By Rotimi Fasan
While the rest of the world and those Nigerians with the presence of mind to be romantic in these hard times were waking up to celebrate yet another Valentine’s Day, residents of Santos Estate in Akowonjo area of Lagos State came under the siege of armed robbers who took over their neighbourhood in the early hours of the morning of February 14.

The robbers who invaded no less than five flats in Adama Daniel section of Santos were in uniform of personnel of the Police Mobile Force.

They operated with impunity, moved from one flat to the other, quietly waking up the residents who waited in agony for the entry of the criminals after their calls for rescue went unheeded.

Neither the police who have one of their stations located not far from the Estate or the local vigilantes employed by the residents were around to protect this people when death stared them in the face.

Whole families, husbands, wives and their children, several of them tots and kids too little to fully understand what was going on except sensing the fear in their parents, waited on the evil ministration of these gun-totting guests of darkness.

The trauma of such experience is unquantifiable and might not be fully understood until years later. Suffice to say that, once more, the Nigerian state has failed its own people.
The question of insecurity of life and property has been on the lips of many in recent times.

The scale and magnitude of violence has increased exponentially as the elections draw near leading many, not unjustifiably, to draw a link between these violent crimes and politics.

Somehow, the politicians in our midst know how to protect themselves by restricting for their personal use resources meant for all of us. They move around with enough personal security than can sometimes be found in a police station.

The few police men and women not attached to banks and close friends of the politicians, themselves victims of out corruption-ridden system, are left to extort miserable and unauthorised tolls from hapless citizens at checkpoints. No matter where they turn, Nigerians lose all the way.

And so many die, not only needless, but avoidable deaths. Many times such deaths are caused by the negligence, if not the direct involvement, of those who should protect them.

We saw such deaths at the campaigns organised by the PDP to kick-off President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential bid in Port-Harcourt where many got trampled to death as a consequence of poor crowd control. Human life means so little to us that we can simply dispense with it without batting an eye lid.

At other times, the involvement of the authorities, state institutions and officials, in the tragedy that befall Nigerians is more brazen and direct than can be imagined. Which takes me back to the robbery incident at Santos Estate last week.

It’s not the first time such robbery would take place. I’m aware of at least three such neighbourhood invasions by robbers in the last one and half years.

The confounding thing about it all is the complicity of authorities of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in the robbery incidents.

It might seem far-fetched to accuse the management of the Airport of complicity in incidents of robberies around Santos and environs but the failure of the authorities to adequately secure the vast areas surrounding the Airport, leaving them open to the activities of criminals, is the reason they have to bear responsibility for the activities of robbers in Santos.

The point is that Santos Estate shares boundary with the MMIA, separated only by high walls that are doubled and crowned with barbed wires. But despite such apparent fortification, these walls are more porous than the route to a public park.

They are, in addition, the very routes through which armed robbers and other categories of criminals make their way into adjoining neighbourhoods of Akowonjo and Egbeda.

It should not be surprising that surroundings of the MMIA should be the route criminals take to commit serious violations against innocents trying to live quietly in their own part of the world. Airports all over the world are high security zones, often off-limits to unauthorised persons.

But that is not the case here in Nigeria. Although the MMIA looks like a military zone and crawls with all kinds of security personnel who seem to lurk in all nook and cranny of the place, but like a broth that is soon destroyed by too many hands, one only notices the overwhelming sense of security people, not their effectiveness.

You’ll never know certain types of security outfits exist in the country until you visit the MMIA and see them in their strange uniforms, some of them duplicating uniforms of better known security organisations.

Yet they all seem to be concentrated in the Airport lounge, practically slumbering while serious crimes are carried on in their vicinity.

It was in the vicinity of the MMIA, right under the nose of airport security, that the Direct Data Capture Machines that were brought into the country for the April elections were first stolen.

The criminals who perpetrated the crime said they had seen the machines where they had been deposited in the bushes where they had gone to relive themselves. What scandal! What criminal abomination must be going on in an area that had been turned into public toilets and smoking joints by criminals?

This is a serious indictment of our security agencies, especially those operating in and around the MMIA. Anything can happen in these areas. And quite a lot has been happening without anybody paying attention.

If innocent residents of those areas bordering the Lagos airports (local and international) are not to continue to suffer in the hands of criminals, the authorities and management of the place must begin to act responsibly and provide the right security for its unsecured surroundings. Enough is enough.

A state establishment shouldn’t be seen to be as remiss as the managers of the MMIA. They’ve been less than useful and need to be called to order.

Or are we waiting until terrorists open a base right on the airport grounds before somebody sees the need to stem the tide of armed robberies initiated from across the airport walls, or better put, from within the MMIA into neighbouring households?