Rethinking special protection

It was by all parameters a gory Friday. Seven persons, including three police officers and a lady, were killed penultimate weekend in a gun ambush on the General Overseer of Omega Fire Ministries, Apostle Johnson Suleman. The controversial cleric said it was an assassination bid against him, whereas police narrative suggested it was a kidnap attempt. Whatever it was, lives were needlessly lost.

Suleiman was said to be returning from a trip to Tanzania en route to Auchi, his base in Edo State, when gunmen opened fire on his convoy and cut the victims down in cold blood. He was riding in an armoured Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), while the vehicles in which others accompanying him rode were not as protectively reinforced. They were, in effect, sitting ducks in the firestorm. Suleiman’s account was that the gunmen were after him, but he managed to beat the ambush in his bulletproof car. Those felled in the hailstorm of bullets weren’t as lucky apparently because they were not bulletproofed. “I just escaped an assassination attempt where seven people were killed,” the cleric said in video posted on his Facebook page shortly after the attack. “My car was attacked. They opened fire on my car and kept spraying it with bullets. My wife and my kids were there. The escort car was in front with some police(men), they killed the policeman. They killed the other people in the other escort car and the buses with us. Seven people — we were all moving in a convoy — were killed,” he narrated. Police account, though, was that six persons were killed and one missing in the attack.  

Developments following the shooting compounded the conspiracy theory. One of the gunmen was apprehended alive by local vigilante people and handed over to the police. The Auchi Divisional Police Officer Ayodele Suleiman, however, was seen extra-judicially and summarily executing the suspect, prompting Apostle Suleiman to accuse the police of designs to cover up tracks. The state police command subsequently said the DPO had been recalled for debriefing at the command headquarters. But all that is by the way and not the point of interest here.

The deadly gun attack on Apostle Suleiman happened barely six weeks after a similar ambush on Senator Ifeanyi Ubah, who represents Anambra South senatorial district in the red chamber of the National Assembly. Ubah’s convoy was attacked by gunmen late on Sunday, 11th September, in Enugwu-Ukwu, Njikoka council area of Anambra State while returning to Nnewi, his home town. No fewer than five persons were killed in that attack – two policemen from among Ubah’s security escorts and three civilians, one of them a passer-by. Besides the fatalities, two policemen were injured and taken to the hospital for medical help. Ubah escaped the assault in his bulletproof SUV. “Amidst the confusion, all the cars were just ramming into one another. But since the vehicle the senator was riding in was bulletproof, his driver managed to manoeuvre out of the damaged cars and drive away, even as it was being shot at,” an eyewitness told media outlets following the attack. A media assistant to Ubah confirmed that but for the bulletproof car he rode in, the senator might have been unlucky. “If not for the bulletproof SUV the senator was riding in, he would have been dead by now. We were passing Enugwu-Ukwu junction when they hit us from all sides,” Kameh Ogbonna recalled to journalists. 

If primary targets of gun ambushes are making it out alive in bulletproof vehicles whereas accompanying persons get killed as collateral targets in same ambushes, it is about time we reappraised the protection cover for the entire entourage. In other words, if a ‘big man’ feels sufficiently threatened to get himself an armoured carrier for a car despite having armed security escorts, it would be exposing those escorts and all others in the entourage to foreseen danger when they ride along in ordinary (i.e. non-armoured) vehicles. True, those escorts are usually armed. But there’s just so much anyone could do if they unexpectedly run into a hailstorm of bullets in unfortified vehicles, even with the arms they bear. In the best case of alertness and reflex action, the split second of shock and confusion that a gun ambush on a moving convoy imposes is all it takes to fall victim – unless, of course, the armed escorts are protected like the principal in armored vans.

“If a ‘big man’ feels sufficiently threatened to get himself an armoured…car despite having armed security escorts, it would be exposing those escorts…to foreseen danger when they ride along in non-armoured vehicles.”

The escorts who get killed in convoy attacks obviously belong to the police’s Special Protection Unit (SPU), which is a special unit of the Force established avowedly to provide dedicated security for high-risked persons including political actors, diplomats as well as expatriates working on sensitive government projects and foreign direct investments in Nigeria. The unit is a creation of the 2009 Police Reform Agenda of government, although it didn’t commence full operations until 2011. At the opening of the SPU Base 25 complex in Asaba, the Delta State capital in September 2019, then Police Inspector-General Mohammed Adamu was reported saying the SPU was set up to “fortify security around VIPs and diplomats who, by all ramifications, must be protected and guarded against any unforeseen attacks.” I have argued elsewhere that the merit of using the national police institution to provide dedicated security for some persons – not just top political office holders by virtue of their high offices – and not for other citizens is highly debatable. It is worse that some SPU personnel attached to ‘big men and women’ – private and public – as orderlies get turned into domestic hands and made to do menial chores like housekeeping, handbag carriers and shoe cleaners, among others, for their principals. The recent case of a private ‘big madam’ who is accused of battering her police orderly with help from some domestic staff, just because that orderly refused to join in menial household chores, is yet awaiting adjudication by the judiciary.

Even at that, the least that could be expected is that when national security assets are engaged in private use, they are not sitting ducks in situations where the principal anticipated danger sufficiently to have taken self-preserving safety precautions like providing himself an armoured carrier. Put in a common idiom, sauce for goose should be sauce for gander. Nigeria has a population estimated at over 200million and a national police strength of about 350,000. In aggregate terms, this translates to a ratio of one policeman to about 572 citizens, which falls far short of the United Nations (UN) recommended ratio for policing at 1:400 persons. But it is even more critical than it would appear. The UN recommendation is for where there’s normalcy in the security situation, not where there are peculiar security challenges of terrorism and banditry, insurgency, rampant kidnappings and the like as we have bedeviling us in Nigeria. It is to compound this that only God knows what percentage of the police workforce is assigned to ‘special protection’ duties. We can presume, of course, that the percentage will be more on the higher side than lower, considering that some ‘big men’ have more than a score police personnel dedicated to them alone, and for years on end. To boot, these personnel get killed at a pace faster than the national police workforce is being replenished; and that is not talking about the sheer human loss entailed and the toll for families and dependents, and also the loss of national investment in their training following recruitment into service.

And why should public police personnel serve in private protection duties anyway? Ideally, private persons who need special protection should engage the services of private security guards and equip them with walkie-talkies that can be used for calling in the police when the need arises, not that police personnel be converted to private guards as obtains presently. With the crowd of police personnel assigned to special protection duties, there are too few left to look out for the rest of us.