NIGERIA NATIONAL SECURITY- PRESIDENT’S POWER IS PREDOMINANT...But he needs Help! John O. Ojikutu - July 2011

Introduction

A nation’s security we are often told, rest on the availability of many resources which include human, natural, technological, political to name but a few. But Nigeria does not seem to lack too much of these, yet the current level of internal insecurity appears to be tasking the strength of our security forces far beyond their capability. It is equally testing the resolve of the president as commander-in-chief of the armed forces in taking decisive action to arrest the situation that is gradually developing to snowballing into full scale gorilla warfare. What most observers believe we seem to lack, particularly to confront the escapade of our homegrown terrorists, is our inability to organise the available resources, arrange and focus them within a coherent intelligent pattern. This organisational capacity which we lack is a prime factor in the management of the national security. This capacity depends on the individuals and the leadership in the national security structure and organisation.

Probably sensitive to the danger of militarism and domestic militancy, the makers of our constitution fashioning it with that of US, designed the highest elected government official, the President, as the Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and endowed him with the powers to issue proclamation of war, declaration of state of emergency, suppression of insurrection, determining the operational use of the Police and the Armed Forces, but all these can come to pass  only with a National Assembly resolution and approval. These precepts have remained unchanged in the last 12 years, as the President and the national legislature have developed distinctive patterns of relationships in their concern for the national security. At the same time, there are other factors profoundly influencing the shaping of our national security structure. One is the absence of powerful nations on our borders. This confidence, couple with a persistent distrust of our security forces and our aversion to war, restricted the tangible evidence of our might to just a token military establishment.

Our security forces, particularly the  Armed Forces and the Police are distinct and separate entities, established , organized, funded by separate legislation, and yet carrying  out their assigned or implied mission as best as they could with limited means and capabilities. Moreover, in their joint efforts in conducting internal security, their operations are most times marred by acrimonious controversies, confrontation, confusion, makeshift administrative expedients and organisation improvisation. The most glaring weakness often, is the lack of coordinate intelligence, adequate monitoring or the coordination of efforts among the internal security forces for the development of policies for strategic planning and for the mobilization of the human and logistic resources for the national security.

Executive Power of the President

As the Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the President has the central role in the formulation, direction and execution of the national security policy and this primacy makes him predominant in national security affairs. Unfortunately, our constitution appears not to have adequately addressed national security as a separate matter, but simply granted powers to both the National Assembly and the president to “ensure peace and security of public safety and public order” and leaves the course of events to determine which of the two arms of the government have the decisive voice. In most cases constitutionally, that voice in matter of internal security has always been that of the president.

For an executive president to fulfill his national security responsibilities, he must be knowledgeable about it, and must make vital and often swift decisions, not only about the national security, but also on foreign and domestic policies, economic and social questions and myriad of other problems. All these are integrated into the framework of the overall national policy and he, ultimately he alone, can conceive and understand it. However, he still cannot achieve it effectively alone in a vacuum.

Several years ago, President Truman of USA, underlined three conditions that must be met for a president to act effectively. First, he said the president has to be on top of situations, getting the facts, and all the facts take hard work. The president, he also stated, cannot make decisions if he does not know what the alternatives are. Likewise he cannot know what the alternatives are if he does not have all the facts. Second, the president has to find the best men he can to be in his staff and his cabinet. Third, the president needs an organisation that can and will give full effort to his decisions.

To get the job done and make achievable decisions the president as the chief executive and the commander-in-chief, is constitutionally empowered to appoint all the heads and members of the entire Executive Offices in the government. These executive offices are structured into the Presidency, in the inner ring and two others in concentric circles namely the President Cabinet and some autonomous Federal Executive and Advisory Bodies consisting of Commissions, Councils and Boards. All of these are responsible for social, economic and political matters.

The Executive Office of the President in general terms, is meant to provide him with a ready flow of information on top-level problems; help him in anticipating and planning for future programme; protect him from minor and time consuming details and ensure the implementation and coordination of policies. The most prominent institution in the president executive office is the President’s Cabinet which is wholly political in its makeup and has never been capable of providing the needed assistance to him. Very often, the interests of members of the cabinet are disparate if not conflicting since they align with the interest of their various political parties’ programme and to some extent the departments they head. The Cabinet was never intended to be working staff for the president, but they are prescribed by statue and thus are accountable in some respect to the National Assembly. However, they are all directly responsible to the president as the chief executive and their primary function is to assist him.

