Dr. Mike Okiro, a former Inspector General of Police (IGP), has assured Nigerians that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will overcome banditry, abduction, and other security concerns bedevilling the country.
The former police boss, while speaking with The Nation yesterday in Abuja, stated that if President Tinubu replicates what he did as governor of Lagos, Nigeria will be free of all sorts of insecurity within the next three years.
He said, “People ask me if President Tinubu will be able to surmount the insecurity in the country. I am always emphatic with my response, which is yes. I shouted yes because, as they say in mathematics, you go from the known to the unknown.
“With what he did in Lagos, he can do it again. The biggest problem facing Nigeria now is insecurity, and the biggest problem Lagos faced when he came as governor in May 1999 was insecurity. He was able to sanitize Lagos, and I am sure, by the grace of God and as human calculations can permit, he will be able to sanitise Nigeria too.
Remembering some of his engagements with President Tinubu while he was governor of Lagos, Okiro said: “There were so many things that the (then) governor and I set in motion that were copied by so many other states and commands in Nigeria.
“In the Army, the Armed Forces are there for external aggression. Before any soldier is deployed, you have to get permission from the Chief of Army Staff.
“In Lagos, the police had no manpower or arms. We could not deploy soldiers. I went to Tinubu to complain that we could not be going back and forth any time there was an operation: ‘give a standing order’.
“So, he wrote the Chief of Army Staff, and a standing order to the Brigade in Lagos was given for the soldiers to join the police for the Joint Anti-Crime Patrol. That helped us curtail crimes in Lagos.
“At a point too, he wanted to give me money to buy fuel because he bought patrol vehicles for us. But I told him I did not want money. I told him to instead create a petrol station where policemen could go and collect fuel rather than give me or my men cash. And he accepted.
“He opened a dump at Alausa. So, every morning, each police patrol vehicle would go and collect 40 litres. That way, if there was a crime somewhere and the police were called, they could not say they had no fuel; hence, they had no excuse not to go. If not for him, I am not sure I would have functioned well in Lagos.”
Okiro further emphasized that President Tinubu’s experience will be a big asset in his fight against insurgency.
“President Tinubu is an experienced politician and also experienced in his fight against insecurity from what he did in Lagos. He set up a trust fund in Lagos, which other governors followed.
“I can say without fear that Lagos, with all its complexity, is among the cities with the highest population and economic activities. Yet Lagos has the lowest crime rate in Nigeria, all thanks to the work set in place by him in Lagos.
“Now that he is the president, I believe he will replicate what he did in Lagos in the entire country. If he does what he did with regard to the security architecture in Lagos, give him two to three years, and insecurity will be a thing of the past in Nigeria,” he stated.
