, most delegates want Nigeria to progress, to improve, and to remain together, meaning that our advocacy of indivisibility, and unity is appreciated and accepted by the bulk of us.
The other question that you raised that is connected to this is how far have we gone as committees? I can only speak about my own position, because the committees’ reports are not one’s privilege to reveal or expose. It is a joint project, which I have subscribed to myself. And from my background, we don’t reveal what is considered confidential issues until the parties concerned decide to make it public. I can only say aspects of my own positions, especially those aspects I still feel pretty strong about .Some of which where acceptable to my colleagues; some of which were not in the report of the committee which I had the privilege to present last Monday, being the Deputy chairman of the Security Committee.
The highlights of my contribution are as follows. And I am afraid, a lot of Nigerians including my own committee would rather have things remain, more or less as they are. Inspite of the series of complaints that everybody seems to be making, (criticisms and complaints) when it comes to making changes to improve the situation, you will find out that most people will run around, rigmarole, but they want the situation to remain more or less as it is, not bearing the fact that unless you make changes that are in consonance with current developments in our country and the world over, we will never be able to make the progress that we aspire to as a country. Highlights of what I had felt should be changed include the need for a National Guard as an additional protection force for this country.
I think that a National Guard should be created to deal with the so called porous borders that we have throughout this country. And we counted about 1,400 of them. The Immigration service that we have today, inspite of the fact that some of them are being armed, are never going to be able to cope with these borders especially in the light of the current threats, where we have insurgents, infiltrators, and all manners of people, walking through our borders and coming to our territory to threaten our national integrity and sovereignty. Therefore, we need a border force, and I will like to call it National Guard Force.(NGF) And that National Guard Force should be trained to deal with border patrols and be able to fend off any threats from these porous borders into our own territory.
I would also expect that National Guard to be able to deal with situations of emergencies, local skirmishes here and there, and they are everywhere now, they are increasing all over; for the first time we are having a restive situation all over the country. Today, you find that there is violence, killings somewhere, tomorrow it happens in another place. Last night you heard about the bombings in Jos, where over a 100 Nigerians were killed. Now, I think that such situations that constitute violence, whether by members of the Boko Haram sect, or communities, or whether by the cattle rustlers as we call them, or whether by any serious community violence that threatens lives and property in huge numbers, the National Guard should be drafted to go and deal with such issues.
Why do I think of this? It is because the Army is a defence force. The Navy, the Airforce, they are a standard defence force, and their primary duty is to deal with a warfare situation. If we are to go to war with another country,for instance, our Armed forces should be well trained and equipped to be able to defend our national sovereignty and integrity. That is what they are trained to do. Today, you see them engage in duties all over the place that is not part of their calling. As you drove into this hotel, I am sure you saw soldiers on guard duties. That is not the work of a professional soldier.
That should be left to another force. In our country, it is the mobile police, surprisingly, that is saddled with that responsibility. I don’t see the mobile police in many of these places anymore. So, the soldiers should be withdrawn and re-trained for the purpose they are used to – warfare, combat. So if you create this National Guard Force, it will take up that responsibility. Some of the arguments against creating a National Guard is that every time you create a new service, they are ill-equipped and poorly funded, and at the end of the day, they are ineffective, and a lot of money spent without proper co-ordination. I don’t agree with that. For instance, I think that we should create a National Guard from a revamped mobile police force. The mobile police force, unfortunately earned some very poor reputation within the society. So you turn them around by re-equipping and retraining them to be the National Guard. People will loathe them as mobile police, as they have always done if you keep them that way.
My calculation is that you re-brand the mobile police and turn it by law to the National Guard and give options to those who are serving there now. Ask them, ‘do you want to continue in the mobile police which is now being turned to the National Guard or you want to return to the police?’ We did this, with the creation of the National Security Organization in 1976. I was a police officer in the then special branch. What happened was that following the death of the then Head of State, Gen Murtala Mohammed, the Nigeria Security Organisation was created. We were given options, because we were all policemen. Those who wished to go back to the police went back to the police.
Those who wanted the security services opted out to the security services. That’ show we got the NSO which translated to the SSS, and so on, and so on. I think the same thing should be done this time to transform the mobile police by law, to a National Guard Force and re-train, re-equip, recruit more people to make it a formidable force to look into our borders and internal violent situation. Finally, I will say, in this respect, we will then withdrawn soldiers who are all over the place, because once you post them to this routine civil duties, you compromise their quality as effective fighting force. You withdraw them and train them effectively for what they are supposed, to be – a defence force. So that is why I think we should get a National Guard Force.
