When Will Nigeria Cease To Be An Analogue Nation?

[Shola Sholaz]

Last month, Joe my cousin, who is always frightened of the Military called me on phone to warn me never again to offend, in his words, "dangerous persons and institutions like the Army". His call came one day after I delivered a rather combative paper at a military conference in Lagos. He sternly asked me: what do you know about security that makes you think you can publicly criticize the Army? While agreeing that I know just a little about warfare, I opined that professionalism in military operations is a different subject from public perception of what the Army does or chooses not to do.
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For instance, whatever is the opinion of the Army on issues such as the use of road blocks on our highways to combat crime, they are rather obsolete to me. In earnest, we – laymen – have a right to imagine that anyone who chooses to inflict collective fear could in fact easily blast with a bomb, all those managing a road block as well as all the travelers in the usually long queues around it.
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Today, many of the several 4-lane streets in our beautiful capital city- Abuja have, for security reasons, been converted to one-lane streets. While the Army may think that the policy can curtail the easy movement of criminals; a public analyst is free to see the policy decision as akin to that of a man who decides to blind himself so as not to see his enemies. How then, does he see his friends? I then concluded my response to Cousin Joe that my concern is for Nigeria to follow the times, dump stone-age strategies and emulate societies which use modern technology to detect and arrest heinous crimes.