BY Sodiq Yusuff
Lagos state government is bracing up for the eventuality of terror attacks in the state, TheCable understands.
Doctors at all government-owned hospitals have been receiving training on “basic emergency response” in the event of attacks which are no longer considered “impossible” following security warnings.
Essential medical materials and medications have been distributed to all the government-owned hospitals while the state has also been increasing its blood storage and buying more ambulances for emergencies.
Medical directors, according to sources who spoke with TheCable, have been holding regular meetings with the state government.
Governor Babatunde Fashola has been meeting with community leaders to alert them to be vigilant, and has made the hot lines of top security chiefs available to them.
They are being given tips on what to watch out for and how to handle any suspicious movements and activities in their areas.
“It is not an entirely new move by the governor, but it has become paramount with the recent blast in Apapa,” a government official said.
The cause of the June 25 blast in Apapa ─ which killed three persons ─ has been muted, supposedly to prevent general panic, but top government officials have privately admitted that it was an attack carried out by a female suicide bomber.
TheCable learnt that security operatives had for a while been deployed in the Apapa area on surveillance, but the blast caught them by surprise.
There are many tank farms in Apapa storing millions of litres of petrol and the consequences of a successful terror attack on one depot “are unimaginable”, said the official, who confirmed that security has now been “tightened” around critical infrastructure in the state.
Although Boko Haram has been operating only in northern Nigeria, latest security reports indicate that their foot soldiers have infiltrated the south.
Hundreds of travellers have been arrested in the south-east in recent times after they were unable to state their mission or destination upon interrogation.
The most publicised operation was the arrest of 486 suspects in Abia. They were travelling in a convoy of 35 buses in the middle of the night when soldiers stopped them.
According to reports, two of the buses escaped while the arrested passengers did not know where they were going.
Prominent northerners accused the military of ethnic profiling, but the authorities later announced that a “notorious terror kingpin” had been identified among those arrested while 144 had been released.
Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State ─ which has been most hit by the Boko Haram insurgency ─ said recently that southerners should not think they are immune to terror attacks, warning that if the militants succeeded in the north they would spread to the south.
A security source told TheCable that “the possibility of attacks in the south are now very high, although they may not be as frequent as what we are witnessing in the north”.
He said there is no denying the fact that “the south has now become a target” ─ although he refused to reveal the findings of the probe of the explosive devices found at a church in Owerri, Imo State, last month.
Meanwhile, at a meeting with operators of tank farms on Tuesday, Fashola asked them to be more vigilant.
He said they should promptly report suspicious vehicles in their areas of operation to the police and other security agencies.
Fashola told the operators: “You have to put down your foot about vehicles parking around your premises. We have tried but many of you have resisted. We have been called anti-poor and anti-business, but it is only those who are alive that will do business.
“So around your tank farms, around your offices and around your storage facilities, there should be no vehicles that are parked there that could not be accounted for. Once there is such a vehicle that you cannot account for, let us know, call the commissioner of police or the director of SSS, this is the way to win this war; it is not going to happen by wishes or getting sensational or hysterical.
“The game must change. We have met with hospitality facilities, we have met with health, we have met with the malls, the motor parks, we are taking every measure, we are not leaving anything to chance, every information that we get we check. But we need leaders in strategic places because we can’t run your businesses and we need you now to take responsibility in this area and leave the rest to us.”
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