The apex pan-Ijaw socio-cultural organisation, Ijaw National Congress (INC) says the security situation in the country has not changed for the better since President Bola Tinubu took over the baton of leadership from his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari.
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President of the INC, Professor Benjamin Okaba in a statement he issued on Sunday urged Tinubu to pay serious attention to Nigeria’s internal security problems instead of focusing on the political crisis in neighbouring Niger Republic caused by overthrow of that country’s civilian government by coup plotters.
Okaba said, “Curiously, there has not been significant improvement in the security architecture of the country (Nigeria). The security policy of the Federal Government under the current political dispensation is not yet clear to the citizens, who have continued to live and go about their daily activities in subdued fear and anxiety.
“The Ijaw National Congress (INC) recalls that President Tinubu, since his inauguration, has held at least two security meetings between June and July with the Service Chiefs, including the acting Inspector General of Police, that he appointed after sacking their predecessors which he inherited from Buhari. Sadly, this has not brought about fundamental paradigm shift in the war against insurgency, banditry and kidnap-for-ransom in all parts of the country.
“Despite those security meetings, the nation has continued to record killings and abductions of hapless citizens every other week. In some instances, victims of kidnapping had paid humongous sums of money to secure their freedoms from their abductors. Others have not been lucky.”
The Ijaw leader, while lamenting the precarious security situation, cited the killing by dare-devil bandits of some soldiers in Niger State and the abduction of some National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members in Zamfara State as few instances of the unfortunate menaces of insecurity in the country.
“The INC likes to point out that the Niger Delta is not spared as poverty is weaponized through environmental degradation, resource injustice, infrastructural neglect, among others. The region has been reduced to a conundrum of mass anger, frustration, hopelessness, and this is generating anger if these issues are not adequately addressed.
“We view the worsening security architecture of Nigeria, especially in the Army, as the consequence of the new government’s choices wherein many experienced officers were unduly thrown into retirement to make way for an officer from a particular ethnicity to be appointed as Chief of Army Staff.
“In the midst of this dire security situation in Nigeria, President Tinubu is devoting so much energy, time and resources to the impasse in neighbouring Niger Republic occasioned by the coup d’etat launched in July by some of that country’s putschists”, he said.
According to him, the Ijaw nation was opposed to military action as an option to resolve the political logjam in Niger Republic, no matter the reasons that may be proffered.
Okaba added, “Therefore, we implore the Federal Government to focus its attention on the internal security of Nigeria and galvanize its security policy. So far, Mr President, Nigerians are still watching the security decisions of your administration which seemed not to have addressed the troubling challenge of insecurity across the country and has neither inspired confidence nor addressed it in anyway.
“Nevertheless, we want to believe that the acting IGP, Kayode Egbetokun, has an in-depth grasp of the internal security issues facing the country and is capable of taking the right decisions to frontally tackle them and restore the confidence of Nigerians in the government.
“The INC recognises the fact that (acting) IGP Egbetokun assumed office without career casualties of officers of the same rank with him, which was not obtainable in previous occasions. We also note his tacit recognition of year of enlistment into the Force as the hallmark of seniority in the police institution, and not career mobility which occasionally may arise from exigencies of the moment. We hope that his genial leadership disposition would reposition the Force for improved maintenance of law and order across the country.”
