Last week, I reminded you, here, that Nigeria is a land of the absurd like no other. I might not get to the yardstick used in arriving at this, especially at this time that almost everything that works for a democratic process seems to have been thrown to the dogs in our country. And most importantly, when I am sure that any yardstick at all used to measure the truth of the statement will surely produce the same result.
Except, of course, the one doing the measuring is operating from Mars or Jupiter. Or one of those who have been cowed into embracing tyranny for whatever reason that appeals to their greed.
And so, one is bound to hear, per second, of the most ludicrous happening in this country of ours!
Otherwise, what exactly is Operation Positive Identification (OPI) for a country where more than over 200 million people live in no-war-no-peace situation?
Earlier, the Nigerian Army had reportedly announced an OPI in the Northeast, which it claimed was to flush out Boko Haram insurgents they have been battling for years now.
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Later on September 25, 2019, the grossly impoverished Nigerians were further told the exercise would be extended to other parts, starting November 1 through December 23, 2019.
As was reported, the exercise would enable soldiers to stop and search citizens anywhere and everywhere, asking them to identify themselves. Expectedly, this would require Nigerian citizens to move about with legitimate means of identification such as National Identity Card, Voter’s Card, National Drivers Licence and travel passports.
It would appear, therefore, that in the Nigerian Army fashion of intelligence gathering, the exercise, from what was gathered, would check bandits, kidnappers, armed robbers, ethnic militia, cattle rustlers, as well as criminals across the country.
Now, let’s just pause here for a minute and recall that a few days after the kidnap of an assistant commissioner of police and area commander at the Suleja Area Command in Niger State, Musa Rabo, a couple of weeks back, a judge, this time in Benin City, the Edo State capital, was abducted by gunmen.
Justice Chioma Nwosu-Iheme of the Benin Court of Appeal was kidnapped last week on her way to the court, the temple of justice – an incident that saw the police orderly accompanying her, Inspector A.I. Momoh, killed.
Inspector Momoh, reports have it, was killed by the gunmen before taking the Justice away, while the driver of the vehicle was also badly injured.
Now, we are talking of a woman known to be Nigeria’s first female judge to study law up to the Ph.D. level, specializing in the law of intellectual property.
Married to Chief Uzoma Nwosu-Iheme, a former Commissioner for Public Utilities & Rural Development, and Commissioner for Education in Imo State, Justice Nwosu-Iheme, happens to be the judge that handled the Otokoto Hotel ritual killings in Imo State more than 20 years ago. In 2010, also, her first son was kidnapped in Owerri, the Imo State capital.
Edo State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Dan-Mallam Mohammed, who confirmed the incident, said a manhunt had been launched to track down the culprits and rescue the judge.
At the time of filing this report, we were at that point of familiar police assurance that “Investigation is ongoing and by the grace of God, Justice Nwosu-Iheme will be rescued unhurt.”
Incidentally, Justice Nwosu-Iheme’s abduction was coming days after a Federal High Court judge in Akure, the Ondo state capital, Justice Abdul Dogo, was freed at the border between Edo and Ondo states by kidnappers who had abducted him a couple of weeks earlier.
Justice Dogo was said to have been rescued by operatives of the Inspector-General’s intelligence response team from a forest behind the Federal College of Education in Itakpe, Kogi State.
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To think that the federal government even imagined at any time that by stopping people on the streets and asking them for, so to say, proofs of citizenship, such problems would be addressed only suggests that we have completely run out of ideas on how to approach the precarious security challenges confronting us as a country! What an analogue medieval approach to a digital problem, you would say!
Even before such criminal tendencies assumed the sophisticated dimension we are now witnessing, the easiest way to own an ID has always been a journey to Oluwole, since a lot of bottlenecks is placed on the ways of doing such legally. I want to believe we are all clear on what an Oluwole ID is or looks like.
In case you’re not, let me first explain that Oluwole is that ‘hot spot’ in Lagos, a very popular place indeed that not many people know exactly where it is located, even when they must have passed through it several times. Funny, isn’t it?