The Presidency is the most immediate to the president and one that attracts the most attention. This office is characterized by its flexibility and the broad scope of its activities. In many respects, it is the personal staff of the president helping him in his day-to-day tasks by preparing speeches, handling correspondences, maintaining inter relationship with the National Assembly, Cabinet Ministries, Departments, Agencies and the Public, regulating the flow of papers and visitors and taking care of the details and minutiae associated with his positions. The structure and operational procedure of the presidency varies from one president to another. While a president like chief Obsanjo capped the hierarchical structure of his presidency with a Chief of Staff, Yar’Adua had a Special Assistant to the President with extensive powers.

As distinct as the functions of the executive bodies may be, they often overlap and they also impinge on the national security affairs. The national security on the other hand would normally reflect principally the president’s view on the overall national policy and on his role in formulating and coordinating internal security and territorial defence. The more important an executive or advisory body is, should determine the president’s relationship with it, its responsibility and the presidential authority it enjoys. In many cases, this would always impinge every time on the national security affair.

Among the bodies in the president’s executive office, the National Security Council (NSC) is the one that he has as his first concern because it involves the security of the nation. Other executive offices like the Ministry of Defence and the Ministries of Foreign and Internal Affairs could be directly or partially involved.  However, the clear constitutional authority vested on the president on national security over other social and economic matters can be used to enlarge the power and the composition of the National Security Council. Although the president shares part of his authority with the National Assembly which makes laws and appropriates votes for national security, he exercises initiative, authority and leadership in matter of security and neither the National Assembly nor any agency of the government can therefore initiate or carry out national security programme without the president’s approval.

An Obasanjo as president could be on top of national security matters because of a previous experience as a General, former Head of State and Commander-in-Chief. A Yar’Adua could also have an advantage of unsolicited and genuine advice on national security from political interest and committed ex-security and service chiefs from his geographical zone or region. But for a President Jonathan in an unstructured and highly personalized ways of doing government business in Nigeria, he would probably need more advice than what he could possibly get from most members of the established executive and advisory bodies. He needs genuine advice and supports from committed quarters both within and outside the present formal national security structure, including the academia etc to contribute to the process of decision making in the matter of the national security. Part 1(section 25j) of the Third Schedule of the constitution surely empowers him to do that.

The National Security Council is one huge committee of representatives of many agencies that could suffer from comparative weaknesses like most other committees. The members sometimes may not always be free to adopt the broad statesmanlike attitude desired by the president but might rather depend on the views of their own departments. The result of their differences could produce presidentially approved statements on national security that could be imprecise or too broad to be applied for specific national problem. Sometimes the agencies heads may have difficulties in understanding and implementing presidential directives and they might take advantage of vaguely worded directives to do whatever they wished with the president’s directives in their own peculiar operational ways.

Some other times, clear cut views and differences of opinions or recommendation of members of the NSC could have difficulties in emerging at council meetings; Agencies Heads therefore could tend to individually bypass the council to seek the president’s ear. The result can create a breakdown in staff work and coordination that could threaten to negate the great potential value of the National Security Council. Should this happen, it could indicate that the president would need help through legislation on matter of national security. Recognition of these problems would therefore require a study on the role and procedure of the National Security Council in state security matters.

A peep into the working system of the NSC would enable us to find out what is the  knowledge behind the basis on which the quality of the national security programme planning depends or runs; how does the NSC and the president derive or generate information and intelligence about threats to national interest or security? What are the process of collection, evaluation, analysis, integration, and interpretation of intelligence information?

The knowledge of all these would enable us to know if the process adopted by the NSC can produce useful, credible, and reasonably accurate intelligence from the source. Knowledge of the process will also enable us to know if the process is well coordinated and considered by decision makers within the context of national values and objectives. Above all, we should know if information about intelligence is properly disseminated to the end users that need –to- know or to the state security forces to enable them to effectively interdict or disrupt the agents of the threats and attacks at their planning stage and not when they become operational.

