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In this interview with ANIMASAHUN SALMAN, the acting Chairman of the newly established Sokoto State Community Guards Corps, Yusha’u Muhammad Kebbe, talks about efforts to build local capacity to beef up security in the state
Sokoto State Government recently signed into law the Bill creating the Sokoto Community Guard Corps. What is the significance of the law to the people of the state?
It is indeed a very important occasion and all the members of my committee and by extension, the entire people of the state that this idea that I have been nursing for quite some time now is gradually coming to fruition. When the governor brought the idea of setting up a community vigilante watch, a lot of people didn’t give it a chance and as a member of the media, you will know that so many people gave it a political colouration that it was just a lip service, that the government was not serious about it.
Even as a committee, a lot of people didn’t take us seriously as they believed that we were just being used by the governor and his government to just while away time as regards security challenges in the state. But the signing of this Bill into law has proved all those doubting Thomas wrong because there is now a law on the ground for the establishment of this community guard corps.
 Apart from that, the recruitment exercise has also commenced in earnest. As of today, the final screening is in progress and we hope within the next four days, we would have finished the final screening. Once the screening is over, those who are successful will go into training for about two months, and they will be out hopefully with adequate training to enable them to carry weapons in protecting our different communities.
 Also, according to the statement of the governor, while signing the Bill, this community guard corps is not to operate as an alternative to the existing federal security architecture in the state; they are just complimentary. So, their efforts whatever it is going to be, will be based on the direction and spearheading of the existing security architecture especially that of the military which is directly involved in the insurgency situation.
 Whenever they are going to work, it is going to be along with the military, Police or rather the joint task force that is already working on this insecurity in the state.
 Many of the recruited persons interestingly as I discovered during my local government tours, are already in this local vigilante of which the military was making use of them before now in their operations. Some of them already have local knowledge of the environment where these bandits operate, so you will find out that the military always works with them when they are going out so, it is not a new thing. The only thing the government is doing now is to formalise that relationship and properly give them higher weapons than the guns they were using before.
 That is just the difference. Another one is to have an enabling law that will give their operations legal backing because whatever they will do has to be guided by law. Going forward, we expect to see that the security challenges in the state are being tackled, and as we have started with the existing security architecture in the state (Federal Government security agencies), we are not waiting for bandits to attack before we respond, but now chasing them into their hideouts.
 Let me tell you as we are talking here now, an operation is going on, As I was on my way to the screening exercise at the NYSC orientation camp in Wamakko, we received a report that these bandits have crossed through Bakura forest down to Isa Local Government trying to gather along some villages in that area, so we immediately mobilised the military to the area and we are going to confront them headlong tonight.
This is a new development in the area of insecurity but we have to accept the fact that the number of security operatives that we have currently is not enough to confront these and every challenge that may arise which are part of the reasons we muted this idea of having about 2,000 additional hands, well equipped and trained that will make a difference.  This is because the security operators will now be able to confront the challenges head-on with more hands and resources.
This administration hopes that very soon, everyone will see clearly that the situation is being tackled adequately with an improved security situation in the state.
 Don’t you also have the fear that by the time these people are trained with weapons, they may equally become a threat to society?
 Yes, there is always that fear; you know we are a human organisation in which there are always bad eggs no matter how hard you try in your selection process. Having that in mind, we have taken some measures to ensure that as far as we can, we minimise that kind of situation. We will ensure that once they are not on any operation, all their weapons will be kept at a particular point which is the various Divisional Police offices in their local governments.
 Once they are going out for operations, they will be issued with this weapon under the command and control of the military. So with these steps we are taking, I believe we will be able to minimise such incidences from arising. Also, training takes a very important role in any operation, so the government is making arrangements to ensure that these people are having adequate and continuous training in all ramifications, so it will not just be these two months of training that they will do on arms handling, but the training will be a comprehensive one, like community relations, intelligence gathering and various warfare training, probably ambush operations among others.
 We hope that the various people who will give them a talk like some religious leaders talk to them about the religious aspect of this operation, we will involve a psychologist who will also address issues and assess some mental issues that might be associated with some of them, that is apart from the health and other physical assessment because we don’t want to give someone with psychology issue a weapon to handle; it may be a danger to himself and other people around him.
 So, we are looking into all these problems to make sure that by the grace of God, we minimise to the lowest possible level, incidences of accidental discharge or misdemeanours of people becoming a danger to society and things like that.
 Also, let me tell you this, all the people being recruited, none of them were recruited based on political affiliation or any other connection, each person, his ward head, not just the village head, must certify that he is of good character and not involved in drug, and that he has never being found wanting on issues of stealing or any of such things, apart from his certification by his parents or guardians.
 Also, the district head will have to concur with it that he is of good behaviour, and even the sole administrator of that local government has to concur before we move to the Divisional Police Officer to check his records if he has any record with them for any criminal activities. All these people have to sign on each of their application forms that they are clean. So, we hope with that step we have taken, we will have good output from these people; two, we will minimise any incidences of misdemeanours.
