Food For Thought

The two or so deaths occasioned by the riot which visited the TI Ahmadiyya Senior High School in Salaga in the Northern Region is regrettable and avoidable.

It is standard practice for the military to support the police in major internal security operations, but it would appear that the secondary role the former is expected to play in most cases has been diluted.

The police, by their training and orientation, are better primed to manage such situations and should take the leading role when riotous conduct breaks out and threatens whole communities as happened in Salaga.

In the Agbogbloshie issue in which the military was called in to support the police, the exercise could not have been described as without avoidable hitches. Like others before it, the military took the commanding role away from the law enforcement agencies and, of course, with disastrous fallouts.

We are neither unable to at this stage determine whose bullets killed the innocent persons nor even expect to ever know this important fact. Suffice it to point out, in recent times when the two services join hands in operations the results have not been pleasing.

Law enforcement officers have often complained on the quiet about how it is they who are projected to the public as having caused fatalities in such operations.

We do not by this commentary seek to downgrade the role of the military in such operations, but only trying to advance the point that the law enforcement agencies should be in-charge.

And indeed the call-up of the military should be at the behest of the police who should know when they are being overwhelmed and need the support of the military.

Unfortunately, however, it is politicians who sometimes call in the military action steeped in oddity.

In Nigeria for instance, it is the Mobile Police Force which is called in before the military but in most cases the MOPOL, as they are known in security parlance in that country, are able to bring the situations under control enough for the conventional police to come and deal with the prosecution and other related matters.

The military too, we are aware, especially the officer corps, undergo as part of their cadet training management of internal security operations; but as stated earlier, the police are the main operators here in the true sense of the word, leading their counterparts in the colours.

We wish that this necessary but sometimes messed up subject of joint operations is streamlined so that the law enforcement agents are not unduly confined to the backburners and avoidable fatalities recorded.

We also find the conduct of the students of the school reprehensible, one which should never be allowed to recur.

Riots are infectious, especially in places with records of volatility. That is why the Salaga riot took the turn we witnessed in the past few days.

Community leaders should be engaged in the aftermath of the bloody incidents with a view to obviating recurrence.

The relationship between the law enforcement agents and the locals is anything but cordial at this stage. It is so bad that the law enforcement details there might have to be transferred to other places because the bad blood occasioned by the security agents' response is awful.