Nigeria’s internal security threats top agenda as police hold two-day retreat

The Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Usman Alkali Baba, and some senior officers are currently on a two-day retreat in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, to assess Nigeria’s international security threats and devise means of tackling them.

Nigeria, for years now, has been plagued by several security challenges, ranging from Boko Haram insurgency, banditry to abduction-for-ransom.

Police officers have also been target of deadly attacks, especially in the country’s South-east where the agitation for an independent state of Biafra had given rise to armed group, IPOB.

“We hope to undertake a holistic assessment of the current internal security threats and crime dynamics in the country, identify factors engendering crimes, re-evaluate our strategies, identify operational gaps and evolve new pathways or strengthen existing strategies towards meeting our sacred obligations to the citizens of this country,” the IGP, Mr Baba, said on Tuesday at the opening ceremony of the retreat.

The retreat is the “largest gathering and broadest representation of senior police officers” across Nigeria, according to Mr Baba.

The officers, he said, are drawn from the force headquarters, formations, zonal headquarters and state commands across the 36 states and the FCT.

The retreat is to come up with a roadmap for stabilising Nigeria’s internal security.

“This Retreat and Conference will avail participating Police Officers of the opportunity to draw on the expertise of seasoned facilitators and the rich professional knowledge of the array of police officers here gathered to broaden and strengthen their critical thinking and strategic leadership ability.

“It is also our expectation that we shall leverage on the network to be established at the event to enhance professional peer-review towards engendering a broader understanding of our mandate and strengthen our administrative and operational capacity,” Mr Baba said.

The Akwa Ibom State Governor, Udom Emmanuel, who is hosting the retreat, said the meeting was timely because of the current security threats all over the country.

“We are living in an age where known approaches to fighting crimes have been tested, thus necessitating the evolution of new strategies. We are living in an age and time, where criminals have reinvented their wheels of criminal enterprise; where non-state actors with no known addresses have infiltrated our space, where a neighbour may be kidnapers, or runs a terrorist cell.

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“This reality calls for new strategies to take the fight to these enemies of peace and defeat them. The first step to achieving this usually starts from retreats such as the one you are having here,” Mr Emmanuel said in his opening remarks.

The governor said security is everybody’s business and therefore Nigerians should support the police and other security agencies to fight crime.

The retreat which is supposed to be annual gathering since it was first hosted in Lagos in 2019 could not hold in 2020 and 2021 because of COVID-19.

The IGP assured Nigerians that the police would continue to work for the safety and security.

He also spoke on the 2023 general elections in the country.

“The countdown to the general elections will present new sets of security challenges which will undoubtedly further task our professionalism. We must, as strategic police managers on whose shoulders the task of ensuring a peaceful electoral process rest, be adequately prepared.

“It is my additional expectation that this Conference and Retreat will serve as a forum to also engage issues relating to our roles in the electioneering process,” Mr Baba said.