Dangerous rhetoric on kidnapping; state police, and Peter Obi’s cross over NDC acrimonious primaries

In Nigeria, kidnapping has gone political. Opposing political groups engage in bitter spat over what has become a criminal trade. But everyone seems dead silent about the solution. Victims languish in kidnappers’ den why the finger-pointing continues.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s moves for state police have received the National Assembly’s nod. But have they counted the cost?

Peter Obi is being dragged to the Golgotha over the NDC acrimonious primaries. But why?

Needless politics over insecurity

It is sickening to hear elected public office holders come on television screens to spew gibberish. They shout that political opponents of the current administration were sponsoring abductions across the country to embarrass the government and to make it look like the government had failed.

Today, it is convenient for Abuja to blame political opponents for the gale of abductions going on. The most nauseating is the insinuation that the mass abduction incident in Oriire, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, was politically-motivated. As you read this, the abducted pupils and their teachers are still in captivity while the finger-pointing goes on.

But when it happens in Zamfara, Borno, Benue, Plateau, Kwara, Kaduna, Sokoto, Yobe, or any other place in the north, it is simply viewed as the handiwork of bandits and terrorists. Kai!

The question that has not been answered is, why has the government not arrested those it thinks masterminded the abduction?

The other day, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, told stunned compatriots that they knew that the increase in the wave of insecurity was normal in an election season.

Akpabio claimed that political opponents and “enemies of Nigeria” were deliberately sponsoring terrorism, bombings, and kidnappings to destabilise the country and discredit President Tinubu’s administration ahead of the 2027 general election.

If a highly placed leader of Akpabio’s hue should make such a statement in public, it shows why the country is not making progress in the critical areas. For them, everything is just flippant politics!

They believe that the abductions and killings were the handiwork of the opposition. They are also saying that the increasing wave of insecurity was to whip up sentiment and to deny them the opportunity to campaign this political season. This is purely infantile!

One of such rhetoric came from Governor Monday Okpebholo of Edo State on Tuesday at a rally. The governor alleged that the recent wave of kidnappings across Nigeria was a coordinated, politically-motivated plot by opposition elements. He claimed that these rivals were sponsoring abductions to create instability, discredit President Bola Tinubu’s administration, and influence the 2027 election.

The governor spoke as if he knew the names of the sponsors. He was screaming on top of his voice that certain people were staging abductions to frustrate the President. This line of narrative creates a wrong impression that Nigeria does not have the right kind of leaders she deserves.

For crying out loud, Edo has, for long, become a hot spot for insecurity to the point that anybody passing through the state remains agitated until he/she leaves the corridor. There are many parts of the state that have become kidnappers’ dens. Since he came on board, the state has featured prominently in news over high level of insecurity. He was talking about political opponents sponsoring insecurity; was it not in his state that a former governor of the state and other prominent politicians were shot at, and their vehicles riddled with bullets?

Why has it become convenient for elected office holders to spread lies for political exigency? Was Okpebholo simply trying to speak so that Abuja would see him as a loyal governor or what was the reason for that theatrical? When politicians fail to deliver on their campaign promises they begin to throw all manner of excuses.

Granted that the high level of insecurity was being masterminded by political opponents, when did a sitting government begin to lack the capacity to rein in actions of non-state actors?

Edo State, and indeed, all the state governments in Nigeria must rise to the occasion of ending this monster of insecurity and stop moaning and pointing fingers at non-existent enemies. Nigerians have been insulted for too long; they must be given a break. This whole buck-passing is getting nasty. Mtcheew!

Tinubu presses throttle of state police

The debate over the desirability or otherwise of state police has continued to rage. President Bola Tinubu believes that bringing it on board would ensure proper policing in Nigeria. The National Assembly, as usual, has ticked it good.

President Tinubu believes that if policemen and women take the responsibility of policing their areas, and that if individual states become responsible for their domain, it would lessen or totally remove the bottleneck of a centralised police authority.

As germane as the idea seems, many critics have continued to flag the plan, arguing that it could give birth to unintended consequences. The major opposition arises from the possibility of misusing the forces by state actors the same way they are misusing the financial windfall arising from the subsidy removal.

At a time when everything in Nigeria has been ethnicised, state police can be turned into a weapon of intimidation and oppression in the hands of both state actors and powerful elements in the states.

Look at what is happening in some parts of the North, where bandits have practically seized power and determined what happens in far-flung communities in some states.