Arguments against this National Guard range from the ridiculous to the sublime. It is said that in Nigeria, when a new service is created, it is turned into a honey pot by the personnel and the objective will not be met. Secondly, there are already several parallel security services doing the same thing like the Civil Defence, road safety commission etc.
I think what you have said is what a lot of people are saying. They don’t quite understand the need for this specific outfits. I am not suggesting that the National Guard should be a completely new outfit. No. it should be taken from the mobile police as I said earlier and made more focused. The issue of too many parallel security organizations people are saying, I will come back to address the issue of the civil defence corps. I am just saying, reform what is existing now and make it more efficient in the light of the threats that are confronting the nation today.
Three things that have been deferred for a long time which also fanned the embers of the convening of the National Conference are, regionalism, true federalism and resource control. They did not pass the committee stage. What went wrong?.
Thank you. That is a good question. I partly raised the point and I will answer it fully now. I have said that whereas everybody is full of criticism for what is going on in the country, nobody seems to be willing to make the necessary changes that will reposition the country to effectively deal with these issues. For instance, one of the things that I recommended that did not pass the committee level was the creation of the homeland security ministry which will co-ordinate all the areas of internal security; co-ordinate not deal with it, so that there will be a focal point that all the services, whether it is the police, or SSS will look up to for co-ordination. It will only be a co-ordinating point, so that at the various levels of threats, whether it is Local Government or Community levels, State or National level, homeland ministry will be the body to co-ordinate everything and send to the various arms for implementation. Now, one of the problems which we have is that co-ordination is lacking. The intelligence, information, activities, whether by the police, SSS, military, immigration or internal affairs ministry or by the civil defence, the information, generally is there but they are not co-ordinated.
Every leader in any of this department is doing his own thing, and the next thing you see is that he wants to shine. “I did this. I got this one. I did the other one” it is there in this country, as it is in other countries. But others have managed in some cases to bring themselves together and get a co-ordinating body. Again, in this area, I am not recommending a new ministry as such. No. I am saying that our ministry of Police Affairs from the day I was born in this Nigeria, and I grew up in the police force in the 1960’s, we have had the ministry of Police Affairs.
And everybody agrees that the ministry of Police Affairs, really does not do much of anything except preparing budgets and making contracts, and the police itself is not even being controlled by them. I see that ministry as largely redundant. Convert it to the ministry of Homeland Security which will now co-ordinate everything about internal security for the various departments to implement when decisions are made. And the level of co-ordination will be at various levels – community level, local government level, state levels etc. This ministry will co-ordinate and their posture or focus is purely for security. The National Guard should operate under this ministry so that it is well focused. That is my own personal recommendation. It is one of the things that I think will ease the present complicated, difficult to work security composition.
I recommended also that there should be a V.I.P protection department and this should be housed either in the Presidency, or under the National Homeland Security, or even the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But I think the best of all is that it should be a department within the presidency. What would that do? Why do I think it should be there? The reason is simple. If you go through the streets now, every so called ‘big man’ in this country is having a mobile police team. Maybe that is why we don’t see them in public places anymore. The rich man is having a mobile police team guarding him. Sometimes, they have SSS people also guarding them. But then, take the official guards in this area.
The governor of a state is entitled to so many mobile police guards, ordinary police guards, security personnel guard. When you calculate all the numbers attached to his official residence, private residence, country home, for 36 governors; when you talk about the other layers of so called ‘big men’ that are also being given this police protection as individual entitlements, you find that this will go into almost a 100,000 policemen. They should be on the beat doing their jobs, but they are not. They are deployed to special protection units. What does that mean? It means that these people are taken off their regular duties.
They soon lose their professional expertise because they are compromised, given duties that are not in consonance with their regular training. They have schemed out the number of police men that you can apply to regular police duties. At the end of the day, these people will be part of the sources where corruption come into the police, because those to whom they are attached, the so called ‘big men,’ deploy them to do things they are not supposed to do. The police is losing their services, and the other services that deploy them are also losing their services.
What I am advocating is that you create this unit – V.I.P protection services – and once you create it, you recruit the number of people required and those who are entitled to public protection, the President, the Governors, get the desired allocation. The so called ‘big men’ who want this protection should pay for it and get them. The system will be earning some money. Now there is no provision that they should earn money, even though there is irregular payments going out to them. But if you make it formal and give the guidelines, the system will be better for it. It may surprise you to know that some of these people posted to these people as protection guards have no experience or training. Because the demands for these people have become so much, they just send anyone out, irrespective of his background in professionalism. Maybe that person does not even know how to control firearms. Maybe he has not been trained in the martial arts,- karate, kung fu, etc. So people who are not trained and are attached to V.I.Ps are liabilities to those they are attached, and they get compromised, and have lost their professional touch and it is not in the National interest.