Our national security programme planning suffers from the absence of an Executive National Intelligence Agency in the national security structure and this is a major factor in the national security policy. Here we rely on the different opinions of intelligence derived from various security agencies which generally are only relevant to their individual services and peculiar operations. This negates the relevance of intelligence or their value to the overall national security policy.

Doubts as to the quality of our national intelligence were engendered by the examples of its alleged failures to interdict or infiltrate the perpetrators at the planning stages of the bombing attacks on the Bonga Offshore Oil Field, Atlas Cove Onshore Fuel Depot Lagos, Mogadisu Army Barracks Abuja, the nation’s 50^th Independent Anniversary in Abuja, the Police Headquarters Abuja, incessant bombings in Bauchi and Maidugri etc. even when there were signs and early warnings of these attacks.  While the validity of the criticism might be disputed, the alleged weaknesses and failures in intelligence called for closer scrutiny and supervision of the intelligence community.

True, our armed services and the police have organic intelligence, but their respective intelligence is tailored and useful only for their individual and peculiar services requirement and operations. The present Joint Intelligence Board (JIB) process of intelligence gathering by the National Security Adviser is a collection of biased and most times cloudy arguments of the various services, which cannot provide the National Security Council all the facts needed to sufficiently advise the President in making fair judgment or taking actionable decisions. A professionally autonomous body would therefore be required to coordinate and collate unbiased intelligence from the security agencies into a cohesive actionable decisions and help the president in taking  actionable decisions whenever it matter most.

Free nations need intelligence today to assure survival and studies have shown that intelligence is as important as the armed strength of free nations. In this era of pushbutton weapons, intelligence is more than ever before the first line of defence. Intelligence therefore is an instrument of defence and of the national security policy that must be subjected to effective and continuing higher review and coordination. In which case, its collection, collation, evaluation and analysis are jobs for professionals.  The golden rule in intelligence gathering is silence, because more can be lost by saying too much, or too soon, than by saying very little. If public statements have to be made at all, they must be made only in response to overriding national interest and on the responsibility and under the control of the high authority.

With the current level of threats and violence coming from our homegrown terrorists, the National Assembly and the President would need to do more than warning the criminals at every attack. Government should first determine how effectively or efficiently has it organised existing human and capital resources towards a coherent pattern for the national security. Government should also review the structure and the organisational capacity in the management and control of the security agencies intelligence with a view to restructuring them into an effective and efficient network on an executive platform for collaboration and integration. The aim is to provide a coherent and cohesive intelligence support for the decision making process in the National Security Council and for the president to take actionable decision.

Secondly, government should commence the review and amendments to executive policies, orders, directives and procedures that govern national security classifications of intelligence information in an effort to expand access to relevant information for federal agencies outside the intelligence community, for states, local authorities and the Nigeria public which are critical to the fight against homegrown terrorists.

Thirdly, government should begin the process of designing or amending the National Security Act to create and sufficiently staff a statutory executive director of National Intelligence Agency as distinct from the National Intelligence Agency in the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the non- executive office of the National Security Adviser. The Director of the proposed National Intelligence Agency should be the president’s principal adviser on intelligence and should have the full arrangement of management, budgetary and personnel responsibilities needed to make the entire national intelligence communities operate as a coherent whole. No person however, should simultaneously serve as the National Security Adviser and Director of National Intelligence Agency or as the Director of any other specific intelligence or security agency,

A statutory Executive Director of National Intelligence as distinct from the National Security Adviser should coordinate intelligence from the executive agencies of the Defence, SSS, Police, Border Security(Customs and Immigration) Internal Affairs and Foreign Affairs Ministries etc. This Directorate should collate, analyse and evaluate information received from these intelligence community agencies and regularly disseminate intelligence to the National Security Council and to the president.

Perhaps, it could be argued by some that the Joint Intelligence Board chaired by the National Security Adviser functions well as an intelligence community. Unfortunately constitutionally, the Joint Intelligence Board as presently constituted is not a statutory body and the National Security Adviser, though a member of the National Security Council has an advisory role not an executive or statutory power unlike the other members of the NSC.

