Nigeria: Growing insecurity and fate of 2023

Right now, Nigeria is on auto-pilot. The cockpit is not being manned by anybody. President Muhammadu Buhari appears to be having fun, flying from one part of the globe to the other. They say he is looking for foreign investment that has not come since 2015.
Abuja tries to claim that these latest junketings are the magic wand that would address the nation’s self-inflicted multifarious maladies. But one thing is evident, governance is on suspension in Nigeria, that is, if it ever existed!

Nigeria is preparing for a national election in 2023. Officials of government are currently busy chasing positions while their present beats are suffering.

The possibility of a successful election next year hangs in the balance.

Nowhere is safe in the country any more. Non-state actors are now perfectly in control. They seem to have succeeded in shooting the nation’s security apparati into submission or some observers would say that “the security agencies in the country are either sleeping on guard or overwhelmed.”

In a country preparing for election next year, no part of it is safe. People are being killed per second across the country. While the members of the Islamist sect, Boko Haram are reigning terror in the North East, lwseizing territories from government, their terrorist brothers are wreaking havoc in North West, North Central. Herdsmen are sacking community people and slaughtering innocent natives in Benue, Plateau and many parts of the South East, and ‘Unknown Gunmen” are also carrying out murderous activities in the South East. The country has fallen under the very watch of a government in place led by a retired military general.

The saddest thing of all is that government continues making endless promises of bringing perpetrators to book.

Kidnappers have taken over the country, killing their victims with reckless abandon and pushing families into deep sorrows.

Read also: Panic in Ondo as gunmen kill soldier, kidnap expatriate

Millions of naira is being spent to secure the release of many people and government still claims it is relevant to the people.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has raised the alarm that the growing level of insecurity across the country could hamper the successful conduct of the election.

The off-season gubernatorial election that was held in Anambra State last November was partly marred by insecurity. INEC ad-hoc staff reportedly shunned some communities considered volatile. Before that election, apprehension was high over the possibility of cancellation, but the intervention of various classes of leaders in the state saved the day.

Today, with the level of killings going on across the country and the seeming helplessness of go ernment and its agents, 2023 hangs in the balance.

Nigerians were greeted last Sunday with unpleasant news of slaughtering by terrorists, in an Ondo church, of worshippers whose fault was that they went to worship their God. Once again, the bestiality was greeted with another round of castrated condemnation and empty promises by political leadership in Abuja, of bringing the perpetrators to book abd such like.

With the level of bare-face killings and other terrorism acts, the 2023 general election is in serious peril.

A few days ago, a pitiable sight of three women and five men in a latest video released by the terrorists that abducted the passengers of the Abuja-Kaduna train on March 28, should move any reasonable government into action. But Nigeria’s case is a different story. In many forests and bushes across the country, there are many Nigerians being held hostage by either Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen, terrorists, kidnappers and ‘Unknown Gunmen.’ Many of these victims will not see their homes again because they will die in their abductors’ den. Also, these bushes and forests are littered with carcasses of Nigerians who were killed by their mindless abductors. The account of the gory experience of the Prelate of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, His Eminence, Samuel Kanu-Uche who was kidnapped in Abia State and made to pay N100 million ransom to purchase his release and that of two others, rather than move the government into action, has unfortunately been politicised. The security agencies are now playing the Ostrich. They have left the real matter and are now chasing shadows. Since the current administration, Nigeria has become a killing field. A recent data from the Nigeria Security Tracker (NST) put the number of violent deaths in the last seven years at 54,948 (fifty four thousand, nine hundred and forty eight).

But to government and self-serving politicians, the misery of Nigerians does not perturb them at all. While many citizens are still being held up in the forests, politicians are doing their own thing; junketing all over the place in their private jets. They are bothered about the next election, how they would position themselves to continue the plundering. Even those of them that have direct responsibility to protect lives and property of the citizens have since abdicated their duties in pursuit of lucre. Nigeria is sinking, and sinking fast!