•Subtitle: EX-ministers go! Drugged luggage=Druggage; Undeclared war; Second Niger Bridge!

President Buhari, welcome. Issue ‘All change’ to ministers -good or bad- go, while EFCC must initiate forensic investigations for the corrupt Judases. Nothing personal, just a common sense ‘change’ presidential anticorruption strategy. We have good new people- new minister materials to serve Nigeria 2019-2023. No one is indispensable.

Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) are suffering too much abuse, rape, deprivation, uncertainty, financial and infrastructural menaces. Government wake up, serve your people.  You could be a refugee tomorrow.

Nigerian security services work -when they want to. But they react, not prevent. Zainab Aliyu could have been executed. Her release indicts us all, informers and security. Abroad, the ‘Internal Affairs Department’ in security outfits prevents and detects internal crime with pre-emptive intelligence reports, investigation, punishment, prosecution on staff offenders.

Did ICPC, EFCC not hear of this crime years ago? Today we are deaf to rumoured government pension office scam cartels extorting from pensioners. Are there not preventive measures like luggage counts? These people destroy electronic monitoring equipment.  Are other airports involved? How many other passengers have been traumatized by being wrongly caught, prosecuted, incarcerated and even executed? If Zainab had been executed, they would have loudly clicked their teeth watched the Breaking News and warned listeners not to carry drugs o! In the office they would have lamented loudly ‘Is that not the girl who passed through my duty post? And we did not suspect her o!!!!!’ Of course, they would have known what their failure has cost the drug provider and planned to plant drugged luggage or ‘Druggage’ on a new courier!  This crime should earn the guilty life incarceration. Zianab could have been executed! The media must have structured public awareness projects on such risks.

International deaths in the Northern Castle, 15 soldiers killed Magumeri Borno, base overrun, weapons seized, kidnapping of Daura leader, UBEC chairman and 100s of serious incidents including murders of police scream impunity pointing to an army of sophisticated informed terrorists. Ore-Benin and Lagos Ibadan road are used to being terrorised and people were abandoned to extortionist police. Add Abuja–Kaduna Road! Remember the government then hardly ever cut the elephant grass to prevent rocks being thrown at vehicle windows. Now the problem is strangling the North by social media enlightened disgruntled talakawa implementing a rebellion or imported Fulani and ISIS militia. This is war. How many personnel and civilians must die? Our goal in any war should be the capture and surrender of the enemy which is not afraid of the police, armed forces or death. Why is there no attempt to limit the influx of terrorists across our border? We merely drive the enemy out from one place to another only for them to regroup, when we withdraw at night, for another counterattack!

In this war, why do the police and the army go public with secret plans and announce to Boko Haram and marauding herder and road terrorists their python and scorpion operations in advance? Nigeria’s terrorists are not stupid. This is not a confrontational war. It is a hit and run, guerrilla, war. The first laws of war are deception, surprise and concealment of real plans. Does the armed forces want the bandit to flee to other states and come back when the army announces the operation’s end?

We never see encircling activities to prevent an exit strategy which would capture the enemy. Instead we hear of confrontation allowing the terrorists a clear unmined exit route with no ambush. The terrorists just go away to terrorise another day. Amateur military historians of Alexander, Artemisia, Boudica, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Hannibal, Napoleon, Saladin, Queen Amina, Queen Mother Yaa Ashantewaa, Chaka Zulu know that security means S7 =SSSSSSS -Strategise, Surveillance, Scenarios, Surround, Surprise, Subdue, Subjugate! We are at war. Use ‘The Media Rules of War’. Value our courageous Nigerian armed personnel and do not put them in harm’s way. The media should act in a war mode. Their reports must not feed the enemy with intelligence. News items that endanger our soldiers endangers us all. No more warnings before the armed forces strike.  The terrorists also read the news media, have spies and witness troop movements.

An innocent white Australian lady, Justine Damond, reported a crime, was shot dead for her trouble by police in Minneapolis, USA. Her family was awarded $20m, no substitute for life. Perhaps such punitive damages will reduce police violence. Who teaches them ‘shoot to kill’ like soldier vs soldier and not ‘shoot to maim’ like police vs civilian? What is awarded to the many ‘wrongful death’ African-American families? If we can pay politicians high pay and pension, Nigeria must raise the value of Nigerian life, and award its murdered victims’ families realistic punitive damages.

Strangely our Supreme Court awarded a single contractor N132,000,000,000, at N360:1$ that is $366,666,666 and approves fines of billions of dollars for contraventions of regulations against wayward banks and conniving cellphone companies for financial impropriety. Murder perpetrated by security forces is a financial cyber, physical and mechanical, bullet attack terminating a corporate [bodily] person’s financial potential -a financial loss demanding compensatory awards for the surviving families.

Hurray. The ghost is dead. The Second Niger Bridge, a concrete reality, no longer a mirage, is rising from the Niger River of ghost stories retold at each ‘election promise’and, 9th Assembly disruption aside, opening in 2023 according to vice president.