It is important to state finally, that all the members of the Executive office of the president ie the Presidency, the Cabinet and the Federal Executive Boards appointed by the President and approved by the Senate are only exercising the power of the president in their official capacity and are therefore only advisers in their relationship with him. They can only make recommendations to the president and only him as the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief can take decisions on national security and any other matters. He can not delegate Decisions on national security matters in particular, to any agency, committee or individual to make. The president can however delegate the execution of his decisions on national security and other matters to the constitutionally responsible agency, department or ministry. Even when he sits as the chairman of any council meeting and indicates agreement with specific recommendation, this does not become a decision or presidential order until the executive council or NSC to be precise, present a final document to him and secures his written and signed approval, before it can become a Government Policy, Presidential Decision, Directive or Orders.

Wanted – A Coordinate Executive Intelligence Agency for the National Security Community, Group Captain John O. Ojikutu (Retired) - December, 2010

“Decision Makers  often forget that intelligence is as important as the armed strength of the state security forces and more than often, they forget also that, it is the first line of the national defence against any threat” (Stanley L. Falk in National Security Management, 1972)

One of the heroes in the US war against terrorist’s threats who most Americans will for a long time continue to admire for his candid opinion and courageous expressions on the work in the US Intelligence Community is Richard Clerk, an Intelligence Analyst and a former Coordinator of the Counterterrorist’s Security Group of the National Security Council in the Bush Administration.  Richard Clerk it was, who out of frustration of the Bush government inaction against terrorists threats, wrote Condi Rice, then the National Security Adviser to President Bush on Tuesday September 4^th, 2001 that “…… imagine a day after hundreds of Americans lay dead at home or abroad after a terrorist attack and ask themselves what else they could have done”.  That was seven days before the Tuesday September 11^th, 2001 attacks on the US.

Clerk had told the US Congressional Hearing during the investigation into the 9/11 terrorists attacks on the US that “…..while the Bush Administration listened to me, it didn’t either believed me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem” In his remarks at the same Congressional Hearing, he had told the American citizens present and those watching on national TV that “….. your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you.  We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed”. 

These candid expressions, essentially a critical assessment of a government by a senior government official is very rear and definitely not in the attitude or character of most government officials or political office holders to criticize the government under which they serve.  But the kind of frustration which Richard Clerk faced before the 9/11 that made him confront the National Security Adviser was the type that had overwhelmed most angered Nigerians following the Abuja bomb blast that killed 14 and injured 66 innocent Nigerians during the 50^th independence Anniversary in October and the recent one at the Mogadishu Military Barracks Abuja that killed about 11 persons on the new year eve and injured 13 persons .It was the type that troubled some others following the attacks on the offshore Bonga Oil platform and the Atlas Cove Oil Depot in Lagos.  The same frustration you probably would find among some other Nigerians over the various arms cache found in some containers at the Apapa seaports.

These examples of public frustrations were the results of government inactions and missed signals from the opportunities that would have been presented by intelligence for decision makers to counter the threats to national security before they become operational or active. Intelligence as it were, is about gathering information on imminent threats and analysing them into Pre emption and for Disruption. While pre emption is about pre empting the threat and determining the mode, timings location or target of threats and identifying those behind it, Disruption on the other hand is to prevent or interdict the threat at the planning stage before it becomes operational or active and arresting the actors for prosecutions.

The Nigerian experience does not only demonstrated the lack of understanding of intelligence as distinct from the strength of the state security forces, but also the unwillingness of the security forces to collaborate and to jointly attack the threats. The challenges in the management of the national security system are more than the prospect of establishing new or Special Forces in addition to the present forces structures or the installation of high technical surveillance system. These challenges require the government to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of the present structure and determine what we have done wrong, what we have failed to do right or why we have failed to the right things.

Nigerian Security Management Challenges

Before the occurrence of the most dastardly attacks between the months of October and December, there were evidence in some media reports suggesting that the government and the security agencies had prior knowledge with sufficient time to nip the threats of the attacks in the bud at the planning stages. They for instance, had ample time to interdict the arms cache at the Apapa Wharf between July when it arrived, and October when they were eventually discovered during a re-shipment to the Gambia.  Rather than take responsibility for their failures and the lack of coordinate intelligence in the decision making process, government agencies and political officials response was to be defensive of their inactions, criticising each others agencies, and hiding behind the veil of secrecy or national security.  Yet, in the words of Craig Whitney of the New York Times, they forget that “accountability from elected and appointed officials of government when something goes terribly wrong are the basic responsibilities to citizens in a democracy”. 

