Nigeria’s worrisome insecurity

Recently, Nigeria has been trending on both local and international media over ceaseless kidnappings, banditry, robbery and other criminalities threatening the fabric of our social existence in the country. It is no longer news that terrible and horrific things are happening day in day out in almost every part of the country. While it is compounded, it is aching that such a mess is happening in a country that has government on which security of lives and property is shouldered.

In Nigeria today, people no longer travel in peace. Travelling by road, being the means of transportation for the poor, is now a safe haven for criminals. What knocks your mind first is not even ‘Accident’ but rather the fear of being robbed or kidnapped. If you take the Abuja-Kaduna road, you get kidnapped. Travel from Borno to Yobe, you get kidnapped; and more. This clearly symbolises that the slide to anarchy is inevitable, unless drastic measures are taken.

The question is who are these kidnappers, bandits and killer herdsmen? They are the ever avenging and unforgiving cows in human clothing, they do not have human feelings at all; people are suffering in the hands of bandits who ravage our local communities, kill and destroy property.

The rate of insecurity in Nigeria is really alarming. It is sad and unfortunate to the extent that a second class emir in Kaduna state was kidnapped alongside 12 family members including women and children from his home in Kajuru, in the early hours of July 11, 2021. This kept me asking if an emir can be kidnapped amidst security, who else is safe? Shehu Sani said, “The kidnapping of the Emir of Kajuru and his family members is tragic and unfortunate. If an emir is not safe no one else is safe”.

I call on government and security agencies to rise up to their responsibility of protecting lives and property of the people. Though, President, Muhammadu Buhari has given series of orders to our troops to crush all bandits, the killings and attacks by these bandits and other criminals in Kaduna, Zamfara states and other regions in the North persist.

Although, security agencies are doing well, they can do even better. Government should provide them with the necessary ammunition more sophisticated than these bandits have, so that they can confidently and gallantly go into the forests, and ‘crush them’. The country is sinking but hope is not lost, Nigeria will be great again!

Mary Bawa,

Kubwa, Abuja, Nigeria

08148861264