A former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Malam Nuhu Ribadu, has said that the escalating spectre of insurgency in the North-east was a product of incompetent system brought about by leaders who had lacked the audacity to do what was right.
Delivering a paper entitled “Change for the North and Nigeria” at a two-day meeting organised by the Northern Elders Forum in Kano, Ribadu said the North “is in a cul de sac as the institution of governance in the country is in a shambles,” and lamented that the “forces of colonisation seeking to polarise the country along ethnic and religious lines are still holding sway.”
He noted that the insurgency was blatantly allowed to escalate as those saddled with the task of containing it took solace in adopting a taciturn posture towards it.
He said: “If at the present stage our leaders could not rise to the challenge of nipping the insurgency in the bud even before it goes out of hand, then one can rightly say the system is incompetent and our leaders had failed the litmus test of leadership.”
Ribadu, however, stated that all the major security chiefs saddled with the responsibility of maintaining security in the country are from the north and yet they have not proven their mettle in that regard, stressing that if they had all hailed from the North-east they would have kept vigil in all the flash points ravaged by the conflict.
According to him, as things stand at present, the North is in a doldrums in the face of the abject neglect and the wanton persecution it has suffered in the hands of those presently calling the shots.
On the cancer of corruption that had eaten deep into the body fabric of the nation, Ribadu said many of the apologists of anti-corruption crusade “are mere pretenders promoting the evil act and that with a clear paradigm shift the Augean Stable would be cleaned.”
