•Lists 17 ways to avoid being kidnapped
•‘How to secure school children from abduction’
•Speaks on lessons from Mexico

By Kennedy Mbele

Colonel Hassan Stan-Labo (rtd) commanded troops in Liberia, Sierra Leone, West Darfur and Bakassi Peninsula as part of the Army’s Elite Infantry (Special Forces) Corps. Now a security consultant and defence strategist, Stan-Labo speaks, in this interview, on the kidnapping epidemic in Nigeria.

He explains what government should be doing urgently including geotagging to stem the tide just as he lists tips on how Nigerians can avoid being kidnapped. Excerpts:

With kidnappers now seemingly everywhere, what measures do you advise Nigerians to take to avoid being kidnapped?
One, never use car stickers that say where you work especially if you have a prestigious job. Two, when travelling, don’t leave too early and make sure you are at your destination before 6 pm at latest.

Three, never share pictures of your kids in their school uniforms or badges. Protect your kids!

Four, when you attend parties, don’t let the band get you so high that you start spraying money.

Use an envelope. Five, don’t be the one that tries to empty the ATM machine by making large withdrawals. You don’t need 50k in your wallet to feel like a man. Six, always delete your bank transaction notifications, especially SMS.

You really can memorize your bank balance, and don’t forget to shred/destroy your POS/ATM receipts. Seven, don’t go jogging while it’s dark. You really should be smarter than that. If you can, get someone trusted to give you company.

Eight, always lock your doors, even if you’re only going out to switch off your generator.

Nine, never ever wear your ID card outside your workplace. No one needs to know where you work.

Ten, be accountable to your spouse or parents, and let someone know where you are at every point.

Eleven, as much as you can, don’t send kids alone on errand outside your house. They are soft targets.

Twelve, don’t try to show that you are the richest in the neighborhood by making large donations in your estate meetings and learning modesty.

Thirteen, when you give, give with modesty and privately, learn to say “I can’t spare that amount now.”

Fourteen, don’t stay late in your office long after closing hours. That deadline work can be done later or at home if you wish.

Fifteen, make safety the number one factor in your decision always!

Sixteen, mind what you post about yourself on social media.

Seventeen, never make any attempt to open your gate/door to even your child, brother, or any relative in the night, particularly dead nights. They might be used to get you easily.

And how do we protect school children from kidnappers in the light of what just happened in Ekiti?
To prevent future happenings, we should begin to implement the Gordon Banks School Safe Project handed over to us years back.

It reels out a set of safety protocol on school safety ranging from wall fencing, lighting, access, security, visitations, pick-up arrangements etc.

Unfortunately, like it is with us, only few private schools have so far implemented it. As for public schools, the response has remained extremely poor.

The general impression I make of all these is that our enforcement regime is weak. We haven’t made up our mind to implement this yet.

It is madness to keep doing the same thing the same way and expect to get a different result. What do you think government and security agencies should be doing now to get the desired result?

What government and security agencies should be doing now: Manpower beef-up, use of technology, use of airpower and use of intelligence. By manpower beef-up, I mean massive recruitment is presently required in all arms of our national security and defence sector to meet the deficit on ground.

Existing training facilities must be expanded and new ones established. The Nigerian Army presently recruits about 5, 000 men through its Training Depot in Zaria. If you juxtapose that with the natural exit through retirements and casualty coming from the North-East and other operations spread over the 36 states of the country, you would agree that we may only boast of 2,500 fresh entrants per annum.

As a country at war, what is preventing us from recruiting into to the Armed Forces and security agencies? The unemployment situation is so terrible that the talk of a forceful conscription does not even come in.

What stops us from establishing five more training depots one each in the geographical zones. This would give us no less than 25,000 men per annum.

With this strength inflow we can successfully occupy, hold the ground and practically sit on all troubled spots in the Plateau, Benue & S/Kaduna axis.