Assessing government security agencies failures and inactions in matters of national security is to demand accountability from government decision makers and its intelligence services  by asking to know, how much intelligence they all had or derived from the threat warnings given by MEND weeks before each attack particularly, those aimed at “the heart of the nation”? For example, did our decision makers not know from intelligence that “the heart of the nation” as MEND had put it in some of its early warnings may not literarily mean Abuja the Federal Capital geographically situated at the heart of the country, but could also mean, the live wires of the nations ecomony represented in the Bonga Oil Rig Platform, the Atlas Cove Oil Depot and the oil pipelines which are prime symbols of economic importance to the country?  Has the government security agencies been able to draw further intelligence to identify and provide protections for other symbols of economic importance which could be potential targets of attacks to our home grown terrorists? 

Following the bombing of the Atlas Cove Oil Depot in Lagos, and while not trying to do the job for the terrorists,  I alerted some government officials and decision makers asking: who is responsible for keeping watch over other symbols of economic importance in this nation which may include our air and sea ports, the bridges over rivers Niger and Benue connecting the South to the North and East to West including those connecting Lagos Island to the Mainland, the power generating stations and transmitting lines, communications network, major  oil refineries, oil and gas pipelines, major military installations and strategic industries etc?

Have our security agencies been able to identify Nigerians who are threats or are of high risks to the national security particularly, among our politicians and within the religion and ethnic militant groups irrespective of the magnanimity in the current government amnesty programme?  How many of these persons are under surveillance or have been put under security watch-list? Above all, who are those behind the political killings, incessant kidnappings, recurring religious rioting particularly the Boko Haram and Jos crisis etc?  Why have we not been able to find the intelligent solutions to all these or better still what are the intelligence behind them?

In retrospect and against the background of what some observers adjudged as credible information from the MEND early warnings, or actionable intelligence from foreign sources, what did government security agencies and decision makers do to protect Nigerians during the 50^th Independent Anniversary in the light of the information that were available to them weeks before the event?  Why did the security agencies not prohibit or restrict the movement and parking of vehicles within a radius of 1 – 2km to the anniversary ground or why did the responsible agency not provide controlled corridors for screened private vehicles and public   transport into the event area? Were there no security patrols and surveillance around anniversary ground before and during the celebration, to lookout for the presence of abnormal behaviors and the absence of normal behaviors?  Most importantly, which agency was responsible to coordinate intelligence and security for the management of security during the anniversary?

The discoveries of the arm cache at the Apapa seaports have some semblance of the arm cache on a cargo plane that landed at Kano International Airport sometime ago. With no coordinate intelligence consideration, Security agencies concluded that the arms were destined for the Niger Delta.  When the investigation was eventually carried out and completed, the aircraft was released on “orders from above” and left to departed with the cargo of arms to a destination that was not in the Niger Delta or in any part of Nigeria.

 In that similar fashion, while the discovery of the arm cache was being unfolded at the Apapa Wharf the Israeli coordinate intelligence network tracking the containers of the arms from Iran into Lagos came out categorically to state that the arms were destined to Gaza.  In converse, our security services insisted that the arms were meant for discharge in Nigeria even when there was nothing to suggest that the national intelligence officers at the Nigerian Embassies in Iran and India, the origin and the first point of call of the arms respectively, had alerted or shared any information with the SSS which was contrary to the statement credited to the Israeli Embassy in Lagos.

These examples of missed signals and evidence of missed opportunities in our security management system show clearly that our security agencies do not sufficiently network or share analysis from their intelligence among themselves. This perception among security agencies that they have ownership of the intelligence they acquire impedes the flow of information.  In effect, information analysts in the responsible agencies are often denied access to critical intelligence held in other security community.  This perception is further made more serious by the lack of a coordinate executive agency that is statutorily responsible to collate intelligence derived from the various Security agencies into a coherent whole for the National Security Council to sufficiently advise the President or for the president himself to take effective decisions on matters concerning national security.