Why didn’t the National Conference look into the populist demands of the people like state police, true federation etc, with rigour?
I think all of them were examined. I won’t say they were thrown away. There were compromises. Like I said, I am not going to talk on these issues which have not been raised on the floor of the conference. There were compromises, but it still did not dilute the objective which the public is expecting. For instance, people talk of state police. When you talk of state police, it is a sharp decision. You create state police, rather than being controlled at the national level. You want to control them by the state governors. And the fear for and against is that the governors might use them to witchhunt their political enemies.
I mean, you have just seen the local government election in Kano. Kano has the largest number of local governments in the country. Would you say rightly that a state like Kano where there are 44 local governments, a local government election will be held, and there are other parties, but none of these parties can win any local government? All the local governments were won by the ruling party. That is the fear that those people who do not wish to have a state police are nursing. And this fear is all over. The compromises that have been made. For instance we had generally recommended that the Nigeria police should remain, but it should be decentralised and reformed.
And if you do so, the local element of policing, that we talked of, you will have it. I will come into my own personal side on that matter. I thought the civil defence has the duty to defend national infrastructure and so on – very broad responsibility. Wherever you go, you see them. They are protecting some people. We are having a conference now, they are there. I think they should form the core of local policing. They are everywhere, fully localised. So, they should be integrated with the Nigeria police. Effectively train them, make them function at that level and they are local people in most cases. So the fear that those who are against state police are having will be eradicated; because now you have your own people from the local communities, from the Local Government Areas, at the State level manning these places. They are the Police at that level.
The Nigeria police as it is now, will perform at a higher level. But it has to be decentralised, because as it is now, we all know it is not achieving maximum results. So you decentralise and reform it and it will serve the purpose.
There were rumours of a plot to extend the life span of the present administration by the National Conference. Were there such moves?
(laughs) That’s laughable as far as I am concerned. No such proposal or questions were ever raised or asked by anybody. I read the piece in the papers. I think, and I am sure you cannot think that this President, or his supporters or Advisers will contemplate such a move in the light of what happened with the Obasanjo proposal to extend his tenure in 2005 at the conference of that tine, where I was also a member. I do not think that this is true.
There is tension in the country now because of preparations for next year’s election. The opposition is mounting a spirited campaign to outwit the ruling party, making pronouncements that amounts to subversion. Is it healthy?
I have made a statement on that. The electronic media interviewed me last week and I mentioned it, to the effect that I, as an authority in security in this country, internal and external, see a lot of subversion going on. There is a broad line between politics and subversion. As a lawyer, I will say that if you narrow it down, subversion you can bring down to the legal point of sedition. But as a security authority, subversion goes well beyond that. You can see what is happening in that land. It is the result of deep rooted subversion, which had not been properly treated. Subversion in itself is a process, mostly tied to false propaganda based on half -truth meant to create disaffection in the minds of the general public, and thereby instigates rebellion. And it starts from a low to medium to high level subversion. At the stage we are, you will agree with me that subversion started a long time ago. For about three years now, perhaps, when people started to say that this administration will be made ungovernable, unless they achieve certain this or certain that. Then, on top of that was propaganda, part of it was well meant, some of it was ill-meant. On top of that propaganda came series of propagandas; publicities, what the Russians will call disinformatia, half truths; using information to pollute the minds of the people. It got to that stage, nothing was done effectively to diminish it.
Now, it got to a stage which is very dangerous now, where even the elected officials are daily involved. In governance,they are digging the foundation of the collapse of government which is a sad thing, because the Federal government gets so unpopular and then is overthrown, not by force, but by politically running down its image. It is a different thing campaigning to win elections, from running down the image of the government to the extent that the estimation of the public on that government has run down flat. And that is what the latest level of propaganda is doing. The Russians call it disinformatia. And it can go on and on until people lose confidence in the government and the government has no value anymore. People don’t have faith in it anymore. When it gets to that stage, what do you have? Rebellion. Open rebellion could start and it could spread. God forbid.
