APSI proposes anti terror tactics

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Mr. Raphael Osamor is a guru in the provision of security and hospitality services. He is also a renowned crowd control expert with long standing years of experience. He is currently based in the United States of America but has decided to return home and contribute his quota towards ensuring that his experience helps in combating the security challenges currently being witnessed in the country. He spoke to our correspondent recently on his aspirations and how he intends to contribute to the fight against terrorism, kidnapping and so on.

Briefly tell us about your company.

I have been in the United States for over 20 years doing a lot of security and crowd safety work and during that period I also established my own protection service company known as Amor Protection Services Inc (APSI).?

Going by the wealth of knowledge acquired over the years, I decided to come home and establish Ironshield Services Limited which is into Security, Hospitality and Entertainment.?

We are very good at Hospitality because I had a background in the hospitality industry before venturing into security and other areas. so I have a lot of experience in hospitality and also in crowd management. We specialise in ensuring that venues are, that people do not smuggle weapons into ?gatherings and also maintaining decorum in those types of gatherings.

?I have being privileged to even handle security in sport activities like the Super bowl in the United States and provide security for large musical concerts. We also provide security during church programmes.?

So I?m coming back with a wide range of experience in providing security for events and places.?

We are set up to not only provide full fledged security services, also we are into procurement. We can help procure security equipment like bullet proof for cars and other facilities, and we help procure spying facilities for personal and commercial use. We can help get cameras, whether hidden (covert) or the type you that can be easily noticed on your walls, fence and other areas.?

We provide covert cameras that can help in recording people for instance, if you are not sure of someone who you find loitering around your area, we can bring in such equipment that would help in investigating such a person.

Those are some of the services we render; well, anyone interested can get a look at our full range of services on our website as there are so many services that I cannot outline during the course of this discussion.

How can you assess the security situation in Nigeria and its challenges??

Well, Nigeria is a country that is growing and for any country in the World that is growing, it goes through growing period and Nigeria is not an exception to that. Every great nation in the world, I believe, went through what Nigeria is going through right now and so just because they are older, they?ve become wiser and know how to handle themselves better and so the situation Nigeria currently finds itself in is not uncommon to a lot of countries.?

What I think we really need to do in Nigeria is to have a very good system in place that would be able to identify signs that are there. There are a lot of signs that are there but we do not have a body that is crossing the T?s and dotting the I?s and seeing how these things link together, if you don?t have a body carrying out these functions, you might just think all these things happen in isolation and that is one area we really need a lot of help in Nigeria.?

We need one control centre where you can call all the experts whether you are in the fire department, police department, SSS and others. We need a place where we can analyse all these data like an intelligence bureau so to speak.?

If we can have this centre in place, you will be amazed at how easy it will be to attack all the issues that are currently besetting us and get to the bottom of the challenges.?

That is one area where I think we really need to address in order to look at all the similarities and weak points and then attack and address them to achieve meaningful results. I think if we are able to that, Nigeria will be able to address a lot of the problems we hear that is coming out of the country.

Currently, there are lots of security challenges on ground in Nigeria, from Boko Haram in the North to Sea piracy in the Niger Delta, Kidnappings and even armed robbery, how does Ironshield services think they will contribute to curbing a lot of these security breaches?

Like I hinted in my prior answer, a lot of these issues have to do with intelligence gathering. A lot of areas in the world face security issues that are also being handled by the level of intelligence reports they have been able to gather over time.?

You talked about Boko Haram and even Niger Delta militants but there are a lot of people that really know what is going on.?

The first thing we must do if we need to get to defeat these insurgents is to get a lot of intelligence reports. The government and all parties concerned with security must be able to get people to infiltrate these groups. We need people trained specifically for covert operation that can infiltrate these groups to obtain information and pass to the relevant agencies which these agencies can now use to ensure these people are arrested.?

These people think they are invincible and cannot be tracked but their operations if well studied would reveal clues that could be used against them. What we must do is to pick up these crumbs left behind from their operation to be able to identify their strongholds, their training grounds and stuffs like that.?