Structural Challenges and Recommendations

The Punch Newspaper succinctly captured the lack of collaboration among our security agencies on its headlines of October14th, 2010 where it reported the “Rivalry between SSS police threatens Probe” following the Abuja bomb blast. The paper expressly stated that “the two agencies have been carrying out their investigation without sharing information and evidence on the blast that killed i4 persons and injured 66 persons”’. It went further to report that “.the mastermind would not have succeeded if the two agencies had collaborated when intelligence reports that some people were planning to bomb Abuja reach them.” The paper concluded with a barn- door – closed – after- the – horses- have escaped claim by the SSS ‘’which believe that “it should be at the forefront of the investigation because the incident undermined the National Security since it was meant to disrupt a National Celebration attended by the President, other senior government officials and visiting head of states”. 

These evidences of consistent lack of collaboration among security agencies   requires government to define the line of responsibility between each agencies in matters of national security and determine which of them is responsible for interdicting threats at the planning stage and which is responsible for arrests and prosecution after the acts.

With these obvious flaws and gaps in the national security management in an environment that is largely characterised by home grown terrorists masquerading as religious fanatics and ethnic militants, and in an election year that is perverted with inflammatory utterances coming from our supposedly elite statesmen and politicians, the present insecurity has gotten to a crescendo that is beyond the establishment of additional security agencies or the deployment of tens of CCTVs. We have more than enough security agencies from the traditional armed forces of Army, Navy and Air Force, the Police, SSS and the NSCDC for the territorial and internal security, to the immigration and customs services for the border security. We also get early warnings from friendly countries and most times too from the home grown terrorists themselves than whatever we may possibly get from the CCTVs that may not function most of the times due to inadequate power supply.

Recommendations

The federal government will need more than warning pronouncement to the criminals.  Our starting point should be to determine how effectively and efficiently we have been utilising the existing assets of human capital and infrastructure within the national security systems. In addition, the federal government would need to urgently review the chain of control of the security agencies organic intelligence units with a view to restructuring them into an effective and efficient network with a platform for collaboration. The aim is to provide a coherent and cohesive intelligence support for the decision making process in the National Security Council and for the President.

Secondly, government should review and consider amendments to executive policies, orders and procedures that govern national security classifications of intelligence information in an effort to expand access to relevant information for federal agencies outside the intelligence community, for states, local authorities and the Nigeria public which are critical to the fight against terrorism.

Thirdly, government should begin the process of amending the National Security Act to create and sufficiently staff a statutory Executive Director of National Intelligence as distinct from the National Intelligence Agency in the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the non-executive Office of the National Security Adviser.  The Director of the proposed National Intelligence Agency should be the President’s principal adviser on intelligence and should have the full arrangement of management, budgetary and personnel responsibilities needed to make the entire national intelligence communities operate as a coherent whole. No person however, should simultaneously serve as both the National Security Adviser and Director of National Intelligence Agency or as the Director of any other specific intelligence or security agency.

A Statutory Executive Director of National Intelligence as distinct from the National Security Adviser should coordinate intelligence from the executive agencies mainly of the Defence, SSS, Police, Border Security (Custom and Immigration) Internal Affairs and Foreign Affairs Ministries etc.  This Directorate should collate, analyse and evaluate information received from these intelligence community agencies and disseminate intelligence to the National Security Council (NSC) and to the President.

Perhaps, it could be argued by some that the Joint Intelligence Board chaired by the National Security Adviser functions well as an intelligence community.  Unfortunately constitutionally, the Joint Intelligence Board as presently constituted is not a statutory body, and the National Security Adviser too, though a member of the National Security Council (NSC) has no executive or statutory power like the other members over any member of the JIB on national security. 

It is important to stress finally, that the National Security Adviser is a part of the Presidency and essentially too, like the other President’s Advisers, an advisory arm of the Presidency rather than a policy making body. He can only make recommendations for the President and only him as the Commander in Chief can take decisions on national security matters.  A decision he can not delegate to any Agency, Committee or individual. The President can however delegate the execution   of his decision on national security to the constitutionally responsible agency, department or ministry. Even when he sits as the chairman of the NSC and indicates agreement with specific recommendation, this does not become a decision or presidential order until the council or the NSC present a final document to him and secure his written and signed approval, before it can become a Government Policy, Presidential Decisions, Directives or Orders.

