Sunday, 23 May 2021: Prof. Nelson O. Fashina, a super vigilante cop, National Commander, a DCG, and a distinguished scholar has stated that there should be inextricable relevance of vigilantes in securing our porous security spaces as well as the forests and bushes been used as hideouts by the Boko Haram insurgents and other bandits.

Fashina, a Professor of Education, stated this while delivering a lecture titled “The Role of 'Vigilante' in National Security” at the Nigerian Army Resource Centre,
Asokoro, Abuja. He gave the lecture on behalf of all the entire structured and core vigilante informal security groups in Nigeria to address the kernel of vigilante relevance to national security.

According to Fashina, all the vigilante bills that were passed into law by the 8th National Assembly were never assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari. Yet, the problem of insecurity in the nation worsens daily, such that both civilians and the Armed Forces are being killed daily by the sophisticated terrorist.

The lecture, which became seminal, was explosive in its fearless chronicles of the achievements and failures of the security agencies in tackling our national security.

Fashina explained that the total population of the regular security personnel in Nigeria is not enough to combat and conquer the terrorists.

He appealed to the Army as the parent-security and to the Nigeria police and all its extended police family, to support the National Assembly in the bid to enable a legislation of the well-disciplined, well structured, patriotic and nationalized set of CAC incorporated vigilantes as a formal security agency.

Fashina made scholarly and sociological distinctions between two types of vigilantes: 1. “Ethnic Militia Vigilantes” (Negative Vigilantes) who are subversive of national unity and of the Government, who are criminals of electoral violence in Nigeria.

2. CAC incorporated vigilante groups whose data base is with the Nigeria police and the NCDC. He argued that category 2 vigilantes are the patriotic volunteer/informal security groups who have been assisting the police in crime detection, prevention, report, and arrest, and that they have also been successfully assisting the Military in the Joint Task Force operations against the Boko Haram guerillas in the Northeast and other terrorist afflicted regions in Nigeria.

Fahina argued that Boko Haram being driven by religious, socio-economic and political ideologies of subversions cannot be overcome with physical counter-insurgency strategies. Rather, he called for psychological, logical, and social orientation strategies to divest the enemies’ minds from their wrong affiliations with inhuman, ungodly and false indoctrinations, adding that the crisis is an endemic part of any society that arises from grievances against the State, especially in capitalist societies, but conscious attempts by the State/Government to reduce the gap of socio-economic inequalities is a giant step to reducing crime and criminalities.

He talked about the need for massive creation of employment through the establishment of a new security agency from the vigilantes, especially the Vigilante Group of Nigeria, and the Hunter’s Group of Nigeria, (HGN), because the HGN has no internal leadership crisis and their personnel are well disciplined and ready to undertake formal national security assignment of policing the forest, the bushes and the schools being the spaces yet to be secured, adding that the aim and objectives of the HGN do not duplicate duties of the Nigeria police or Civil Defense.

During the lecture, he appealed to the already existing Government security agencies to eschew what he called the “co-wife” pattern of unhealthy rivalry and jealousy against the personnel of the standing and well-structured informal vigilante security groups that are assisting them in crime control on voluntary groups to comply to the structures of lawful ethics in their conduct and assisting roles in aid of police and military duties.  

It is no more a news that Nigeria's national security is already compromised. And the combined efforts of all the Armed Forces, both in hardware reactive duty, intelligence and logistics have become overwhelmed and possibly demoralized by the guerrilla and non-conventional attack strategies of the insurgents. From the abduction of almost 300 girls from Chibok and similar crime in the abduction of Dapchi school boys, with the daily kidnaps for random and killings of crop farmers to cattle rustling, the national is in her worst moment of distresses security.

The Lecture was full of high levels of conceptual definitions and applications of theories of security, under the Community Policing Initiative of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Armed Forces dignitaries that formed the audience included all their service chiefs or their representatives, 43 Army Generals and distinguished scholars on national security.