These criminals are well known by everybody in their community, even by the government, yet, nobody says anything.

The other day, 39 elders were abducted in Zamfara by bandits. Reports had it that the elders had gone for a meeting with the parents of the bandits to prevail on their children to stop the evil trade.

In many places, some people are scared to even mention the names of the criminals let alone spilling the bean to the authorities.

How would a state police battle criminals in the North where many people, including the elite believe that any attack or pressure on criminal elements was against the interest of the North?

If past experiences and events were to be taken as a compass to future operations in the North, it could be easily said that state police may not perform above the sentiments and belief of the entrenched interests- political, religious and even traditional.

How, for instance, would Yoruba-dominated police in the South West see the Igbo population in the zone? How would the Igbo-dominated police in the South East treat the Yoruba and Hausa populations in the zone? The political class has ruined the spirit of brotherhood in Nigeria by sowing seeds of hatred among Nigerians.

Today, we hear and read about soldiers deserting their stations in the North and going on ‘AWOL’ (Absent Without Leave), simply because they allege that they are increasingly being targeted as they fight the insurgents.

These narratives are also scaring away many Nigerian youths from getting enlisted into the Army or even the Police Force. The Federal Government must be concerned about these negative developments.

While the thought of floating state police may be commendable, and will surely be backed by legislation, the big elephant in the room is what happens to other policies that were equally backed by legislation that are being abused today?

While the government may mean well with the plan, the high trust deficit level is the major Achilles’ heel.

The Peter Obi cross

The just-concluded primaries of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) in some places may have placed an incredible pressure on the person of Peter Obi, the party’s presidential candidate.

Everything that went wrong at the primaries was blamed on him, no matter the location. He has been called several names by critics following the acrimonious primaries, even though most of the major parties had same chaotic exercises.

Although Obi is not the chairman of the party, his critics believe the buck stops at his table. The sing song out there is that since he proclaims himself as a puritan on political turf, his party could have shown the transparency example.

Some of his associates and supporters who had wanted to ride on his popularity to achieve their own political aspirations, like many did in 2023 on the platform of the Labour Party, were not able to scale the primaries, and the name of Obi is being dragged in the mud.

The thinking by some critics is that Obi had the power to kill and make alive in the NDC. But information gleaned from the inner caucus of the party paints a different picture.

Every political party has its internal arrangements. The founders of the NDC floated the party as a platform to realise their own political ambition first, before any other interest.

The serving Senator, Seriake Dickson, hopes to, not only return to the Senate in 2027, but to also do so on the platform he founded.

The joining of the party by Peter Obi must have given the NDC the level of prominence and visibility many of the 21 political parties in Nigeria today do not have.

What many people, including those who nursed one aspiration or the other did not know was that those who helped Dickson in the formation of the party must have obtained certain promises or assurances of enjoying unfettered access to tickets for either themselves directly or their cronies.

So, it would be uncharitable, and amounts to grand betrayal if he decided to throw them under the bus. Agreement, they say, is agreement.

Obi could not have also upset the apple cart. Everybody, including tyros in politics, who had never before contested elective political office, wanted to ride on Obi’s crest to hug victory.

As painful as it is, some diehard supporters of Obi were advised to drop their ambition few hours to the primaries or were roundly trounced in an exercise the credibility of which they doubted so much.

The sudden and disastrous loss of these supporters have since provided a platform for Obi’s critics to impugn his integrity and cast dust at his reputation.

Some are saying that he went underground as soon as he clinched his own ticket as the presidential candidate of the NDC, and that his phones had gone dead, deliberately. He has dragged one of his traducers to court.

But here is a man who just joined a newly-founded party after fleeing an inclement weather somewhere. The party leadership graciously granted him asylum in NDC. It would be infantile, unfeeling and insensitive of him to begin to raise his shoulders by dictating who should become what in a party that does not belong to him.

He could not have insisted on having all his associates on a dinner table, the menu of which he never sponsored, himself also being a guest. Those who traduce him may not have understood how political parties function.

My honest reading of the goings-on in the new party is that denying the likes of Aisha Yesufu the ticket they aspired to clinch did not mean that the party does not value the energy that such individuals bring on board, and their unfeigned and unflinching love and support for the party’s presidential candidate. It is just the way of politics where you lose today and win tomorrow. It is like a standing fan- it blows to you this moment and blows to the other person next moment. No vex!