Sambisa forest remains a huge operational challenge to us till we can clear it of any form of terrorist occupation and dominate it by the physical deployment of men on ground. We should make Sambisa like several other forests around the country ‘no-go’ areas.

It should be clear to them by the dare-devil action they see that a visit to any of these forests means death. On technology, the engagement of drones in the fight against terrorism has been over-emphasised and leadership of the military seems to have bought into it. Such drawbacks as collateral damages should never deter the military from doing the needful.

In whatever way you look at it, some would definitely pay the supreme price for the rest of us to be alive be they soldiers or civilians. Geotagging techniques could also be applied in tracking down communication by terrorists and kidnappers.

Each time a kidnapper uses a phone to communicate, the device connects to nearby cell towers, which leaves a digital footprint. Modern smart phones, often used by kidnappers, have built-in GPS capabilities which further enhance the accuracy of location tracking. Geotagging utilizes this data to pinpoint the location of the phone.

Many countries have used this method to locate, apprehend, and eliminate kidnapping rings. For example, in Colombia, a country once notorious for kidnappings, security agencies have successfully employed geotagging. In one notable case, Colombian authorities tracked the mobile phone of a kidnapper using geotagging, leading them directly to the hideout and facilitating a successful rescue operation.

Mexico’s adoption of advanced geotagging techniques in collaboration with the United States has led to several high-profile successes. The technology was pivotal in dismantling a notorious kidnapping ring in Mexico City. This shows the potential of cross-border technological cooperation, and Nigeria can replicate this with its neighbors.

For Nigeria to effectively employ geotagging, however, there is a need for significant investment in technological infrastructure. This includes the upgrading of cell tower networks for better coverage and accuracy, and the integration of advanced software for real-time tracking. Security agencies must be trained in the nuances of geotagging technology.

They must understand the legal and ethical implications of tracking and developing the technical expertise to analyze and act upon the data gathered. Concerning airpower, the greatest advantage we have over the enemy in this ongoing war is our airpower.

Air parity does not exist between us because the enemy has no air assets. Unfortunately, we are not exploiting this advantage over the belligerent force. I expected that all terrorist strongholds would by now have been spit locked with several daily bombardment sorties to keep the enemy off balance and its HQs in complete disarray.

What I see is the direct opposite: Terrorists sending warning notifications of impending visits to own Nigerian communities while we look helplessly. Something is seriously not adding up. We are not being told the whole truth.

This is not the same Nigeria Army I fought with in Sierra-Leone, Liberia, Bakassi Peninsula and Darfur where I commanded troops. The Nigerian Army is known for its bravery, resilience, boldness, doggedness, determination and fighting spirit. What has gone wrong all of a sudden? What really?

I ask innocently, having retired over a decade ago. On intelligence, the entire intelligence community in Nigeria needs to do more. Their present performance can’t take us off the hook. It is far below par if the truth be told. Wherever the problem lies, we’ve got to fix it and quickly too.

Intelligence does not come cheap. At times you go outright and buy it where it is waiting for the highest bidder. Intelligence is capital intensive. After the 9/11 incident, most Western democracies tripled their budgetary allocation to Home Security and other intelligence platforms. Besides funding issues, synergy amongst agencies is highly important. This must be forged and made to work in the national interest.

The thinking in some quarters is that insecurity may have spiralled out of control. Do you think the thinking has merit?

The assertion that insecurity has spiralled out of control with the turn of events in the country is correct. You don’t treat terrorism with kid’s gloves or soft-handedness and expect it to vanish.

The only language terrorism understands is instant death. Terrorism or insurgency will not stop until you make up your mind to stop it. As for now, Nigeria remains indecisive.

The nation of Israel after the invasion of Oct 7, 2023, took a decisive step on how to address its security challenges in line with its national interest to protect the life and wellbeing of every member of the Sovereign Jewish State of Israel. When the Prime Minister of Israel said NEVER again will Hamas contemplate a war with Israel, he knew what he was talking about.

