By Lai Olurode

The recent rescue of the kidnapped school children and their teachers in the Oriire Local Government of Oyo state of Nigeria is a welcome development. It demonstrates the potentials that can be harvested when stakeholders decide to place governance above raw politics and grandstanding.

This is particularly so in the case at hand where the federal and the state governments are of different political parties. In our country, opposition politics is criminal. It is forbidden to recognise or concede any goodness to the opposition political parties. This is our own definition of arty politics.

The governments of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Governor Seyi Makinde, in their politics of cooperation rather than politics of unethical rivalry have acted in the best interest of Nigeria. Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the then Governor of Lagos and of the then Alliance for Democracy did not enjoy a similar courtesy from the then President Olusegun Obasanjo of the People’s Democratic Party.

At the beginning of the kidnap, there were feelings that the blame game was going to triumph over rational and national politics.

If the cooperation had been the case much earlier in the incident, the rescue would have probably taken place before the beheading of the Mathematics teacher and the unimaginable sufferings including the psychological travails that the kidnap victims would have gone through. It is doubtful if any ransom was paid. Governor has demonstrated an uncommon resolve not to be involved in any trade by barter over the kidnap saga.

Nigeria needs to resolve the wisdom of commercialising the phenomenon of kidnapping. Ransome payments cannot be argued as effective in securing the safe return of victims. The ‘rebellious’ resolve of Governor Seyi Makinde is worthy of scrutiny. As long as we pay a ransome in return for a victim of kidnapping, then it becomes a vicious circle.

Some of the lessons that are unfolding from the rescue operations can be summarised as including the following. In securing our country and shielding us from consistent global negative perceptions as a jungle and a lawless country, intelligence gathering is a necessity.

Second, the active vigilance of the community is important. No community is expected to play the role of siddon look Even petty traders including food vendors must be circumspect about an uncommon volume of sales.

We mustn’t feel completely helpless in matters of community and indirectly national interest. We live in a society, where happenings, even the smallest and the remotest village can rapidly and immediately become instant.

Third, science and technology are central to tackling the new challenges of insecurity. For example, when the network providers cooperated with governments to cut off the kidnappers from communicating with the outside world, we are no longer fed with the horror and the harrowing images that the victims are being forced to go through and to which we have almost become accustomed.

Fourth, all the levels of governments seemed to have provided the required funding for the operations and the welfare of the security personnel. Sixth, the Oriire example might not be easy to replicate in other states because of geography and culture. However, experience sharing among the professionals and a segment of the other participants is important. Seventh, cooperation and synergy must be given precedent.

Lastly, experts in the field of education need to critique the prevalent regime of learning and see to its possible review. Safety issues have now forced themselves to the front burners and we can only ignore them at our own peril. I congratulate the Federal Government under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the 0yo State Government for their shining political pragmatics.

Professor Olurode is of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.