Against the backdrop of the sustained blame game among many political parties in the country, Nigerians across sectors have urged the political class to see the security challenge as a national problem that demands the collaboration of one and all to surmount.
Nigerians, who spoke with our correspondents across the states, said it had become necessary to appeal to the conscience of politicians to know the limit of politicking by coming together to fight a common foe.
The respondents expressed dismay that the insecurity challenge in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States, occasioned by the activities of the Boko Haram sect, has been allowed to fester simply because politicians chose to play politics with human lives.
According to them, had politicians united like they did in the fight against the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), the security challenge in the North East which has claimed thousands of lives since 2009 would have been contained.
It would be recalled that the two major political parties in the country have continued to engage each other in verbal abuse over who actually should be held responsible for the cocktail of human wastage going on in the North East.
Condemning the finger-pointing and buck-passing attitudes of politicians on the security situation in the country, Ojo Maduekwe, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Canada said: “One wonders how the two mainstream political parties demonise each other on a national security challenge which has become an existential threat, instead of locating a bipartisan response.”
“Kicking the can down the road by leading politicians of various political persuasions who should be joining hands with the President to deal with a threat worse than the civil war does not qualify as responsible political behavioiur,” he further pointed out.
Kehinde Salawu, publicity secretary, Oyo State PDP, said all well meaning Nigerians should cooperate with the Federal Government to fight the insurgency.
“We should join hands together and fight the Boko Haram for the sake of the country. Many lives have been lost, property destroyed and all manner of atrocities committed by the sect; so let’s fight this common enemy by all means,” Salawu said, adding,
“we should all protect the nascent democracy. We must not allow the Boko Haram activities to cause the military to come back to power, that’s why all hands must be on deck to fight the sect.”
Emilia Ekama Akpan, national vice president (south-south/south east), Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Port Harcourt, said: “There is need to unite on serious national challenges just like Nigeria did in the Ebola emergency. Some foreign powers refused to send their trial drug to us, but we fought back collectively and won. Today, they are even begging us to help others. Let us do the same on insurgency, now.
“The way out is for us to get to the root of the matter and find out the cause. It will take a kind of roundtable affair with all the political leaders and some other ones. Enough of talking; now is time for a plan of action and real action. I am happy that the national publicity secretary of the PDP, (Olisa Metu), talked about the need for cross-party consultation and dialogue. It is not a Jonathan thing. There should be a small conference on insurgency to find out why such flares occur in the north, in the south-south, in the east, etc. It’s time to proffer solutions across board.
“We must know that injustice is the key to insurgency. When people are systematically injured or aggrieved, the anger is bottled up and one day, they take extreme action, they explode. They go underground. So, let us return to transparency so that people do not boil or bottle up.”
Uche Okwukwu, a barrister and activist, believes that political parties and states do not have much to do on the issue of security, because, according to him, it is a Federal Government issue.
“Senators and members of the House of Representatives are saying that the state of emergency is not working. If you take a drug for an ailment and it does not work, is it not proper to change the drug? See, Hamas and Israel, they talk. You may have to discuss, else, the casualty figure keeps rising every day.
“In dialogue, show sincerity, else, the opponent will not come clean. The President must reach out to leaders to intervene. He must seek out those who will not benefit from the crisis and engage them in a dialogue to help him reach across. He should show keen interest. When Chibok girls were abducted, it took him many days to begin to react, to make a statement. He even doubted the saga at first. Elsewhere, if even 10 girls were abducted while writing an examination, the army headquarters would move down to that place till the end of the matter. Apart from the political parties, the army is not united on this fight. Instead, they are fighting one other, arresting and convicting others. This bolsters the insurgents.”
“My fear is that if this is not halted at this point, it may spread to the south and east. It is wrong to think it is a northern matter. This is how kidnapping started in the Niger Delta and everybody laughed it off. Now, it is a national threat. There is enough bottled up anger, frustration, social dislocation in the south to ignite the area. It will flare up, if things are not arrested now,” Okwukwu added.
Adeniyi Olatubosun, a professor of Law and dean Faculty of Law, University of Ibadan, he stated that to get out of the wood of the security challenge, advised the Federal Government to adopt the soft approach to countering the terrorism through de-radicalisation of prison system on one hand, and “mobilising family, cultural, religious and national values through partnerships with faith-based organisations, community-based organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)”.
Stella Agada, treasurer/head, Foreign Mission Port-Harcourt Chamber of Commerce Industry Mines and Agriculture (PHCCIMA), a chartered administrator and MD ST International Limited, said: “We all know that insurgency is almost over running the Northern Nigeria and it is not in our favour, especially those of us in the south to sit down in our various homes and feel unconcerned, watching those people, it is still one Nigeria. On the issue of our political parties coming together, it is very compulsory. What I have noticed in Nigeria is that when we fight together we win very fast. The recent example is that of Ebola, where every hand was on deck and of course, within few months it found its way out of the country.
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“So, I want to believe that if political parties should come together, irrespective of your party inclination and put heads together we will fight this element, it is a foreign attitude to us. It is an external war and we must have to fight it squarely. Coming together will also help them to know that the insurgency is not an APC, PDP, APGA matter.
“They should come together and put their heads, minds and act together as one and fight insurgency and we in the private sector will say yes, when it comes to issues like this Nigerians fight as one.
“This insurgency is a threat to the economy of the nation, people are now also moving from the North to the South, and poverty is coming.
This issue is a virus and a virus does not recognise any political party it can attack anybody, we should have it in mind that we are fighting a virus called insurgency.”
Zebulon Agomuo, Ignatius Chukwu, Remi Feyisipo, and Saby Elemba
