Two days ago, on Tuesday 2nd of August 2011, armed robbers reportedly stopped a half-full luxury bus on the Okene-Lokoja-Abuja road in the middle of the night. They forced all the passengers and the driver to alight and lie face down on the road, and then commenced robbing them. Midway through the operation, a bus, similar to the one being robbed, came upon the scene, and in an effort to avoid the robbers, ran right over the robbery victims. Another large truck following the bus also run over them. The robbers fled, leaving behind many dead bodies, some badly mangled, and many injured. The Police arrived later to move the dead and injured away from the scene. There are unconfirmed figures of the dead put anywhere between 16 and 40. One of the dead was a small child.
The misfortune of the victims of the armed robbery who were killed by another vehicle while being robbed will touch even the hardest hearts in a nation almost desensitized by the daily occurrence of the most horrific crimes on our highways and in our homes. The incidents of robbery on Okene-Lokoja-Abuja road in particular have become almost routine, yet this road represents one of the major north-south arteries of the nation. If people are not being mangled in accidents, they are robbed almost at will by heavily-armed highway robbers. Elsewhere, travelling by night has become a very hazardous venture, with the probability being very high that you will either be involved in a serious fatal accident, or fall victim of robbers.
Obviously, the police cannot cover every inch of our highways, and it will be wrong to stop commercial vehicles from travelling by night. But these are not reasons why the nation should resign itself to living with mass slaughter called road accidents, or rampant criminal activities on our highways. The challenge before the government, the police and security agencies is to raise their levels of performance and restore some confidence of the public that we still live in a civilized country where citizens can expect protection as a matter of right.
The practice of robbing luxury buses which had been almost eliminated a few years ago appears to be resurfacing. This threat had almost killed the business of night travelling, a popular choice of many people, and a useful measure which reduced traffic on our highways in the day. The relative success recorded a while back in reducing the incidents of luxury bus robberies was the product of better intelligence, greater presence of the police on highways, and quite possibly the result of conscious efforts to flush out bad eggs within the force. Now the police has to go back to the drawing board, and re-examine its strategy to deal with this serious problem, particularly on highways such as the Okene-Abuja road.
There is no doubt that the challenges which all security agencies face in Nigeria today are very serious indeed. The police in particular are involved in internal security, as well as policing many more flashpoints than had existed in the past in many parts of the country. They are still under-manned, under-equipped and under-funded. Many policemen justifiably worry about the fate of their families if they are killed by heavily-armed criminals, or if they are badly injured in the line of duty. There is therefore the need to improve the logistics and equipment of the police to deal with new and old challenges. Its intelligence gathering must also be radically enhanced. Many communities which dot our highways are very good sources of intelligence. They can identify suspicious movements of strangers, who may be highway robbers, or locate their abodes in or near villages. The Federal and State Government must also improve the security situation in many sensitive areas and flashpoints in the nation, so that thousands of men and women who are deployed there can be assigned other responsibilities. The funding for highway patrols vehicles and improved communication should be improved. Similarly, the Police should improve its liaison and cooperation with road transport owners and workers unions to examine how our highways can be made safer.
The killings on our highways, either through accidents or robberies make our country appear extremely unsafe. The world uses our highways as an index of our security and safety, and our image as an unsafe nation is largely the product of what happens on our roads. No foreigner will be encouraged to invest in a nation this unsafe. Nigerians now travel with their hearts in their mouths. Day or night, you are grateful if you get to your destination in one piece. This is not a way for a people to live, and those with responsibility to make us more secure should sit up and do something about it.
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