If we can get all these together, the government through its agencies would now be able to go into these areas and combat the situation. If the government is truly serious in bring Boko Haram under its control, these are some of the things it must do to ensure this sect is adequately handled and defeated.?

We need to ensure that all human capital is in place, equipment are in place but most importantly we must ensure that we have current information and intelligence to achieve results on where and how they operate. We must do this because it is hindering the growth of our nation.?

Nigeria is a country people would love to do business with because the market is good for business, but investors cannot come in despite the availability of the market as long as these negative security reports keep coming in from Nigeria.

You have consistently talked about intelligence network and information gathering, with your entry into the security market in Nigeria, how do you intend to work with other security firms and security agencies like the police force, SSS and others to reduce the crime rate that seems to be at its peak currently?

Well, it is what I would call a herculean task but it?s a task that can be accomplished. We need to start from the grassroots. What I mean here is working with the security agents and the public at large to achieve results. We must create an atmosphere for the populace to know that they are well secured and protected enough in order for them to divulge the level of information that is needed.?

The security agencies must create a platform of trust for people to be able to give up the information they have in order for us to get well meaningful results. Government agencies must be able to work with security workers who are always on ground and see things as they occur.?

Also we must consider providing support and build a relationship with people like the Okada riders, bus drivers and so on. These are the people who often drive these people around and so they know their hangouts and their locations.?

These militants and terrorists are known to some people but we need to be able to create a secure environment for these people for them to release the information at their disposal because they too are afraid of these terrorists and kidnappers.?

These people need to be protected well enough for them to know that whatever information they release to the government would not be used against them. These are some of the reasons why people do not trust our security agencies but if we can address these lapses, then we can start obtaining crucial information that would be of help in arresting these criminals. We must work with the grassroots first to obtain sensitive information through creating a secure and trust centered environment to work with them.

Once we can get this information, we can now start building on them before we can now send in our trained private detectives to infiltrate these groups leading to their arrest and capture.?

One area again which I think is necessary is for all these security outfits, hotels and so on to have an organization where they meet regularly to address issues as it relates to them.?

In Washington DC where I reside, I belong to a lot of hospitality organizations and we do meet once a month to address security challenges in our hotels. We brainstorm and share ideas and mostly exchange security tips on how to nab criminals who patronize our hotels.?

We inquire their modus operandi from one another and that gives us a ?heads up? when the need arises. We once had a situation when there was this ring of pick pockets that did operate from hotel to hotel.?

Our information sharing was able to help us pick them up because we had all become informed about them and their style. This is what we need in Nigeria. We have so many security companies and operatives in Nigeria and if we are able to bring them under one body in Nigeria, before long we would be able to address a lot of these challenges and arrest them and Ironshield services is already gearing towards them.

One area often looked down upon in the crime war is the area of prevention, what efforts would ?Ironshield services put in to prevent crimes from happening instead of waiting to catch offenders after crimes have been committed?

This is a very good question. We all know that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. What we need to do is make sure that our youths and unemployed are gainfully employed. How do you do that? Where do you start from? These things require training and re-training.?

Once a person comes out from school and does not get a job, we need to train them on how to stay gainfully employed or creating a vocational training for them. This really has to do with the government.?

The government needs to create more avenues for unemployed youths to be trained and stay self sufficient. If the government can create more of these training avenues, hundreds of thousands would be trained and would stay out of crime thereby reducing the crime rate in the country.?

These necessary provisions, put in place will keep them active and combat a life of crime. Ironshield services intend to train the first one hundred people who would be applying on our website on a wide range of areas ranging from security to hospitality, crowd control and a lot more.?

To help in our little way in alleviating unemployment and to give back to society, the first 150 to submit their resumes online to [email protected] would be trained for free and of those, 75 would be given immediate employment.

I implore our youths to rush to our site and apply for this training experience which is www.ironshieldservices.com

A lot of professionals would be coming with me to train these people and I urge our youths to take advantage of this life long opportunity. We will be training people at our Lagos office and from there we would be moving to other states as time goes on.

Raphael Osamor.?

[email protected]

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