 Security is capital intensive, do you think the state has the financial capacity to sustain the welfare of these corps?
 Thanks for that question. We need to know that security and its maintenance is everybody’s business because whatever you plan to do can only be materialised when there is peace and order. Even, as a religious person, you cannot pray to God when there is insecurity. We have witnessed things like that and those who are in such situations now are in a better position to say so. As a committee, we looked into that and finance may be a big challenge, we have made some recommendations to the government on ways we believe the government can generate some funds to pay off the maintenance of security in the state.
I am sure when we present our final report, you will be there to see some of these recommendations.
 Considering the working conditions of the military who will at times have to wait for a directive from Abuja before mobilising for operations, how do you intend to solve such challenges?
 From my little experience working with the military in the last few months, I have come to understand that some perceptions are wrongly placed about their mode of operations, If I want to believe that we are in war situations, considering the activities of these bandits, are the people that will give order apart from the Commander-in-Chief? Mr President has already given the go-ahead to fight this insurgency,  so that aspect of command has already been taken care of by the presidency. Talking about the military high command who is also involved in giving orders, they have done that a long time ago before the coming of this administration and luckily, we have a GOC in the state who is a member of the military high command and has all the authority to take decisions regarding the operations here in the state. I must tell you that so far, we have not had the challenge of getting his approval to operate in any areas.
His assistants ( the lieutenants) operating in the area have always been forthcoming. As I told you earlier, it was on our way to NYSC camp that we received an intelligence call and before we got to the camp, the mobilisation had already been done for people to move the forest, so what is more cordial than that?
So, I must commend them for the way and manner and the speed of response to security cause. Also, on Wednesday, there was a challenge in Gwadabawa, one of the villages there few minutes to midnight, bandits entered the area and killed one person but we were able to call the military and they were able to mobilise them immediately before the bandits could do so much carnage, they quickly ran away on their motorcycles.
This is to tell you how proactive the current posture is. Before, you may be calling for up to four hours without seeing anybody but now, even their (bandits) movement is being monitored and the moment we receive any notification of their movements anywhere, we contact the military and they will take action. This is a great divergence from the previous posture of the military, so I must say that for now, we don’t anticipate getting the challenge of getting approvals to operate.
 Already they are in various local government including bushes, they enter some for two-three days without coming out. Sometimes they operate for up to four days in the bush, like the last operations last week, for four days they were in the bush challenging these people and they get there their tyre flat.
 So you can see now, before they would just stay at the entrances of the local governments’ headquarters checking vehicles but now they are good into the bush even searching for where these places are hiding. Going forward, we anticipate the use of technology like drones, civilian surveillance drones that can give us within a 10-kilometre radius, that can give us a clear location of where these bandits are operating. With that, we can be able to attack them with precision; we hope they have only two or three options.
The options I gave when I visited the various local governments, they can surrender and give up their weapons, they also have the option to leave the state and move elsewhere or the last resort which is to lose their lives.
 Is your committee working in synergy with other neighbouring states with similar security arrangements?
Yes, I am sure you know that the Northwest States are joined by one border and where these insurgents are included Zamfara, Katsina and now Sokoto states; these three states are working together. Before we started, we went to Katsina State to see how they established their community guard, look at the law and then make some adaptations to our situation here.
Coming back home, Zamfara State has also started training, so the same people that train Katsina, Zamfara are also training our people here in Sokoto. So we looked at where they have some loopholes or issues in both Katsina and Zamfara States, and we tried as much as we could to block those loopholes.
So there is quite a lot of synergy between us. I am sure you know Sokoto has a border with Katsina and a very big border with Zamfara State. So we are working together because there is synergy between us. There might be a problem, remember I said earlier that some bandits are crossing from Zamfara State. So with synergy, we can share intelligence and operate joint operations.
 Is there any machinery to check corruption or unethical behaviour among the personnel?
 Let me break the corruption into two aspects; the issue of the greatest corruption in security is when your immediate neighbours sell out information about you to be kidnapped or even get killed in the process, or have someone’s family taken into hostages simply because he knows more about you and your movement or your financial capacity.
For such people, we are collaborating with even the DSS to fish them out and I can tell you we are getting results in that aspect. I don’t need to tell you how but I can tell you it’s paying seriously, we are getting them one by one.
The other part of corruption is the bad eggs within the security agencies, now that they are seeing that those on the other side, both government and security agencies are going after them, my advice for them is to put their heart together and change. On a general note, you need to understand how this military operates, then you can talk about their materials operations.
 Most military operations are very capital-expensive, and most of the machinery they use is very expensive to maintain. When we take the initiative of taking care of some of them personally, then go to a local government and come back, we realise that we have a military vehicle that consumes fuel N1m for such a trip. Now, look at how many of such movements, that is for one vehicle and we are not using only one and we go out to different local governments daily.
I was told we have others that are even consuming more than that, so military operations are very expensive and difficult operations.

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