Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari is witnessing insecurity on a large scale, without any serious strategy for ending this abysmal surge. The country is palpitating from herdsmen terrorising farmers, to kidnappings and to religious killings, making the country a hostage of its own people.
One wonders if the president and governors of the 36 States are truly bothered. This became very clear when some governors and allies could not attend physically, the 12th edition of the “Jagaban”, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s yearly colloquium held at Kano on 29th March, 2021, because of poor weather conditions. Many of them joined virtually at the Abuja airport, thinking the weather would finally come round but it was a No. Abuja to Kano couldn’t take more than six hours by road but unfortunately, our politicians understood the risk of plying road. So, they chose to secure their lives by not attempting to travel by road.
Here is the same road millions of Nigerians commute weekly, but the government is not doing anything to secure or safeguard its people. Instead ,we continue to record more casualties of insecurity as a result of the government’s ineptitude.
On Tuesday 20th April 2021, students of Greenfield University, Kaduna were abducted as a result of rising insecurity in the nation, only for the news to break that three of them had been killed on Friday, three days after the kidnap, according to a statement by the Kaduna State Government credited to Mr Aruwan.
Of a great importance is the news that Nigeria recently sent 144 Nigerian Police officers to Somalia for peace keeping. These officers will be in another man’s country for a year while we continue to battle with security downtime.
Currently in Nigeria, we have around 371,800 Policemen in the force while one-quarter of the force is attached to very important people, otherwise known as VIP in the Nigeria, while the other fraction is shared between extorting or brutalising people and others sent for peace keeping duties while no peace exist in our own country. As a matter of fact, sleeping with your two eyes closed in Nigeria is a disadvantage. It is like those in the army, you dare not sleep with your eyes closed for the fear of unknown.
Sometimes in April, the social media was agog with a video that exposes the insecurity going on Lekki, a high brow area in Lagos for the rich few and its incursion by charlatans and street urchins more recognised as area boys. The Video called the attention of the government and relevant agencies to step in and save the area from the current exposure so as to restore the vigour it once had.
What came to my mind immediately I saw the video was, how many people stay in Ikoyi compared to the 211.4 million people staying in Nigeria and cannot boast that the country is safe enough to leave their doors open while sleeping? Although no data exist to ascertain the number of people that stay in Ikoyi but from the INEC registered voters, it is a just little fraction of the entire numbers of Lagosians.
My thought after weighing these options is for Nigerians to stop being selfish and clamour for security in Nigeria in the face of insecurity, bad economy, hunger, incessant strikes and religious wars instead of seeking relevance for Lekki, alone.
If Nigeria breaks today, Lekki won’t be able to contain everybody; instead, the good of the Nigeria should be our priority and not being tribalistic or ‘locationistic’.
At a time when the presidential aides are expected to front the dousing of tension, they are rather being antagonistic. It’s high time they tell the President and high-powered cabinets members the truth. There is high level of insecurity in the land. The curfew imposed by the president during the COVID-19 should be lifted, as most airline now reschedule flights to night which ends up throwing innocent Nigerians into the dens of Policemen. Policemen no longer arrest kidnappers, thieves and herdsmen. Their focus is harmless Nigerians.
As it stands now, when the government decides to be serious about fixing Nigeria, every area will feel the peace, for the peace will cut across all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria.
Should we continue to push the hashtag on secure Lekki or Nigeria, which is more important?
Written by Tosin Adesile, arpa