A public affairs analyst, Dr Olatunde Amusat has said that until the country is ready to face reality and stop living in denial, finding a lasting solution to the myriads of security challenges facing the country might remain elusive.
He called on the security agencies to adopt what he described as “local solutions” in tackling the security issues facing different communities in the country, noting that every crime is also local.
Amusat gave the recommendations while delivering a lecture entitled “Sugar’s death and the challenges of the leadership recruitment process: Matters Arising”, during the Inaugural Memorial Lecture in honour of a late Federal Lawmaker, Hon Olatoye Temitope Sugar (Lagelu/Akinyele Federal Constituency).
The event which held at the Banquet Hall of the Premier Hotel, Ibadan had in attendance, political associates, politicians, friends, beneficiaries and family members of the deceased as parts of events lined for the burial.
The deceased will be laid in state at the Oyo State House of Assembly today (Thursday).
Delivering the lecture, Amusat noted that one of the reasons fighting crimes had not been effectively tamed in the communities was because of the obvious denial of the role and impact community policing which allows people who understand the local environment to participate and take charge of the security responsibilities.
He wondered why Lalupon, the same axis where Hon Sugar was killed was the same axis other notable individuals including the former head of state General Agunyi Ironsi and his host, Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi were also killed without anyone being able to nip such occurrence till date.
He said “Lalupon is beginning to gain notoriety, with due respect, as an axis of death. When you interrogate history, it was in that the particular axis that a visiting military head of state in the person of late Gen Agunyi Ironsi and his host Col Adekunle Fajuyi, the two of them were taken into the bush in the Lalupon axis and were shot.
“And when you do thorough profiling of series of assassinations that have occurred along that axis, you will begin to have a rethink of why Lalupon.
“In my presentation, I must have said why Lalupon more than ten times. Why Lalupon is instructive and very important. It is important to the extent that a few years ago, a serving Federal legislator was hacked down in the Lalupon axis, just three months into his tenure.
“And years after, a serving member of that green chamber in the person of Hon Temitope Olatoye Sugar, his convoy was ambushed and he was brutally murdered, three months to the expirations of his four years legislative mandate.
“As an academic myself, I am trying to interrogate and see whether there is a cosmic nexus that could be established between the two. The question still remains…Lalupon again and why Lalupon?”
He called for community policing as the way forward to tackle a series of killings in different places across the country.
“For decades we have lived in denial as a people and as a country. You cannot post maybe someone born in Igbo land to be the police DPO in Idi Arere, Ibadan when he doesn’t understand the terrain, he doesn’t speak the language and so, he cannot function effectively.
“Community policing is the way out and some people are shy about the issue of community policing and I think we are sitting on a keg of gun powder. I am not an alarmist and I am not pressing the panic button, but those people in the position of authority should be alive to their responsibilities.
“I should know because I was a victim of kidnap. I was with my abductors for six days, exactly 143hours 30 minutes and I wrote an article to narrate my ordeal. These people didn’t know me, they knew nothing about me. I was just kidnapped. If care is not taken, the migration from the Sahel is moving gradually into the Southwest and something must be done. I feel we should organize and stop agonising and the time to do that is now. Now to the extent that delay is dangerous. We can reinvent Nigeria, Nigeria can be re-invented. Nigeria is not beyond redemption but for it to be reinvented, it has to be re-negotiated.”
The youngest brother of the deceased lawmaker, Mr Dotun Olatoye in his welcome address on behalf of the family said the occasion was not to weep but to celebrate the life of impact the deceased lawmaker had on people around him, describing his late brother as an “accidental selfless public service holder
