By Kunle Oyatomi
Criminality and insecurity are turning Nigeria into a nightmare. From all indications, we are now moving one step over the edge into the abyss. This is not a statement of despair, it is a conscious acknowledgement of the cold fact. We are past midnight before dawn into the status of a failed state. And it is unclear if any person is actually in charge any more!!

Nigerians know as well as I do that nobody is safe anywhere in the country any more because, in addition to other criminal activities by politicians, the bureaucracy and men of the underworld, kidnapping in this country has turned bizzare and left us hapless. Within two weeks,  kidnappers struck three times, snatching the former NFF Chairman, Sani  Lulu’s mother in Kogi, four  journalists in Abia (Wahab Oba and the others), and a Kano businesman in the ancient city, Salisu Mataba.

As at when this piece was being written, the police were still on the trail of the criminal extortionists called kidnappers who were demanding hundreds of millions of naira, as well as dollars, before they will release their victims. Like an enchanted enclave, Nigeria is just sprouting “poisonous” events that repel rather than attract people of goodwill into this nation. Conversely, we attract people like us who are compounding our problems – the criminals and their way of life.

They are all over from the top to bottom of our social, economic and political strata. Yet, there was a time  when this country was a wonderful, safe and peaceful place to live in.

Then, we boasted of having one of the best trained police outfit in Africa; but today, in a Nigerian space that has turned diabolical, that same security outfit is a pathetic image of its old self. It has been contaminated and sucked into the cesspit of corruption that has comprehensively diminished its efficiency.

Otherwise, how come all these criminals are having such  free ride? What is essentially a crime against humanity has now become a “profitable business” not only for the criminals involved, but also, some traditional rulers are alleged to be involved in this bizzar kidnapping “business” in some parts of the country. Owing to what we have seen so far about criminal activities, we cannot absolve the security forces from complicity in a good number of cases.

Take the criminal political assassinations that had ravaged this country in the last two decades for example; which of them has the police resolved? As you read this, we still don’t know who killed Funso Williams, Bola Ige, Alhaja Suliat Adedeji, Harry Marshall  etc; while till tomorrow it is still hanging in the air who it was that killed Kudirat Abiola. Numerous armed robbery operations had gone without a trace of the criminals, and now the kidnappers!!

To make sense of it all, we have to put these events in a holistic context to appreciate the enormity of our problem. What we have on hand is a complex mosaic of criminal engineering that has grown beyond the capacity of its manipulators to control!!

From stealing public funds to stealing the nation’s wealth itself, the people in charge of Nigeria have expanded the frontiers of criminality to cover every inch of Nigeria to the extent that not a single sector of the country’s life is free from the scourge of criminality and corruption.

The upsurge of kidnapping, before we know it, will become a way of life in this country. The question to ask is, could this criminality be beyond the security forces – especially the police – to handle? You will be surprised that the answer is yes!, and No!

Take the case of the journalists kidnapped in Abia for instance, reports reaching the news desk show that  the authorities in charge of security in that state had knowledge of the fact that the route the journalists took on their way back to Lagos was notorious for activities of men of the underworld. So for how long ago have they known this, and done nothing about it?

Why? My hunch is that the police in that area is ill equipped to deal with the problem. If they were up to the  task and did nothing to protect Nigerians in that axis, would they have a case against anyone who accuse them of criminal complicity? Remember, the Nigeria police is supposed to be one of the best  trained of such outfits in the continent, so why cant they function?

Now when you contrast that with the speed with which the police got even with the criminals who kidnapped an expatriate in Lagos, you are bound to ask, were the police in Lagos trained differently from those in Abia?
From my decades of journalism practice, I am aware that the Nigeria police have a fairly good knowledge of the criminal hideouts, network and black spots all over the country. I am also aware that in recent  times, the police have been at a disadvantage in weaponry against the criminals. Could that explain away the security lapses in the country?

Again, there is a third element; corruption!! When you have a poorly equipped police weakened by corruption, surely the country’s security will be compromised.

But that’s not where the problem ends. The entire infrastructure of  governance has collapsed due to an implosion of corruption. This is the systemic failure, which is sprouting all sorts of problems that have taken Nigeria one step over the edge. General Danjuma recently disagreed with Professor Nwabueze over the question of a bloody revolution to change or contain what’s going on in the country. The former thinks a  bloody revolution was un-necessary, while the latter believes that it is the only way  out.

With so much violence and deaths, induced by criminality in governance and on the streets, it is not difficult to see why anybody would sign for a revolutionary change whether bloody or not. But the dilemma is whether Nigerians have the stomach for one?

They had been docile; but with the pain of misery, hardship, poverty and hopelessness intensifying, and the criminals adding one scourge after another to their devastating condition, maybe the man in them could one day stand up and  fight.

The horizon is blank. The future holds on hope. The present is intolerable; It is only a matter of time before there is an erruption. And we should remember that all erruptions carry with them deadly elements of devastation. That is the path corruption and criminality is steering us through. The calamitous explosion will reverberate through the African continent. We should stop these criminals now before they stop us.