This is not a military regime. If it is a military regime, the military will intervene and say this military regime must go. That is what is happening now. It has gotten to that very serious level, where even elected officials are digging the ground under the feet of the present administration which was properly elected. People do things without thinking. We had military regime for 38 years or so. And we all said, no more. Now you are trying to dig the ground for the collapse of an elected government. If you bring it down, it is going to affect everybody, and they will regret what they are doing. People are not sure that what they are doing and its consequences will amount to serious destabilisation of the present administration.
And if it affects the administration at the national level, it is bound to affect all administrations at the lower levels. And it will bring total demoralisation of the country at all levels. It is against every Nigerian. Those who are involved in this calumny and subversion should tone it down. It was different in a military regime. You go in and clamp down on somebody, whether he is a ‘big man’ or ‘small man,’ who is causing subversion.
And it is ok. But in a democracy, people say they have freedom to speak. So the security services are being hampered. You cannot go and call a senator, or governor or a legislator and say why did you do this.? You know this is the consequence of that.
Because of our security issues, Government has opened the way for foreign intervention. What do you think?
I do not think it is a healthy issue ab -initio, to allow foreign interests to come and tamper with our National Security. However, the present situation that we find ourselves is such that, it is clear to all of us that if we allow the trend to continue, it becomes inevitable that we need help. Now we need help. There is no question about that. And these helps are never given free. Nobody will bring his country man to come and die for your problems so that you can enjoy yourselves. You can see what the American General said at the congress hearing, that they are not coming with any boots on the ground. That Nigerians have to fight for their cause, to liberate their country. What they are coming to do is to give technical support, intelligence support, meaning that we need to still do the fight to liberate our country from insurgency.
That is the point. However, Nigerians with all these vile, subversive propaganda that is going on are undermining the fighting forces. I have given this example before. If you raise a football team, for instance the Nigerian National team goes to play a match, we all wish it to win. Isn’t it? So when they got to play Togo or Benin or any country and our supporters go there and start booing them, they will not win. That is what the political public is doing. They are condemning the Nigerian soldiers, the defence and security forces.
You heard the American General at the congress saying the Nigerian soldiers are not willing to fight, which is an indictment of our forces which has been acclaimed to be one of the best in the world, at least in the third world. Suddenly, you find that Nigerian soldiers are afraid to die for their country. And that is because of the vile propaganda that is going on; because of the mannerisms of our public officials who should be encouraging them rather than condemning them. So it was inevitable that in the circumstances we had to ask for help and the help must come with some costs. We must have to admit that.
The President has come under heavy fire for failing to visit the Chibok Community where over 200 girls were snatched by the Boko Haram insurgents. Who is right? The president or his critics?
I don’t know whether he planned to go there. What we saw was two sets of statements. One was very wide publicity that the president was going to Chibok, and it went on for two or three days. That is part of the subversion we are talking about. When president Obama of the US gets to Afghanistan or Iraq, to visit his troops, no one gets to know until he gets there and the visit is only reported with photographs when he is leaving or has left. In this case, for two to three days, they were announcing it that president Jonathan was to visit Chibok. President Jonathan was not going to fight a war in Chibok. He is not a soldier. The chibok girls had already been taken out of Chibok.
They are in some hideout somewhere. It was designed as a courtesy or sympathy visit, but was marred by massive publicity. The publicity that trailed the proposed visit clearly demonstrated the underlining subversive motive behind it. You are a journalist. You will recall what happened in Rwanda. Was it what they wanted to achieve? You remember the Rwanda debacle when the president’s plane was shot down. If the president was going to Chibok on a sympathy visit, he will get there with the commanders, meet them on the ground and say sorry to the people. But you don’t make a blaze of propaganda as if he was going there to campaign. So, it is part of the subversion I am talking about.
I would not have encouraged him to go there if I was in service, especially with the attendant publicity. Before the publicity, if the president was going to go there, assuming I was still in service, two days after it happened he should be there. I don’t know what they intended to achieve with a visit after a month, with massive publicity. You want to kill the president?
With all these subversive activities going on now, do you think the president will survive it?
Why not? He has the mandate. He will survive. The implication of his not surviving it is too serious, too grave for anybody to contemplate. He will survive.
I ask this because of the unrelenting spate of subversions. Someone remarked the other day, that no president in Nigeria’s history has taken as much pummelling as Jonathan. Do you sense any presentiments?
No. I don’t think anything will happen. Remember when you asked me what the solution is and I said the politicians have to come together because they must know that what happens to one of them, i.e. the president, must affect the rest of them. And they have their interests to protect. Therefore they have to come together and stop this nonsense subversive propaganda, so that he will survive and they too will survive. That is the answer as I see it.
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