As if the policy somersaults and blunders of the government of the day are not bad enough, we have to contend with the dire prospects that on-the-field experts who would help bring the much-needed transformations of our communities are now the targets of kidnappers and other raving criminal bands.
There were reports that North Korean road supervision engineers were slaughtered in the Borno-Yobe area some time ago; seven SETRACO engineering construction engineers murdered at Bauchi state; a British and an Italian real estate construction supervisor for the Central Bank of Nigeria’s building in Sokoto were abducted and murdered; a Dantata and Sawoe civil engineering supervisor was also abducted and murdered in Kano; a French alternative energy plant installation engineer was abducted in Katsina and held for so long against his will until he escaped from captivity in Zaria; two German Julius Berger engineers were murdered in Ogun state and two at a resort at the Federal Capital Territory, and now the two American and the two Canadian engineers that were abducted along the Kafachan-Jere-Abuja Highway have further heightened fears that Nigeria is a country on a downward spiral.
If we keep abducting and killing expatriate engineers on the basis that they were “infidels,” it is no wonder that we can turn so easily against ourselves.
Sunday Adole Jonah,
Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology,
Minna, Niger State