Dennis Ogu
Presently, Nigerians are fighting on many fronts: hunger, inflation, killings and kidnapping etc; it is still the ordinary citizens that bear the brunt.
And as a result, this is not the proper time to start talking about giving approval for the use of tinted glasses on cars, for whatever reasons.
Our security personnel and the Nigerian leadership should know better: the use of tinted glasses during this period of security crisis will spell doom for the country.
Imagine a time when the Nigerian security architecture is finding it extremely hard to stem the escalated security issues in the country; is it the right time to start issuing permit to individuals to use tinted glasses on their cars?
We have rising cases of kidnapping, banditry, mass destruction of lives and properties in different parts of the country. And these have been happening almost unchecked.
How is it that the Nigeria Police Force deem it as the right time to start issuing licences to people to use tinted glasses on their cars? Why can’t they see enough reason to dismiss this idea with the security situation in the country?
Issuing licences for the use of tinted glasses on cars would amount to indirectly providing cover for kidnappers, ritualists and other criminals who have been carrying out their heinous crimes long before now.
This permit and whatever purpose it is going to serve is not more important than the lives of Nigerians who are even the primary reason for the establishment of all the security institutions in the country.
Our security operatives are supposed to be more concerned about the lives of the citizens than any other thing.
Whether or not there are health issues attached to use of the tinted glasses on cars should not outweigh the primary role of security of lives and properties.
The health issues have neither caused massive deaths nor has it caused road crashes; yet criminals have been carting away Nigerian citizens to the forests and other hide-outs, and many have lost their lives there.
They don’t march those people to those places; they use cars and other vehicles. What do you think will happen when there are licences for some people to use tinted glasses for whatever reasons.
We all know that some criminal-minded people will manipulate it to their own ends just in the name of health reasons. This is the time to weigh two evils and go for the lesser one.
So many things make one to wonder if this plan to permit the use of tinted glasses is an act in ignorance considering the unstable security situation in the country, or may be our security operatives just want to tell us that they don’t care!
Does it mean that our security officers want to tell us they don’t know that tinted glasses serve as covers to hardened criminals? That it serves as channels through which kidnappers whisk away their victims?
We are not new in Nigeria. Even before the sorry state of things in the country presently, many criminals used cars with tinted glasses as cover when engaging in their criminal activities; and it was because of that the then leadership of the Nigeria Police Force banned its use. Why are the Police permitting its use again, and being a time the security situation in the country is frail?
We should consider that nobody stays in a car for twenty-four hours for whatever reasons. Cars are used for transportation, and staying in them is for a short time. But security of lives and properties is not just an everyday thing, it is something as important as the air we breathe every second. We can’t afford to joke with it or sacrifice it on the altar of luxury or pleasure. Whoever can’t drive without being inside tinted glasses for health or whatever reasons should get someone else to drive them or use public transport.
In American and European countries, everybody uses public transport including government officials.
So if indeed, this licencing is on no other reason except health-related issues, then everybody has one health issue or the other. And we can’t afford to put the life of many Nigerians in danger — security wise — just because of a few who have other options in managing their health and lives.
In whatever we do in this country, we don’t need to be reminded of the paramount importance of the security of lives and properties of citizens. The Nigeria Police and other security agencies and, indeed, the Ministry of Internal Affairs should think twice on this their recent decision to issue licence to individuals to start using tinted glasses on their cars for whatever reasons.
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