BOY FLIES IN ARIK AIRCRAFT UNDER CARRIAGE HOLE FROM BENIN TO LAGOS

 

Just before the opening of the Enugu Airport to international flights last week, through text messages and emails, I called the attention of the Nigerian civil civil aviation authorities at the ministry and at its parastatals to the quality of the aviation security control at that airport. Enugu airport was not the only airport that the quality of its security control programme requires attention, all the Nigerian 22 airports under the management of FAAN require such attention, because as I said in the mails, none of these airports had airport security fence. Sure, they all have perimeter fences that could be said to have met the international requirement for aerodrome standards (ICAO Annex 14), but most of them do not have enhanced security fence to enable them sufficiently comply with ICAO Annex 17 on Aviation Security.

Away from the buck passing that is going on now between FAAN and Arik Airline,the incident that occurred on Arik flight from Benin to Lagos on Saturday 24^th August 2013 called to question the quality of the airport security control programme at Benin Airport and the other 22 airports and the quality of Arik Airline security control programme. By now, the NCAA, the responsible civil aviation authority should be finding out what the quality of the access control at Benin Airport was like and what was the quality of the airport perimeter fence that enabled a teenager to cross the security controlled line? Was the airport conducting routine or regular patrol of the perimeter fence if the perimeter fence was not security enhanced?

Responsible authority should in addition, find out: how did a teenager acting alone get access into the airport security controlled area?  Did he get any help from airport staff to find the aircraft undercarriage hold as safe area to hide or did he find it by himself? For a teenager who knew little to nothing about aircraft, he probably got some insider help to do what he did.

Secondly, if the news report quoting the spokesman of FAAN was true, that the pilot of the Arik aircraft was informed of the unusual movement of a person under the aircraft before the takeoff from Benin, the pilot took a questionable risk that must be investigated by the NCAA.  We could start having copycats or moles of terrorists as stowaway, if the NCAA and State Security Service respectively or collectively fail to commence immediate investigation into the acts of the boy, and that of the pilot.

The information provided by a passenger on board the aircraft was critical for the pilot to have aborted his takeoff from Benin and allow the security authority at the airport to conduct search, checks or inspection of the aircraft before any further takeoff in accordance with the provision of International Standard on civil aviation security (ICAO Annex 17). With the level of criminal activities in our environment, the boy could have been a courier for any of our homegrown terrorist groups sent to place explosive devices under the aircraft at the point of take-off.

Buck passing that provides no solutions seems to be regular trade marks by aviation operators whenever something goes wrong with the security and safety systems that they have themselves put in place. Recall that, it was the same buck passing between Arik and FAAN when Arik Pilot taxied his aircraft into a parked aircraft at Jos airport few years ago claiming that the apron markings were too faint to be seen. It was the same buck passing among operators, FAAN, NAHCO inclusive, and government customs agency at MMIA when DDC machine got stolen by a trespasser through the airport fence from Akowonjo end of the airport perimeter fence.

This latest incidence of breaches in aviation security opens a window of opportunity for the new leadership at the NCAA to conduct comprehensive security survey or audits on all the nations airports and domestic airlines security programmes and the National Civil Aviation Security Programmes (NCASP) with a view to adjusting their vulnerability to the current level of the threats in our environment.

The stowaway of Saturday 24 August 2013 by a teenager was not the first occurrence in Nigeria. In 1992, a boy of about the same age with the one in the latest incidence, flew in similar manner on KLM to Armsterdam and was brought back to Nigeria through the MMIA two weeks later by the Dutch police and immigration officers.  One adult whose identity could not be determined and his nationality became controvercial did not survive in the aircraft undercarriage hole of an Egypt Air flight between Abidjan and Lagos in 1992.

Teenager holding on inside an aircraft undercarriage hole may be intriguing, what is even more amazing is how these boys were able to withstand temperatures of about 5 degrees centigrades or less at high altitudes especially in the case of the one on 6 hours flight from Lagos to Armsterdam.