June 19, 2026
LAST week, I asked fellow Nigerians, readers of this column what else we can do about insecurity that we haven’t done. It was a rhetorical question. Truth is there’re lots we can do that we haven’t done. Are we no longer Nigerians? The most resilient group of peoples in the world? Are we not the ones that flourish where others flee? We are Nigerians! Remember, when armed robbers took this country hostage and laid serial sieges, how did we respond?
With the central police system failing all of us, we reached into our inventive inner selves and came up with home-grown solutions that endure till this day. First, we got vigilantes. We formed community development associations that fashioned out initiatives against insecurity. One of such initiatives was to hire night guards to keep watch on the neighbourhood while we slept. We also invented access control measures in our residential areas. As I speak, there are very few streets in our towns and cities that do not have gates. These gates are locked by midnight and reopened between 5am and 6am in most towns and cities. Some neighbourhoods even restrict usage of generators beyond certain hours of the night.
With these incessant kidnappings, we have to reach deeper into our inventive selves and bring out even more effective solutions. I am particularly delighted at the experience of natives of Ohuhu, in Abia State. There, last week, two indigenes were kidnapped. One of their abductors handed a phone to one of them to make calls and state ransom demands for their release. The person given the phone dialled a number he could remember, but chose to speak in his language, Igbo, which the abductors did not understand, and in the process, described the location of the den where they were being held. Of course, he was mercilessly beaten by the abductors for that. But the good side is that residents of Ohuhu mobilised their youths, stormed the kidnappers’ hideout, and rescued their people.
