THE dire security situation in Jos, Plateau State has defied conventional military alone solution. The operators, the Special Task Force (STF) otherwise known as Operation Safe Haven, currently headed by Maj.-Gen. Henry Ayoola, do not pretend either about the way forward.He admitted this much in a recent public electronic discourse. And to drive home the point that the military alone is not doing the job, Ayoola came to the event with the Police, the secret service, and officers of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). He said that the security conundrum in the Plateau needed the synergy of all parties to succeed.According to the general, membership of the expanded task force is essentially to aid civil authority and to provide protection for the law-abiding citizens in the state that has known no peace for a long time.Ayoola explained that the STF was necessary because the usual civil means of enforcing law and order had nearly collapsed. ''The issues are in many dimensions and of course we know that there is the religious dimension, there is the ethnic dimension and of course if you have been on the Plateau, it has got to do with the issues of 'indigeneship' and 'settlership'. Of course, there are other several undertones that are associated with this.'He admitted that, 'the military usually is not the normal means of enforcing law and order...' but this is a peculiar situation, he said.He said that the STF is not made up of the military alone. It has members drawn from the Nigeria Police, the Department of State Security Service and NSCDC.Speaking on how much cooperation he has so far received from other non-military security agencies, he said there has been a tremendous improvement in the operation of the task force.As diverse as the composition so rich are the views and operational manual. 'We have joint planning. All the security chiefs in the state meet regularly. We interact both formally and informally. We brainstorm on issues to find solutions as all of them are represented within the STF'So, it has been a very good collaboration all the way,' he said.On the sort of cooperation the STF has been getting from the civil authority, Ayoola said it had been good. He said the military cannot operate in isolation, pointing out that it is on that premise that the clause, 'in aid of civil authority remains relevant. The relationship between the STF and the state government, the local councils and even the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), has been wonderful. We are actually cashing in on that because knowing fully well that this assignment is not purely a military one. So, we have been concerned about deploying all the elements of national power at our disposal, military-non-military, lethal, non-lethal, diplomatic, social, political and all of that so that we are involved in a kind of effect-based operation.'Ayoola, who has been visiting tribal groups, stakeholder communities, NGOs, religious groups, said there are many benefits derivable from such visits which afford him to know what the issues are. According to him: 'Sometimes you could be very wrong assuming that you know. But when you deal with the people on the ground, who are actually directly affected, you begin to get some deeper insights into issues. Secondly, too, it brings us closer to the people because it is part of our confidence-building measures so that people can know that the STF is for them. And that we are unbiased, we are focused on our mission, we are firm and fair to all.'I think that has been helping us so that we are able to cut across the barriers. You know some artificial barriers have been created as a result of the problems on the Plateau. So, we are using that to break some of the barriers so that we can bring the people together. They had lived together in peace before, so we can do it again. We can identify where we missed it and then we can get back to how we were doing it and how it was peaceful in the past...'On his successes since assumption of duty in May, the STF Commander, he again admitted that solutions could not be achieved overnight. 'Since I came in, in May, we have broken some new grounds in the area of our own operations trying to strengthen the competence and the skills of the different services making up the STF.'He said the training and re-orientation of the different groups that make up the task force impact on the successes achieved so far.He illustrated what he meant: 'For example, we had the 'Calling and Search Up' exercise where we had helicopter insertion and some of the men were seeing such a thing for the first time. But these are part of the things they are supposed to be doing. So, how do you tell a man to go and do things he has never done before' So, all of that is helping us in the area of operations.'And we are also trying to strengthen our operation by having what we call 'Standard Operative Procedure' so that we can have some minimum standards for doing things. We also came out with something called 'Aid Memoir.' In the military, that is a small booklet that reminds you of some basic things you should know. So, you have it in your pocket so that you can make quick reference to it like a small manual. We also came out with some notebooks so that every member of the STF carries this in his pocket so that when you are told to watch out for some things at the checkpoints on the roads, you write it down. You don't put it in your head because you can forget. So, some of these, we have introduced. Again, as a result of the peace parleys, we have been able to cut across to all the different groups and of course we meet even down to children, to students, the student association, the NGOs, the religious bodies, all the different groups. We have been meeting with them and that has also helped us.'Gen. Ayoola had his own pre-assignment assessment of the situation on assumption of the command. 'When I came in, for my own assessment of the situation, the estimate that I made, I saw that intelligence is key to getting this work done. And so one of the first things we did was to come up with what we called Civil-Military Cooperation Net (CIMIC Net). What it is meant to do is based on the concept that every citizen is censored, that is, making every citizen responsible for helping to gather intelligence. I have heard people saying a whole lot now that you have to be security conscious, you have to be security conscious. We thought we could take that a little further to the next level not jut this security consciousness, but you actually becoming a security censor and an intelligence gatherer or collector.'So, we got some phone numbers based on the close user group system. We got that and we put a number of people in one group and we have deployed that in two local government areas, Riyom and Barkin Ladi. It has several advantages. One, it helps us to have quick contacts with those censors once they are selected and they are given the lines. So, they can give us early warnings of any impending problem, if they notice that some strange people are in their environment, they can report and call us and say, look, we have some people here, we don't know who they are.'The second advantage is that it shortens our reaction time. So, it enhances quick response on our own part. It also helps to gather intelligence. It is also a way of galvanizing the communities. Like we have 50 that we deployed in Barkin Ladi. Which means you have 50 dwellers within those villages and cities within Barkin Ladi Local Government that can be mustered if the need be because you can call them, you know them, you have their numbers, so you can muster them. If you hear something, you can crosscheck the veracity of some of the figures. Often times you get phantom alert; sometimes you will even think that some people are deliberately trying to distract. But then, since you have such people, you can call them and you can crosscheck and give him back on the spot assessment of the things on the ground. I think that is another area that we have moved forward.
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