The Expertise We Cannot Afford to Waste

By Lanre Ogundipe

A recent intervention by veteran journalist/legal expert –  Richard Akinnola has triggered an uncomfortable but necessary conversation. Predictably, the debate quickly gravitated towards personalities, emotions and entrenched positions. Yet beneath the controversy lies a much bigger question that deserves sober national reflection.

Can a country confronting multiple security emergencies afford to leave potentially useful expertise completely outside its security equation?

This is not a question about sentiment. Neither is it a question about friendship, loyalty or hero worship. It is a question about national capacity.

For years, Nigeria has battled insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, arms trafficking and organised criminal networks. Entire communities have been displaced. Schools have been attacked. Farmers have abandoned their lands. Highways have become theatres of fear. Vast rural territories have, at different times, appeared vulnerable to criminal domination.

Despite enormous expenditure, the challenge persists. The immediate temptation is to focus on personalities. Yet doing so may prevent us from asking the more important questions.

What happens to accumulated expertise in a country under pressure? How does a nation preserve institutional memory?How does it harvest operational knowledge acquired through years of frontline experience? How does it prevent valuable lessons from disappearing with individuals?

These questions extend far beyond any particular officer. They go to the heart of state capacity.

Across the world, serious security institutions place enormous value on experience. Intelligence agencies maintain relationships with former operatives. Military establishments frequently draw upon retired commanders. Counterterrorism agencies often rely on former specialists as advisers, trainers and resource persons. The reason is simple.

Experience is a national asset.

Knowledge acquired through years of confronting criminal networks, insurgencies, kidnappers and terrorists cannot be recreated overnight. Nations that understand this treat institutional memory as a strategic resource.

Nigeria should perhaps begin asking whether it has done enough in this regard. The public debate surrounding former DCP Abba Kyari provides an opportunity to examine a larger issue.

Before his legal troubles, Kyari was widely regarded as one of Nigeria’s most visible crime-fighting officers. His anti-kidnapping and anti-crime operations earned public recognition and institutional investment. The state trained him. The state deployed him. The state relied on his expertise.

The question is not whether allegations against him should be ignored. They should not. The rule of law remains fundamental. Nor is the question whether anyone should be placed above accountability. Nobody should.

The real question is whether accountability and utility must necessarily be treated as mutually exclusive.

Can a nation insist on due process while simultaneously exploring lawful ways of preserving and extracting useful expertise?

That is where the conversation becomes interesting.

Unfortunately, Nigeria often approaches complex questions through the lens of absolutes.

One side demands total condemnation. The other seeks total vindication. Yet public policy rarely operates in absolutes.

A nation facing a prolonged security crisis cannot afford intellectual laziness. It must interrogate every possible source of advantage.

This is particularly important because Nigeria’s insecurity challenge is often discussed almost exclusively as a military problem.

It is not.

Banditry, kidnapping and organized criminality are fundamentally intelligence challenges.

They are investigative challenges. They are network challenges. They are information challenges. The successful disruption of criminal enterprises frequently depends less on brute force than on intelligence gathering, infiltration, surveillance, informant management and painstaking investigative work.

This reality should concern policymakers.

How much expertise has Nigeria accumulated over the years in these areas?

Where is that expertise today?

How is it being preserved?

Who is documenting lessons learned? What systems exist for transferring operational knowledge to younger officers?

What mechanisms exist for harvesting institutional memory from those who once occupied critical positions?

These questions deserve far more attention than they currently receive. The issue extends beyond one individual.

Indeed, Nigeria possesses a reservoir of retired investigators, former intelligence officers, ex-military strategists and anti-crime specialists whose experiences could prove valuable in training, mentoring, doctrine development and strategic advisory capacities.

Yet there appears to be little public discussion about how such knowledge can be systematically retained and utilized.

This should worry a country facing complex and evolving security threats.

Every security challenge leaves behind lessons. Every operation produces knowledge. Every success reveals methods. Every failure exposes weaknesses.

The danger is not merely losing personnel. The danger is losing what they know.

Perhaps this is where Richard Akinnola’s intervention deserves closer examination.

Rather than viewing the debate through the narrow prism of an individual case, policymakers should view it as an opportunity to interrogate a broader national question.

Does Nigeria possess a framework for preserving expertise during periods of national crisis?

Can experienced operatives contribute to training, doctrine development, intelligence analysis or strategic planning under carefully defined and lawful arrangements? Can valuable knowledge be separated from ongoing legal processes?

Can institutional memory be harvested without compromising accountability?

These are not unreasonable questions.

Indeed, they are the kinds of questions serious nations ask when confronted with persistent security challenges.

The forests do not care about public arguments.

Kidnappers are not interested in social media debates.

Bandits do not pause their operations because citizens disagree online.

What matters is whether the state is deploying every lawful and available advantage at its disposal.

The truth is that Nigeria cannot arrest its way out of insecurity. Neither can it spend its way out of insecurity.

Nor can it merely issue statements against insecurity. The country must become smarter.

And part of becoming smarter involves learning how to identify, preserve and deploy valuable expertise wherever it exists.

This does not require abandoning justice. It does not require suspending the rule of law. It does not require creating sacred cows.

What it requires is strategic thinking.

The national emergency confronting Nigeria demands more than conventional responses. It demands that difficult questions be asked and uncomfortable assumptions examined.

One of those questions is whether the country is making the best possible use of the knowledge already available to it.

That question is larger than any individual. It is larger than any controversy.

And in a nation searching desperately for answers to insecurity, it may be a question worth asking.

Ogundipe, Public Affairs Analyst,  former President Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists writes from Abuja.