He meant engaging the enemy or belligerent force with the requisite brute and callousness required to eliminate it or kick its ass off the Israeli territory. If we approach terrorism on the Nigerian territory with this mindset, it will not have the temerity to spiral out of control.

Unfortunately what we’ve witnessed in the eight years under the Buhari administration is the complicit lines of actions played by religion, tribe, ethnicity, etc and how they informed decisions at the political strategic level of decision-making.

We saw persons with close relationships with terrorists being appointed into the cabinet. We witnessed top government officials lobbying for amnesty for terrorists etc. More emphasis was placed on the taking of Prisoners of War (PWs) rather than the outright elimination of terrorists in the forest. The implications of these actions to us as a nation can only be imagined.

The latest in the incidents of insecurity is the killing of traditional rulers by suspected kidnappers in Ekiti and Kwara states and about 24 hours later school children were abducted and about N100m was demanded as ransom? How did you receive the news?

It became clear to me that terrorists were now out to make a point by going after the leadership cadre of the Nigerian society. It is a big plus for terrorists globally when they successfully hit or take leaders hostage. They bask in the euphoria and hype which projects the entire development as a big victory to the terrorist group. Even the Federal Capital Territory, hitherto the oasis of safety in a national desert of insecurity, is now the theatre of some of the most frighteningly lethal abductions. You must have observed the relocation from neighbouring states into Abuja. This could also be part of the grand plan to concentrate on the political class and its leadership.

My take and conviction remains that this could have been prevented if only there is a deliberate policy to for our troops to eliminate these terrorists in the first place. Unfortunately we seem to be more interested in gathering Prisoners of War (PW) for rehabilitation and eventual absorption into the Nigerian Army. May we not suffer what the Americans went through with Afghanistan. As for the abduction of a large number of school children, it is common knowledge that it calls for celebration amongst such groups.

They could decide to place individual ransom on each child where parents are known to be quite rich or resort to blanket demands as seen in the Ekiti case.

Let’s talk about the economic dimension of kidnapping and banditry in Nigeria against the backdrop of the suggestion that police or military action alone may not solve the insecurity problem.

Yes there is an economic dimension to it all. To keep their victims alive for such long gestation period, a host of multi-disciplinary services are required: Medical, informants, logistics, transport, communication, banking, mediators, liaison etc.

These services are rendered and paid for as the need arises. I share the perspective that the police or military action may not be enough to address the challenges of kidnapping and banditry in view of the economic dimension it is gradually assuming.

At the personal level, we must all remain alert and conscious of our environment identifying strangers amongst us and their purpose. At the community level, leadership must provide guidance and direction at times of necessity staying alive to their responsibilities. Community leaders should maintain close liaising with security agencies on a regular basis. Banks should be discouraged from offering banking services to kidnappers and bandits in facilitation of fund movement.

There is the issue of where kidnappers and bandits get their arms from especially as security agencies mop up arms from time to time.

The quantum of arms mopped up by security agencies could be insignificant compared to what comes in through the borders and illegal pathways. Given the extensive nature of Nigerian borders at the northern fringes, over 1, 527 illegal footpaths leading to the Maghreb across the Sahel region existed way back in the 90s. Nearly every grain-loaded bag or truck crossing the borders carries one form of small arms weapon or the other, be it a pistol, AK47 etc.

The supply chain for this business could be stopped but for the lucrative source of income it avails all parties and secondly the absence of severe consequences. Fine, mop-up actions are carried out but is anything ever heard concerning the culprits?

Kidnappers, in some cases, still go ahead to kill their captives despite collecting ransom. Why do you think these criminals go to this extreme?

Terrorists and kidnappers come with all sorts of temperament. They lack discipline and usually of no unified command or control due to factionalization within groups.

So, decisions taken are seldom binding on all including decisions not to kill. However, some of the reasons responsible for the killing of victims include delay in response from family members, disagreement in sharing formula, vendetta action where the victim is known already, acting on drugs. All these could result in the killing of victims while ransom is being awaited.