By Ochereome Nnanna

THERE are many versions of the story of the bombing incident at the headquarters of the Nigeria Police at Abuja on Thursday last week.

For the purpose of our exercise today, I have chosen to adopt the official police version. In a statement published in the name of the Inspector General of Police, Mr Hafiz Ringim by his spokesman, Olushola Amore, the Police claimed that it was “a suicide” bombing.

However, from my layman’s (and commonsense, at least so I think) point of view, it was nothing of the sort.

Let us look at the particulars of the Police statement. I quote the version published by The Nation: “The unfortunate incident, which led to the death of the suicide bomber and a Police traffic warden, occurred at about 1100hrs of 16/06/2011 when the suicide bomber’s vehicle was intercepted and directed to the car park for searching and checking. The traffic warden, who entered the vehicle of the suicide bomber to direct him to the car park, was blown off along with him as soon as they got to the car park”.

Two elements in this Police story make the claim suspect. Number one is that when the bomber drove up to the gates of the Louis Edet House, he was directed to go to the car park where the car would be “searched and checked”. If indeed this was true then he could not have been a “suicide” bomber. Consider the circumstances of a suicide bomber facing death in a matter of seconds.

This chap is hell bent on destroying a well-defined target. He is already at that target. Moving away would mean missing the main target. He would simply detonate his device right in front of the target rather than agree to move away from it.

I do not see a suicide bomber obeying an order to move away to be searched and checked. Such orders are for law-abiding citizens, and only those who are still bound by the law would obey. If they did obey the directive, then they did not intend to die in the blast.

The bugger probably decided to park in the garage and bolt for his dear life, but unfortunately for him (and his strange passenger) the bomb went off before he could come down from the car. That is not suicide mission. A suicide mission is one in which the attacker intends to die in the act. That somebody died in the act of destroying a target does not make the person a “suicide” attacker. A suicide mission is a statement of extreme hatred: “I hate my enemy so much that I am willing to die in order to destroy him”.

The second element of the story is the presence of the traffic warden in the wrecked car. I have been to the Police Headquarters to see an IG. I am not aware that vehicles that arrive at the gates of the establishment are escorted by a traffic warden or police officer to the car park. Therefore, I cannot imagine, for the life of me, the truth about what that unfortunate officer might have been doing in the car.

Usually, in this country, when a traffic warden boards a vehicle he has intercepted, he is escorting the driver to the station over an alleged offence. Otherwise it could be for other reasons you and I are familiar with. This is not to insinuate that the gallant traffic warden on dutiful service to his fatherland was involved in anything untoward.

All I am saying is that the police official version of the incident does not stand up to the claim of a “suicide” attack. As far as I am concerned, the Police story is just exactly what it is – a police story. It reminds me of another recent “police story” told by Mr Ringim himself. He said the police officers murdered on the Lagos-Badagry expressway a fortnight ago were not killed by soldiers. He did not identify those who killed them.

But in this case, the Police ended up lionising our budding terrorists and promoting the alleged Boko Haram operatives to “Islamic martyrs”. This is usually music to the ears of Al Qaeda and their numerous silent (and not so silent) admirers among us.

The news that the terrorists in Nigeria have graduated to the elite level of suicide bombing is likely to tickle the financiers and strategists of Al Qaeda and other Jihadist groups around the world to “invest more” in their Nigerian network. The Boko Haram has thusly been dressed up in a flattering robe they might or might not have sewn for themselves. They had “promised” attacks (as MEND would put it) before the Police Headquarters strike, but they did not “promise” suicide attacks. But since the Police credited them with a suicide attack they claimed responsibility immediately.

It is high time we realised that we now live in a new world where terrorism is rapidly becoming trite news, and that our country has become a favourite hunting ground for freelance terrorist adventurers, more so as we now have a large army of people who have been recently democratically dispossessed of their “right to rule”. While they faced imminent defeat, they threatened that “those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent change inevitable” and swore to make the country “ungovernable”.

Our security orientation needs a total overhaul. The law enforcement agencies should consider the idea of suspending the donning of their uniforms while on duty. It makes them open targets. Let’s all blend into the civilian mass.

Secondly, Nigerians should realise that God will not come down from heaven to solve this problem, as He has already given us the capacity to tackle it. Let us do our bit as citizens by being eternally vigilant and giving useful information to the security agencies when we notice funny goings-on around us.