Actually, Oluwole is where anything fake but looks so real could be bought in Lagos. But the original street that goes by that moniker is sandwiched between Taiwo and Abibu-Oki streets on Lagos Island, where perhaps faking or cloning of documents must have originated in Nigeria.
Today, Oluwole can be found everywhere – in Ikeja, Shomolu, Oshodi, Apapa, in fact, anywhere you can get fake documents, including travel passports, visas, drivers licence, voter’s card, national ID card – just any document and any form of identification you want.
Oluwole documents are so easy to get, as long as you have your cash.
So, what on earth makes our military think that acquiring such documents that the OPI operatives will be most unlikely unable to verify, is worth the stress they want to subject Nigerians to? Considering also that it takes ages for citizens to obtain genuine IDs, is government by any chance thinking that what this OPI may just successfully do is to boost the emergence or replication of Oluwole in every nook and cranny of our communities?
I, for instance, have applied for the National Identification Card for more than five years now. As I write, I have not heard a word from the Nigerian Identity Management Commission (NIMC), the body responsible for issuing the number/card. Instead, I was given a paper with a number that will only get destroyed should I be carrying it around every day.
In other words, for more than five years, there is no card insight, a development that applies to millions of Nigerians who might just have that option as their only means of identification.
If you think that is enough trouble, just wait for this. Last week, NIMC at the heat of the brouhaha over the OPI, told the nation in clear terms that it does not have the capacity to print the national ID for all the people of this country.
The Commission’s DG, Engr. Aziz Aliyu, said NIMC could only register a quarter of Nigerians for the National Identity Card because of inadequate funding by the Federal Government. The DG, who confessed this predicament at a budget defense session with regard to the Diaspora data before the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora Affairs last week, said that to register all Nigerians, the Commission would have to set up 10,000 registration centres across the country, and consequently, require adequate funding from the national budget.
“We require 10,000 centers to capture the entire country. Our capacity currently is only for a quarter of the population of Nigeria. We can’t capture all Nigerians, because currently, we have only 1,000 centres across the country,” he told the parliamentary committee.
While we are still at that, it is noteworthy that to have a drivers’ licence, you will have to own a car and of course, must have come of the required age to drive. So, how many people have cars or are in a position to travel abroad, if we consider the passport? Plus the unnecessary hurdles often placed along the way by those issuing the IDs?
Just like some lawmakers said while addressing the motion by the House of Representatives Minority Leader, Ndudi Elumelu, on the OPI, if our security chiefs are out of ideas on how to secure the nation, they should let Nigerians know so that they (Nigerians) will be absolutely certain on the fact that they are strictly on their own.
Or better still, they (our security chiefs) can give way for other people who have new ideas on how to fight insecurity in the 21st century to come in.
For goodness sake, how can an anti-people operation like the OPI, which is outrightly a recipe for possible militarization of the country in a democratic setting, and which will pose some threats to human rights, solve the problems so listed?
What Nigeria actually needs at this critical time is a pro-people strategy that will confront our security challenge, head-on, instead of measures that would further victimize the people. And as rightly pointed by the MP that moved the anti-OPI motion, OPI would “downgrade Nigerians to suspects and in fact conquered persons in their own country, thereby stripping them of their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of movement.”
You can just imagine the level of chaos when people in local communities, for instance, begin to see soldiers all over the place demanding identification to substantiate if truly they are members of that community!
This is why it is heartwarming that notable individuals and human rights groups have already condemned the anti-people move, with human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, describing it as a sad reminder of the illegal practice of the white minority rulers, which compelled Africans to carry passbooks outside their homelands or designated areas under the Apartheid era in South Africa.
Falana also took the matter up a notch by suing the Nigerian Army, the Chief of Army Staff, and the Attorney-General of the Federation, praying for an order stopping OPI.
In the suit marked FHC/L/CS/1939/2019 filed before the Federal High Court in Lagos on October 25, he described the operation as unconstitutional, illegal, null and void.
Put differently, this OPI of a thing, which has been also described as the height of insanity, must be suspended because it is unlawful and constitutes a gross infringement of the constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights to freedom of movement and dignity of citizens.
